IMPROVING STUDENTS’ READING THROUGH COMIC STRIPS MEDIA IN WEBTOON APPLICATION

: The aims of this research is to improve the students’ reading skill of the Tenth grade of SMAN 4 Bangkalan by using comic strips in webtoon application. This research is collaborative classroom action research. It aimed to discover and put into action various reading skills improving measures. The research procedure was an action research that consisted of four key phases: planning, implementing/ acting, observing, and reflecting. The researcher and teacher collaboratively recognized certain obstacles andweaknesses of the reading learning process, identified some problems, and planned and carried out the proposed actions. The result of the cycle shows that the implementation of comic strip improves the students’ reading skill, especially understanding the content of the text, vocabulary mastery, and motivation to read by providing the students kinds of reading activities. The success indicator of the implementation were that (1) the students were able to understand the content of the English text, by finding the main idea and specific information, (2) the students were more enthusiastic in doing reading activities, and (3) the students vocabulary mastery was improved. Furthermore, the findings were also supported by the means of the students’ reading score which improved from 62 in preliminary test to 76 in cycle test.


Introduction
Reading is one of four English language skills, such as, speaking, listening, and writing. According to Gilakjani&Sabouri (2016), reading skill in English is an interactive process between readers and texts to gain the correct message from a text, as it main purpose. Reading skill is one of which students need to exercises and traines in order to be able to read an English text and have a great reading skill (Ilma, Masrupi, & Rahmawati, 2019). Reading does influence the students in understanding any English text. By utilizing their reading skill, students are able to write words, arrange sentences, paragraphs, and texts in English.
The struggles which usually faced by the students in reading skill are many of them unable to understand the whole content of the English text. The main purpose that caused the students has difficulties in understanding the content of the text is the minimum vocabularies that they have. Since English is the foreign language that the students do not use it in their daily activities, so that the students became unfamiliar with the English text they read. Also, struggles face by the students during reading English text is the minimum motivation that they have to read, even just reading such kind of English text. One of many reasons the students have minimum motivation is because they think that reading activity is too boring to do. They even use reading time by having chit chat with each other, so that the reading activity became uneffective. Besides that, the students' pronunciation mastery, or the minimum ability to read the English text that also makes them unmotivated to read.
The use of school textbook by the teachers to teach reading makes most of the students are feel bored and unmotivated to read such kind of English text. Teachers usually use textbook-base media in teaching reading. Activities which teacher's often apply in teaching reading is let the students read any text in textbook, then they will ask to either find the main idea of the text, or even just fill in the blank based on the text. To support the learning process, teacher usually read the text first, then, ask the student's to repeat after her/him, and even translate it together after reading it, so that the students will understand more about the things discussed in the text.
Even already applied method/strategy mentioned above, the students are still no longer motivated and confused about the content of the text. The struggles found when students are going to continuing the next activity which is kind of fill in the blank, etc. as mentioned above. The way teacher uses textbook is kind of old styled. Meanwhile, in this technology era, teacher can maximize students interest by using technology or any application to support teaching and learning process, so that the students will become more interested and motivated in the classroom.
Instead of just using textbook, teacher can use several media to teach reading. For example like using fictional storybook, magazine, and comics. Among those media's, the researcher will choose comics as a consideration. Comics can be more interesting to read for some students. It is because, since comics contained text that followed by pictures on it, so that the students will not be bored and even enjoy reading it (Marleni, 2018). The pictures give additional information that can minimize the students misunderstanding, through interpreting the pictures students can illustrate the terms of the text. So that it will make the text are easier to understand by the students, and it will also motivates students to be more participating in the reading classroom. The comic that the researcher will use is an online comic from webtoon application. Students will read selected comic, then they will asked to answer some questions based on the context of the comic.

Reading Skill
According to Rudang Mayang Sari Manik (Manik, 2019), reading is kind of activity in gaining information from the written text. Instead of just reading something that is written, reading activity is more about understanding language process in getting new vocabularies, increasing the reader's background knowledge, get information and general ideas of reading materials. In short, it means that there is a reason why it is important for the readers to learn or to have an ability to read (Ikhsan, 2017). Grabe and Stoller (2002:3) as cited in A. Ilma, Masrupi, & Rahmawati (2019) also stated that reading is the ability to interpret information by draw meaning from the printed pages, with its overall goal is not to memorize the details of the text, while to understand what there is in. In addition, since reading is the process that involves the readers existing knowledge, the text information, and the reading context. So, main goal of reading is gaining something in term of context from the text, which the writer's try to share and to receive by the readers (Pourhosein Gilakjani, 2016).
According to Pourhosein Gilakjani (2016) there are two different kinds of reading. They are extensive reading and intensive reading. Intensive reading is a method of reading that helps readers increase their comprehension of language elements (such as regular and irregular sound-spelling relationships, vocabulary, grammar, cohesion, information structure, genre features, and strategies) from a text by using translation to make the text easier to understand. Additionally, accurate text reading is a step in the extensive reading process.
In order toget the information of the students' improvement in reading comprehension, some assessments of reading are essential to be carried out. In contrast to speaking and writing, the reading process and outcome cannot be seen and particularly observed. For this reason, all assessment of reading must be carried out by inference. Some considerations are needed in designing assessment of reading, such as the types of genres of written text, the components of reading ability, and specific tasks (Sari, 2017).
Furthermore, the types of reading performance will influence the assessment tasks as well. As cited by Sari (2017), Brown lists a number of possible tasks for assessing reading. Related to the specifications of reading in this research that is assessing students' intensive and extensive reading or similarly selective and interactive reading, so there are three types of possible assessment tasks applied as follow: (1) Multiple-choice, which include grammar and vocabulary components as well as a context question to assess how well the students' understandthe text's information. The context is presented by putting a pair or part of a text followed by questions in which the students have to responds correctly. (2) Picture-Cued Tasks, Pictures and photographs can both be used to assess and well utilized for examining ability at the selective level. There are many other picture-cued techniques that are frequently employed. Since this research is using comic strip as a media, so this kind of task can be a consideration to use. (3) Short Answer Task, It is crucial to take the design of the questions in this type of task because it can be challenging to ensure that they reach their intended criterion. Additionally, it will also needto develop consistent specifications for acceptable student responses and be prepared to take the time necessary to accomplish their evaluation. However,the benefits of letting students create their own answers as well as the wash-back effect of any follow-up discussion may exceed these rather anticipated downsides. Each of those three categories of assessment assignments combines form-and meaning-focused objectives. They include the goals of reading evaluation, particularly with regard to the comprehension problem, and they represent the indications of students' reading comprehension.

Teaching Media
Teaching media are very important to be used in teaching and learning process at school. It expected to make conductive learning process that the student's can carry out the learning process efficiently and effectively (Aisyah & Haryudin, 2020). Besides teaching by using media is an important thing, it used better the quality of the process of teaching, such as provide interest in learning and stimulate student's to learn actively (Febriyani, Mustain, & Kiptiyah, 2021).
Achmad Baidawi (2016) stated that teaching media are tools that teacher's bought into classroom which provided to facilitate teaching learning process. It expected to help teacher present the lesson more clearly and interesting, so that students will be more actively participate in teaching and learning process. Learning media are crucial to the teaching and learning process because it might motivate students to participate in the activities involved in teaching and learning while also making the experience enjoyable for them, so that it will increase their learning outcomes (Aisyah & Haryudin, 2020).
Furthermore, Baidawi (2016) defined that there are three kinds of language teaching media, such as visual media, audio media, and audio-visual media. Visual media which refers to media that can be seen by the students, audio media refers to media that can be heard, and audio-visual media which can be seen nor heard by the students. Whereas, kinds of media which already mentioned above are aim to make students get a better experience during teaching and learning process.

Comic Strips
According to Liu (2003) as cited in A. Ilma, Masrupi, & Rahmawati (2019) "comic strip is a series of pictures inside boxes that tell story", it usually contains of dramatic narrative in series of drawings which often including dialogue in balloons. While, Devy Marleni (2018) also stated that comics are series of picture contain image and balloons to write the story. As a learning media, it will of course entertain the reader by the colorful image pages that every comics have. Also make the reader are more interested to get involved in the reading.
Reading class should make the learners enjoy reading and feel motivated to read. In order to make the readers or learners enjoy reading, teaching reading should be interesting and less boredom.The use of comic media is very attractive to students. One of the numerous benefits of using learning media like comics is that they can amuse readers while also motivating them to study and pique their interest in subjects that are thought to be difficult to comprehend, promoting discussion activities, fostering knowledge, and enhancing memory. (Panjaitan, Ningsih, & Novi, 2020). Meanwhile, its disadvantage can be distract for some students and make fun of it during teaching and learning process, especially when it uses to teach young learners. The integration of comics with teaching activities will open a new window to students' imagination and thus contribute to their creative thinking processes (Radeswandri, Budiawan, Vebrianto, & Musa, 2021).
In conclude, using comic strip as a media in teaching reading can be a great tool to make the students easier to understand the material delivered by the teacher. Also, it is considered as a fun media that will not make the students less boredom during teaching and learning process. So, the students become more motivated to participate in reading class and readily receiving the material given.

Webtoon Application
Webtoon is kind of visual entertainment that is becoming more and more well-liked among the young generation. Webtoon series, which are presented as comic strips, are made up primarily of visual elements with sporadic verbal content. Reading Webtoon, despite the entertainment value one can derive from it, deprives readers of the chance for processing more sophisticated phrases (Djiwandono, 2018).The language in educational webtoon should not be obscene; instead, it should incorporate images that convey knowledge. Abusers are replaced by example moral behavior.
Additionally, the comics developed and used are specifically customized to the purpose and lesson materials. Due to students' preference for cartoon images, the images are presented in a humorous narrative in this format The drawing's only purpose is to serve as an illustration of the offered narrative that is relevant to the subject matter. While the dialogue between the comic book characters served as the source material for the narrative prose. In narrative comics, stories are not told in their whole but rather as a series of interconnected episodes. However, the laterpresented materials indicate that the characters employed are still the same.

Research Method
This research conducted byusing Collaborative Classroom Action Researchdesign since it will discuss about using comic strip as a media in teaching reading. According to Elliott views, classroom action research (CAR), as mentioned in Purrohman (2011), is an assessment of social situations intended to enhance the quality of actions. The relationship between selfevaluation and professional development is created through all stages, including review, diagnosis, planning, action, observation, and effect.In this research, the data which will analyze by the researcher is the student's improvement of reading skill. Meanwhile, the student's learning processis the source of data of this research.the data collection technique of this research is conducted steps by steps. Firstly, the researcher collects the data during the research using questionnaires and tests as the instruments. Next, the researcher analyzes the data and the reflection notes. In the next step, the researcher maps the data and removes the unused data. Then, the researcher concluded the final result.

Preliminary Study
Preliminary study was conducted before the research was begun. The researcher observed the classroom condition while the English teacher taught English as usual in the classroom. Then, the researcher along with the English teacher discussed about the classroom condition, also student's behaviour during English, especially reading class.Moreover, the data of preliminary study showed that most of the students still had low skill and less enthusiastic in Reading English text. It can be seen from the result of the preliminary test table and pre-questionnaire tablebelow. Based on the result of preliminary test above, it can be concluded that the average score of pre-test was 62 points. The highest score was 74 and the lowest score was 48. Among the 28 students, there were almost half of them, which about 11 students passed the test. So it can be said that 39% of the students passed, and the other 61% was failed in the preliminary test. It means that the students reading skill in tents grade students was nice, but still need to be improved.
Besides that, the researcher also gave the students' questionnaire which resulted most of the students were disagree that reading was a difficult subject which shown by 50% (of 100%) of them were disagree and 32% were strongly disagree.Then, 54% agree and 32% of the students were strongly agree that it was difficult to understand the whole content of the English text. But, the rest 14% were disagree that they found it difficult to understand the whole content of the text.Next, 64% of the students (46% agree, 18% strongly agree) and 36% (29% disagree, 7% strongly disagree) that the reason they face the difficulties as mentioned before was because of the lack of vocabulary that they have.Lastly, most of the students agree (54% agree, 32% strongly agree) and 14% (10% disagree, 4% strongly disagree) that they need an alternative media to use in order to solve the problem.

Planning
In the planning stage, the researcher and the teacher prepared the teaching learning design, such as arranging lesson plan, and also prepared the material. Then, the teacher and researcher also prepared the instrument for collecting data, such as questionnaires, field notes, and test in order to know the students activeness during teaching and learning process. Then, the researcher along with the teacher prepared cycle test to know the students improvement in reading skill.

Acting
The teacher and researcher implemented the acting into two meetings. (1) In the first meeting,the researcher used the demonstration and cooperative learning method, where the researcher explained the material and introduced the media by demonstrating the way to use it, then, the students formed and worked together in group and discussed their thought about the material delivered.The comic used in the first meeting was called 'Drawing History' which served stories about historical events from all around the world. Then, the researcher along with the teacher decided to choose chapter 94. 'Introducing Indonesia' which tells about the kingdoms era in Indonesia, it was because the teacher think that this topic were going to be more familiar to the students.Lastly, the teacher gave the students written testabout finding the main idea and specific information based on the comic they read, which aimed to know the students improvement of their reading skill.
(2) In the second meeting, the researcher also using the same method as in the first meeting, which was cooperative learning method. Besides, the teacher also applied strategy in this meeting, since the skill was reading, so the strategy usedhere was read aloud, in means the teacher would be able to correcting their pronunciation.In the second meeting, because the students were gave the positive response about the appliance of media in the first meeting, so that the teacher only repeating the previous activities, which was teaching reading using comic strip media but by usingthe different topic. The comic used was also same as in the first meeting, which was 'Drawing History' with the title of topic waschapter 2. 'Human's Rule', which was about pre history of human.

Observing
In the process of observing, the researcher conducted the observation during the teaching and learning process by write down on field note. This phase included researcher's observation about the student's response toward the teacher's explanation and test. As a result, it was found the following findings; (1) Researchers' action, The action focused on how to improve the student's reading skill by using comic strip on Webtoon application as a media, where the researcher acted as a collaborator that observed the teacher while implementing the media during teaching and learning process. In applying the media of reading, the teacher did the procedure as mentioned in acting stage. (2) The students' response, The observations result of the student's responses was taken during the teaching and learning process in every stages. It resulted, that the students are enthusiastic and enjoying the learning process.

Reflecting
After the teacher had done the whole activity, the teacher assessed the students reading task result by conducting cycle test.The result of the cycle test as mentioned on the table result of reading cycle test below: As shown above, the average of students score was 76 by 2,116 in total score. Compared with the preliminary test average score which was 62, it increased 14 points. So it can be concluded that 86% of the students or about 24 students passed and 14% of them or 4 students were failed in this cycle. It means that this cycle was success, because as mentioned in the success indicator that it considered successful if 50% of the student passed the test. In addition, the teacher had successfully improved the student's reading skill by using comic strip in Webtoon application as the media in teaching reading.
Then, in order to know the student's impression after using Webtoon application's comic strip as the media in teaching reading, the students were given post-questionnaire. Based on the questionnaire, most of the students felt that their reading skill improved after reading using comic strip as media,by 71% of the students agree that their reading were improved.Moreover, 93% of the students (86% agree, 7% strongly agree) that comic strip served interesting material in reading English text. Followed by 64% (60% agree, 4% strongly agree) that comic strip increased their motivation to read English text, but there were another 36% (32% disagree, 4% strongly disagree) that disagree about the media help them increased their motivation to read English text. Next, about the term of enrich vocabulary, 79% of the students agree and 21% were disagree that comic strip did help to enrich their vocabulary.The lastly, about 75% (50% agree, 25% strongly agree) that they recommendedthe teacher to use comic strip to teach reading in the classroom.

Conclusion
This research was successful in the effort to improve the student's reading skill through comic strip. After conducting research observation at SMAN 4 Bangkalan, the researcher concluded that comic strip does improve the students reading skill by creating more fun reading activities which motivates the students to be more focuses on their reading. It can be seen from the improvement of the student's achievement from preliminary test to treatment and cycle test.
By providing comic as the reading passages, the students were more conducive during teaching and learning process. It is shown by, first, most of the students are enthusiastic and involving during learning process. Second, they were paying attention to the teacher's explanation. Lastly, they were more confident to answer the question based on their own opinion or discussing it with their friend, rather than copying their friend's task.

Suggestion
Suggestion from the conclusion above, were proposed by the researcher to the teacher, students and the other researcher. First for the teacher, it may help the teacher provide media in teaching, so that the teaching and learning process are more fun and effectively delivered to the students. Second, for the students it can be a new source of learning tools. Since this media was an application based that can be accessed by using smart phone, so the students can use it besides for entertaining, it can also improving their reading skill. Lastly, the further researcher can use the result of this research as references to other research with different skills or subject. Moreover, the researcher believed that this thesis is far from being perfect. So the researcher will accept good suggestions and constructive criticism to make this thesis perfect. Also, the researcher hopes that the thesis will be useful and contribute some valuable thing to the researcher herself and all readers in general.