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The main objective of this experimental study was to investigate whether there is a significant effect of contextual comic strips strategy on students reading comprehension. The study was conducted at the eighth-grade students of SMP Negeri 6 Singaraja. This Posttest-Only Control group design was applied. The population in this study was all of the students at SMP Negeri 6 Singaraja in the academic year 2018/2019. The sample in this study was 60 students consisting of 30 students from the VIII B1 class as the experimental group and 30 students from VIII B2 as the control group. The sample was selected by using cluster random sampling technique. The data were collected through a post-test in the form of multiple-choice test. The data were analyzed by using t-test in SPSS 16.0 program. The result of this study revealed that the mean score for the experimental group (73.17) is higher than the control group (69.00). The result of the ttest also showed that the value of Sig. (2-tailed) was 0.025. Since the value of Sig. (2tailed) was below 0.05, the null hypothesis was rejected and the alternative hypothesis was accepted. Based on the result, it can be concluded that there was a significant effect of Contextual Comic Strips on eighth-grade students’ reading comprehension at SMP Negeri 6 Singaraja in the academic year 2018/2019. Keyword: Comic Strips, Contextual Comic Strips, Reading Comprehension INTRODUCTION English is an international language that plays an important role in some aspect of life. English is one of the important languages to communicate with others around the world. It is better for people to master English well. In school, there are four skills that should be mastered by students in learning English. There are speaking, reading, listening, writing. From that skill, reading is one of the language skills that should be mastered by EFL students. Reading is an activity to reveal the meaning of the letters in the written texts (Smith.2001). Reading is important in the context of a foreign language learning because it is the main source for the student to obtain the input language. The main goal of reading is to gain the correct message from a text that the writer wants the reader to receive (Ahmadi, 2017). ISSN: 2549-4287 Vol.3, No.2, Mei 2019 International Journal of Language and Literature | 62 Reading is one of the important academic skills in the teaching and learning process. By reading, the students can improve their knowledge about the information in the world. This statement is also supported by Gallik (1999), he said that reading also can develop the creative side of people. When we are reading, we obtain the knowledge and experience of other people. We can learn something from the experience of other people and develop our mind and language skills by discovering a new thing from the texts. From reading, we can understand many topics such as how to make something, how to make a better plan, how to find a job, and more. In order to achieve the goal, reading and comprehension skills are needed. Duke and Pearson (2008) states that comprehension is a process of how the readers make the meaning by communicating with the text, a combination of words and the information from the written text. This statement is supported by Westwood (2008) who states that reading comprehension is the level of the reader’s understanding of the information presented in a passage of a text. It is a process of comprehending texts, understanding the meaning and getting the information from the texts. Based on the curriculum of 2013, reading in the learning process is part of the English subject which aims to help students comprehend the reading materials in the classroom. However, this is the most challenging task for students. According to Rukmini (2004), the problem of reading that faced by students in Indonesia is the strategy and the reading material used by the teacher. The lack of interest to read the book due to the students' prior knowledge, unable to comprehend the reading text, and also the complex structure of the book. Reading in the class considered boring because of unfamiliar vocabulary and lack of pre-reading activities, and long reading text (Firmanto, 2005). Therefore, it is expected that the teacher in the reading class uses an interesting strategy to motivate students in reading. Other than an interesting strategy, appropriate reading material is also needed to make students easier to understand and comprehend the text. According to Perfetti (2006), poor decoding skill is one of the factors that causes poor reading comprehension. When reading students tend to spend much time to read and translate the words because they are unfamiliar of the new vocabulary (Firmanto, 2005). They only focus on finding the meaning of difficult words in the reading text rather than trying to comprehend the text. This problem will make students have difficulty in answering the comprehension questions. As the problem still happens, the students will have low interest and motivation toward reading in learning English. According to Kweldju (1996), the model of teaching considered boring because of some factors such as unsuitable reading material due to the length of the text and also the strategy used by the teacher in the class. The strategy that is used by the teacher only answering questions based on the text, and retelling the context of the text (Firmanto, 2005). Majidi & Aydinlu (2016), mention that visualization can be used as an efficient strategy for meaningful learning. Through visualization can encourage students to make a personal connection to the text. Therefore, it is better for the teacher to use some pictures and less difficult words in reading materials. It will make the reading class become more interesting. There are many strategies can be used for helping and improving students’ reading comprehension. One of them is a comic strips strategy. In this research, the contextual comic strips strategy is applied in order to help students to comprehend the text better. According to Cheesman (2000), comic strips can be used to get students' attention, stimulate critical thinking of the students. Comic strips ISSN: 2549-4287 Vol.3, No.2, Mei 2019 International Journal of Language and Literature | 63 are a book that contains text with interesting pictures. The picture in comic strips expresses the information in the text (Cho, 2012). The pictures in the comic strip give students more detail information about the description, setting, and expression of the characters. Those will give students a good comprehension of the story rather than reading the conventional reading texts given by the teacher. Visuals help the reader to memorize the information. Decoding, visuals spark the readers’ interest in the text. Liu (2004) explains that in accordance with Dual Coding Theory (DCT), the combination between the text and illustration produced better result rather than the text alone. Based on previous research that was conducted by Dewi (2012), comic strip was implemented to improve students' reading comprehension in narrative text. She discovered that comic could build the creative side of students and increase students’ reading comprehension. The picture gave students more detail information and helped the student to understand the language. Gorjian (2016) implemented downloaded comic strips stories on vocabulary learning-intensive reading courses among intermediate English learners. in this research, he used comic pictures to make students easily to understand the meaning of the words. The result showed that the experimental group in this research had a significant improvement after treatment on vocabulary learning. Furthermore, Seventilofa (2013) implemented comic strategy and learning style upon students’ narrative reading competencies an experimental. He asked his students to read the narrative text by using comic strip strategy. He used manga (comic book) that was taken from the internet to teach reading comprehension. It was easier for his students to understand the content of the story. the result of the study showed that this strategy was effective for the students to improve their reading comprehension. So, the use of pictures in the comic strip can make students have better reading comprehension. Other than that, comic strip is also more communicative and popular. The use of comic strips in the learning process will be more effective. Csabay (2006) also states that there are some advantages of using the comic strip as a media of learning such as comic strip because is does not only contain words alone but also picture. The comic strip also can improve the grammatical competence of students. The picture of comic strip helps students comprehend the text better and make the students understand the text easily. According to Fukuyama (2006), In teaching using the picture, the use of picture contextually in reading does not only provide the reader with the background information but also make them more familiar with the context in the text. The used of contextual comic strips where the students can understand and are familiar with the situation will make them easier to understand the text. Majidi and Aydinlu (2016) state that when people know the context in the picture, they will use this knowledge to identify the object they see. Therefore, teaching using contextual comic strips can provide the situation and illustration that students familiar with the characteristic, culture, and situation that happen in the story. When we understand the scene in the picture, it would be easier to understand the content of the story. Based on the preliminary observation that was conducted at SMP Negeri 6 Singaraja, it was found out that the students showed low comprehension of reading and the teacher used conventional reading strategies. In this case, most students had difficulty in comprehending text. Considering the aforementioned is

THE EFFECT OF CONTEXTUAL COMIC STRIP ON EIGHTH GRADE STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSIONAT SMP NEGERI 6 SINGARAJA