The Effect of Guided Reading Strategy and Reading Interest on Reading Comprehension of Grade VIII Students of SMPN 16 Pekanbaru

Reading comprehension is a necessity in foreign language learning, especially on beginner students. Students reading interest would also develop given the time spent on learning different literacy. Researcher wanted to explore it as a contributing factor when engaging them to read and to comprehend. This experimental research study was aimed to describe the effect of guided reading strategy and reading interest on reading comprehension of the students. Sixty-three 8th grade students of SMPN 16 Pekanbaru were divided into experimental class and control class as the subjects for this research. Students’ reading comprehension and reading interest were tested by using test and questionnaire for collecting the data of the research. The data were then calculated and analyzed by normality, homogeneity, and hypotheses testing. The result data analysis showed that: (1) guided reading strategy produced better result on students’ reading comprehension in comparison to small group discussion; (2) guided reading strategy produced better result on reading comprehension for students with high reading interest in comparison to small group discussion; (3) guided reading did not produce better result reading comprehension for students with low reading interest in comparison to small group discussion; and (4) there was a relationship concerning teaching strategy and interest on reading to students’ reading comprehension. It can be concluded that guided reading strategy had a significant impact in aiding students’ reading comprehension as compared to small group discussion.