COMPARATIVE STUDY BETWEEN THINK ALOUD AND VISUAL IMAGERY IN ENHANCING STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION

Oct 15, 2026

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The purpose of this study is to determine whether Think Aloud and Visual Imagery produce significant differences in enhancing students’ reading comprehension. A comparative design was applied with pre-test, treatment, and post-test. Visual Imagery instruction involved 32 students in class 8F, who read passages and drew mental images, while Think Aloud involved 29 students in class 8E, who verbalized answers during reading. Conducted at SMPN 1 Parongpong for five weeks (640 minutes), results showed mean gains of 0.038 vs 0.125 and p-value 0.686 > 0.05, indicating no significant difference.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryExam

FormatPDF

Pages16

Reading Time40 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction

Background and reading comprehension gap

Evidence of Indonesian students’ reading performance

Complexity of foreign-language reading

Motivation and teaching approaches

Reported factors causing reading difficulties

Need for background knowledge and vocabulary

COMPARATIVE STUDY BETWEEN THINK ALOUD AND VISUAL IMAGERY IN ENHANCING STUDENTS’READING COMPREHENSION Sylvania Walanda Siagian, Caroline Victorine Katemba English Education Dept. Universitas Advent Indonesia Email: [sylvaniasiagian@gmail.com](sylvaniasiagian@gmail.com) ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to find out whether Think Aloud and Visual Imagery have significant difference in enhancing students’ reading comprehension. This study used comparative design, test the comprehension of the students through pre-test, treatment, and post-test. This research was done to 32 students of class 8F in Visual Imagery group; they were given passage to read and draw the image created in her mind on the paper; and 29 students of class 8E in Think Aloud group; the teacher and students think aloud the answers to the questions that were found in the text. The study was done in SMPN 1 Parongpong, West Bandung for 5 weeks or 640 minutes. Result of the study showed the average gain for Visual Imagery group is 0.038 and Think Aloud group is 0.125. The p-value = 0.686 > α (0.05), which means H0 is not rejected. Thus, there is no significant difference on students’ reading comprehension between those who are taught using Think-Aloud and those who are taught using Visual Imagery. Keyword: Reading comprehension, Think Aloud, Visual Imagery INTRODUCTION Students in Indonesia have different reading comprehension ability especially in English. Some students go to schools with an international standards and are exposed to English daily. Some students go to public schools, have dozens of classmate, and learn English twice in a week. Then, some students in rural area go to small schools that lack facilities and teachers, have their teachers and limited text books as the only source of learning English. These things creates comprehension gap between the students, because as Pearson (1993, cited by Braunger & Lewis, 2006) observes,"One is tempted to conclude that some of the best 'practice' for enhancing reading skill occurs when children are given greater opportunity to read everyday materials"(pp. 507-508) . In addition, a research in Indonesia discovered that the students’ skills in reading comprehension are quite far from satisfactory. It is said that from 15-year-old Indonesian students, sixty nine percent (69%) of them have the worst reading performance internationally (Media Indonesia, 2003) . Furthermore, Kompas, an Indonesian daily newspaper, (2003) reported that around 37.6% of 15-year-old students are barely able to read the text without comprehending the meaning of the text. Only 24.8% out of them are capable to connect with the texts with their knowledge about. Thus, many students are still lacking in terms of comprehending a text (cited by Sukyadi & Hasanah 2009) . Therefore, as Indonesian students have already encountered problems with reading comprehension in Indonesian, the language that they’ve acquired and learned, they also find it way more difficult to read and comprehend reading in English, the foreign language that they do not acquire and learn it barely for a short time. Riswanto, et al., (2014) stated that The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement showed the low reading score of Indonesian students among East Asia students. Indonesian students are only capable to comprehend 30 % reading material, and to read commentary text that needs cognitive process is hard for them (IAE for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, 2003) . PISA (2009 cited by Riswanto, et al., 2014) database found out that Indonesian students’ score is below the OECD average and is placed on the 57th of 65 countries. According to Sunggingwati and Nguyen (2013) reading comprehension in a foreign language is far more complicated than reading in our first language. What makes it more complicated is that the school’s environment hardly speak English, and only exposed to the language in the classroom at ti

FAQs

What was the main purpose of the study?

To examine whether Think Aloud and Visual Imagery differ significantly in enhancing students’ reading comprehension.

How were the two groups taught during the treatment phase?

The Visual Imagery group read passages and drew the images created in their minds, while the Think Aloud group verbalized answers to questions found in the text.

What did the statistical results show about the difference between methods?

The mean gain was 0.038 for Visual Imagery and 0.125 for Think Aloud, with p-value 0.686 greater than α = 0.05, so H0 was not rejected.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Đào