Electronic Theses and Dissertation

The objectives of this research were to find out the effect of using local wisdom-based text as reading materials in teaching reading comprehension and to find out the students’ responses toward such materials. the focus was on three reading subskills which were determining main idea, locating reference, and understanding vocabulary. this research was a quantitative study with the implementation of experimental t-test design. the sample of this study was 30 students on the experimental group and 30 students on the control group. the instruments to collect the data were reading comprehension tests and questionnaire. the findings showed that there were improvements on the pre-test and post-test after the students were taught by using local wisdom-based texts. the reading subskill of determining main idea increased from 9.4 to 20.2; locating reference from 8.9 to 15.2; and understanding vocabulary from 9.4 to 18. while the t-test result showed that t-score 3.47 > t-table 1.67 so the null hypothesis was rejected. thus, the use of local wisdom-based text could positively improve the students’ reading comprehension. the other discovery was the positive responses from the students toward local wisdom as reading materials. the students believed that such materials were interesting, familiar, motivating, and easier to understand than the materials from the textbook.