Improving Students’ Reading Comprehension of Descriptive Texts by Using Paraphrase Strategy at Semester II/D of the English Department of FKIP-UIR Pekanbaru.

This research is conducted to improve the students’ reading comprehension of descriptive texts by using paraphrase strategy. It aims to find out whether paraphrase strategy can improve students’ reading comprehension of descriptive texts at semester II/D of the English Department of FKIP-UIR Pekanbaru. The study employed is a classroom action research design in which the researcher and her collaborator worked together in designing the lesson plan, implementing the action, analyzing data and doing reflection. The participants of this research were 38 students at semester II/D of the English Department of FKIP Islamic University of Riau Pekanbaru in the 2012/2013 academic year. This study was conducted in two cycles, following the procedure of action research – plan, action, observation, and reflection. Each cycle consists of four meetings. The data of this research was obtained through observation sheet, field notes, interview, and tests. The research finding was paraphrase strategy could improve the students’ reading comprehension of descriptive texts. This conclusion based on the increasing of the students’ mean score in reading comprehension of descriptive text indicators namely identification, description, vocabulary, reference, and inference. The students’ score could reach the minimum standard of English score in the English Department of FKIP-UIR Pekanbaru which is 70. It was proven from the improvement of the base score of reading comprehension from 60.7 become 67.24 in post test 1 and 76.76 in post test 2. The factors influenced the improvement of students reading comprehension of descriptive texts consisted of material, media, classroom activity, and lecturer’s approach.