The Implementation of Short Stories Through Authentic Material to Develop Students Reading Comprehension

There are four language skills in English, namely; listening, speaking, reading and writing. From those skills, reading is one of four skills that have to be mastered by the students who learn/study English. However, many students still have problems in reading. It is therefore necessary to apply a certain strategy how overcome such problems. One of the strategies is by using short stories. Using true short stories in English classes will encourage students to read more even outside class. Stories are generally very good for extensive reading and such a practice gives the students the chance to guess meanings in reading. This study was conducted to find whether the use of short stories improve students’ speaking skill or not and to know about the students’ opinion about the use of short stories. The participants of this study were two classes of grade 2 of MAS Darul Ihsan which consisted of Experimental class (30 students) and control class (30 students). This study used quantitative method; the instruments were test and questionnaire. The finding of this study showed that short stories can improve students’ reading skill in experimental class proven by the range score of pre-test and post-test that 7.3 from 78 to 85.5. The range score in the control class was 13.9 from 66.4 in pre-test become 80.3 in post-test. Based on the questionnaire the students gave positive respond of opinion in using short stories through authentic material to develop reading comprehension with the highest percentage was ‘agree’ respond; 43,98%. Thus, based on this study, the using of this method was effective to students and got a positive respond from students.