The Effect of Gender Differences and Reading Strategies toward Students’ Reading Comprehension at Third Semester Students of Sultan AgengTirtayasa University Serang

burhanuddin salam; dr. h. atiq susilo, m.a; elin driana, ph.d.;

The purpose of this research was to find out whether there is any
significant difference result of reading comprehension between gender (male and
female), whether there is any significant difference result of reading
comprehension in the use of reading strategies (cognitive-metacognitive), and
whether there is a significant interaction of gender differences and the use of
reading strategies towards students’ reading comprehension. A quantitative
analysis that included descriptive statistics (mode, median, range, mean, standard
deviation, and the distribution of frequency in histograms), and inferential
analysis (ANOVA) tests were conducted to answer the research questions of this
study.
The respondents of this study were the third semester students (regular
and non-regular class) taking the reading III program at English department of
Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa University academic year 2013/2014. Out of 94 students
of the population, 50 (25 females and 25 males) were chosen as the samples
based on the cluster random sampling. To collect data, the study used two kinds
of instruments: a reading comprehension test, and two questionnaires (students’
demography and Cognitive – Metacognitive strategy questionnaire. The result of
this study revealed that out of two independent variables, only the variables of
gender affected students’ reading comprehension (p – value < 0.05) with mean
score females were higher than males. However, the different use of reading
strategies did not give significant effect on students’ reading comprehension (p –
value > 0.05). But the overall use of both reading strategies through different
gender had not shown significant interaction on students’ reading comprehension
(p – value > 0.05). Thus only one alternate hypothesis was accepted in this study.
Finally, the result of this study showed a fact that the reading
comprehension of English under graduate students of UNTIRTA is still in
inadequate level. Therefore, lecture should teach not only reading lesson, but also
how to make the students be acquainted with strategies in reading.