NAME : ACKYTOFFVUXOMI

NIM : 157835446
ANSWERING THE QUESTIONS ABOUT THE MAIN IDEA ON UJIAN NASIONAL
(NATIONAL EXAMINATION) BY USING SKIMMING ASSESSMENT STRATEGY ON
NINTH GRADE IN JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL
INTRODUCTION
Skimming and scanning are strategy to comprehend the reading. It is
not easy to use this strategy in skimming, we have to practice this every
time. Students can do this strategy when they get task. Because of skimming
is the process to get gist or main idea, so the reader have a prediction
strategy. Brown (2003: 213) argue that a prediction strategy used to give a
reader a sense of the topic and purpose of a text, the organization of the
text, the perspective or point of view the writer, its ease or difficult and/or its
usefulness to the reader.
Ninth grade student in Junior High School is a preparation class to face
national examination. Answering main idea questions in National
Examination is very difficult. The students must have skill and scheme in all
of the reading. Skimming assessment is one of strategy to train student to
answer the question. Students are like athletes. They improve their skill with
practice to achieve the goal be a champion. According to William (2013: 19)
argue that when students come to believe that smart is not something you
are but something you get, they seek challenging work, and in the face of
failure, they increase effort. Students athletes get this. They know that to
improve, they must practice things they cant yet do rather than just simply
rehearse the things they know how to do. We need to get students to
understand this in English Language arts classroom too. Based on the
previous matter above, is skimming assessment strategies can make
students easy to answer the questions about the main idea in national
examination?
SKIMMING
ASSESSMENT
STRATEGY
TO
IMPROVE
READING
COMPREHENSION
Kellaghan (2001: 19) stated that the term assessment may be used in
education to refer to any procedure or activity that is designed to collect
information about the knowledge, attitudes, or skills or a learners or group of
learners. In the school, the type of assessment must be recognize and
involved by teachers or examiner. The Assessment could be carried out the
learners in individual or in groups.

Skimming assessment strategies is usually direct the test-taker skims a

text and answer the questions. Brown (2003: 213) stated that questions can
guide the student to do skimming tasks such as the following 1) What is the
main idea of this text? 2) What is the authors purpose in writing the text? 3)
What kind of writing is this? 4) What type of writing is this? 5) How easy or
difficult do you think this text will be? 6) What do you think you will learn
from the text? 7) How useful will the text be for you?
Depend on the context, we can answer with oral and written. Most
assessment in the field of skimming are informal and formative. Formative
assessment can help learning but it is not new. It will growing up day by day,
year by year, and the student can learn new things. This is the most energy
to increase the aim of the learning. So, it is not only assessment, but also it
is evidence in the feedback of the student responses.
Feedback the student responses can measure the comprehension
reading of the text. Scoring is more important in the feedback. Brown (2003:
213) point out scoring is less of an issue than providing appropriate feedback
to students on their strategies of prediction.
English is the one of scared subject in National examination. There are
many reading passage according the genre in the question in the
examination. The teacher have strategies to face it with skimming
assessment strategies. The teacher must be train the student step by step.
Skimming in one paragraph is the start to train. After that we use two
paragraph to find the main idea. And we can continue until one passage. The
second, feedback the skimming assessment responses to the students is
very important too. The feedback responses can make students better than
before. William (2013: 18) stated that first knowing the students allows the
teacher to make better judgement about when to push each student and
when to back off. Second, when the students trust the teacher, they are
more likely to accept the feedback and act on it. Ultimately, the only
effective feedback is that which is acted upon, so that feedback should be
more work for recipient that the donor. Third, scoring skimming assessment
response from the student is part to solve the issue. Level achievement the
student in comprehension reading especially to find the main idea can
measure by scoring. Scoring assessment response can motivated students to
more curiosity the main idea in the passage.
CONCLUSIONS
National Examination is one of the measure of standard level in
education. The students is more active and ready to face it. The main
obstacle in English subject is reading comprehension in the text. There are so

many variety of questions, but all of the question have indicators appropriate
Standar Kompetensi Lulusan (SKL)/ Graduate Competence Standard. The
challenge for students is how to answer the reading passage with time
limitation.
The Main idea questions need more time to answer. The teacher must
to train the students to answer the questions with quickly. Skimming
assessment strategy is more effective than the other strategy. This strategy
train the students to find the main idea. Students can do it very well if we are
as teacher make training every time. Students must train with skimming
assessment, giving it score and feedback to the students to improve they
skill to solve the problem.
Finally, skimming assessments strategies is means to solve the reading
problem. Students can improve skill with do more exercises. Solving the
problem in National Examination can be give students motivation and
confident.
REFERENCES
Brown, H. Douglas. 2003. Language Assessment Principles and Classroom
Practices. San Francisco: Longman.
Thomas Kellagahan, Vinvent Greaney. 2001. Using Assessment to Improve
the Quality of Education (Vol. 71). France: Unesco.
Wiliam, Dylan. 2013. Assessment: The Bridge between Teaching and
Learning. Voices from the Middle Vol. 21 No. 02 pp. 15-20.