STRATEGIES ON TEACHING READING COMPREHENSION FOR THE JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

English teacher applies certain strategies in teaching reading comprehension to achieve the objective of learning. Covid-19 pandemic has changed the ways of teaching from face to face to online learning. This study is intended to investigate strategies the teacher used, to know the problems faced by the teacher in implementing strategies, and to know how the teacher solves the problems in implementing strategies on teaching reading comprehension during the covid-19 pandemic at junior high school. This descriptive qualitative research was conducted at SMP 2 Manyaran, Central Java. The subject is an English teacher. Observation and interview were applied to collect the data. Miles and Huberman’s interactive model is used to analyze the data. The results of this research show that the teacher applies five strategies to teach reading comprehension during the pandemic covid-19 namely, strategy of identifying the purpose in reading, skimming the text for main ideas, scanning the text for specific information, analyzing vocabulary, and implementing L-R-D (Listen-Read-Discuss) strategy. The teacher encounters several problems in implementing the strategies because the students fail to identify the purpose of the text, face difficulty to skim the text and analyzing vocabulary. To overcome the problems, the teacher makes several efforts such as giving more exercises and texts and conducting discussions. The online learning during the covid-19 pandemic challenges the English teacher to navigate the students to find the sources of learning using the technologies.


INTRODUCTION
During the covid-19 pandemic activities in face-to-face learning process in the class was changed to learning from home. According to Word Health Organization (WHO) on 8 May 2020, that corona virus can easily be transmitted from human to human, so it is very dangerous if gather many people in one room. The learning flow in the classroom has the highest risk of spreading the virus because teacher-student or students-students touch each other. Duration of the learning in class can also increase the risk of passing the virus. The students who come from various regions do not have the guarantee of being protected from the corona virus both from their home, their environment, even on the way to their school. The pandemic makes Indonesian governments issue many policies. The Minister of Education and Culture of the Republic of Indonesia has begun to limit the learning process at schools and universities. The Minister of Education and Culture issued Circular Number 4 of 2020 concerning the Implementation of Education in a Coronavirus  Emergency, one of which emphasizes that online/distance learning is carried out to provide a learning experience without burdening the students.
The learning process from home may vary and take into the students learning facilities. The facilities include the use of technologies for learning because some learning platforms should be installed in electronic devices such as mobile phones, computers, and tablets. Both teachers and students should be familiar with the changes of the ways of learning from face to face to online learning.

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Students who are good at language learning can be able to understand English learning easily from those who are less intelligent so that the strategy that teacher used must be efficient. A study of strategies to teach reading comprehension has been conducted by Anjulo (2017) which focuses on the use an extensive reading strategy. The result is that intensive reading strategy is a strategy that is often used by students, but extensive reading strategy has a great positive effect on students reading comprehension. Furthermore, Kung and Aziz (2020) conducted research using metacognitive reading strategies. The result is that metacognitive reading strategies can improve reading comprehension and give students many opportunities to read independently. This study focuses on strategies to teach reading comprehension during the covid-19 pandemic.
This study is started from the preliminary research that results the data of the students' difficulties in understanding reading comprehension. The teacher also faces a challenge during the learning process in the classroom that many students encounter more difficulty in understanding the material of reading comprehension in online learning. The students' interest in reading texts also decrease. This is a challenge for English teacher to use strategies on teaching reading comprehension that are creative and innovative so that students can enjoy learning well.

Reading
Reading is the most essential skill for success in all educational contexts (Brown, 2004, p.185). Reading is a process to knew, to comprehend, and to feel the content of the text. Reading is an activity where we can explore a lot of information contained in the reading content. According to Bamford & Day (1998, p.6) reading is a process related to recognition and comprehension of the word. Word recognition in here it means a process of perceiving symbols written of the text that match a person's spoken language. Smith (2004, p.3) defines reading as an activity to have four characteristics, namely the purposeful, selective, anticipatory, and based on comprehension. Nunan (2003, p.68) explains that reading is a fluent process for readers to combine a lot of information from the reading text and background knowledge they know before reading to construct meaning. The purpose of reading is understanding. It can be summed up that reading is a process to find out, to understand, and to feel the content of text. Reading is an activity where we can explore a lot of information contained in the reading content.

Reading Comprehension
Almutairi (2018:1) explains that one way to achieve the goals and expectations of education, students must master reading comprehension skills so that they can organize the class well. McNamara (2007, p.11) defines comprehension is an ability where someone can go beyond the words, understand some ideas of a paragraph and know the relationship in each idea in a text. Comprehension refers to the process of understanding a word, sentence, and connected text. McKee (2012, p.46) defines comprehension as the ability to find out and grasp a text, identify implicit and explicit information in a text, and connect the interpretation of what the writer says and what the reader thinks. For the example, when students can understand textual information, finding information related to the text, and identify important information that was available in text.
According to Snow (2002, p.9) reading comprehension is a process where meanings are explored and constructed together with written language interaction. Woolley (2011, p.15) states that reading comprehension is one of the most important components of reading that must be mastered. In each of the activities, students are required to be able in construct a strong comprehension of the meaning in the text that students read. Klingner, Vaughn and Boardman (2007:8) state that reading comprehension is a process of complex collaboration between readers, their interest in reading the text, what they think about the text, the knowledge they get from previous texts and understanding the type of text. Furthermore, reading comprehension can be explained as the student's capability to comprehend a whole of the text, including understanding 17 implied and implied meanings, types of reading text, the information or knowledge contained in the text, the aims of reading and the student's capability to use strategies on reading comprehension. Oakhill, Chain and Elbro (2015, p.1) defines that reading comprehension as a complex task combines cognitive skills and abilities such as identifying words, decode and mastery of language in the text. In a text the author usually uses certain codes such as the use of synonyms, antonyms, and idioms so the reader needs to decode this code. It means that to be able to identify words and decode the text, readers need to mastering language so that they can easily understand the reading.

Components of Reading Comprehension
There are many skills that can contribute to overall comprehension performance. McNamara (2007, pp.48-50) writes three components of skills related to the meaning.
1. Inference-making Making inference is very important to ensure a good understanding of the text. The author doesn't have to write every little detail in the text so that the text becomes long and it makes the reader bored. However, the readers are left to fill in details in the text that are not stated explicitly. The readers can fill in details by integrating the attached statement or inserting general knowledge with information in the text.

Comprehension monitoring
Comprehension monitoring is essential to construct meaning. When students realize that they are lacking in comprehending, they can take several steps or ways to solve the problem. Comprehension monitoring can be seen by asking the students to analyze the consistency of a reading text. These can be found in random sentences, contradictions, or information that contradicts the content of the texts.

Understanding text structure
Instructions in the text structure can help someone reading comprehension. An explicit awareness of the structure of the text and the expectations it generates from it can be a useful tool for readers. This means that readers can use the background information and schemas in the text to construct meaning-based representations. Meanwhile, Pang, at. al (2003) state that there are five components of reading.

Phonological and phonemic awareness
Phonological awareness is an ability where the students are able to find language sounds that are different from their meaning. Phonological awareness has a strong correlation with a person's reading ability when viewed from the study of the language (alphabet and non-alphabet). In the study of the language of the alphabet, phonemic awareness is very influential because it can map each letter of the alphabet into phonemes.

Fluency
Fluency is one of the most component in reading. Someone that is include category fluent in reading is they are that able to read quickly, accurately and with full expression. A person who is fluent in reading has no problem with vocabulary recognition so they can focus on the meaning of words in the text. 3. Vocabulary Good readers are readers who are able to master vocabulary knowledge well.
When understanding a reading, readers must understand the meaning of each word they read by building text understanding through the ability to understand words according to the context in the sentence. Actually, getting knowledge of vocabulary is very difficult but this is really needed when someone is learning to read and wants to develop their reading skills.

Prior knowledge
Reading comprehension can be developed from the students' prior knowledge. This prior knowledge can be in the form of knowledge about culture, learning materials, the outside

Comprehension
Comprehension is the activities by which someone gets or knows the meaning of the text they is reading. A person's comprehending in reading can be seen from the knowledge of vocabulary, thinking and reasoning they are involved in the reading process. McNamara (2007, p.6) states that strategies for reading comprehension are cognitive actions or behaviors that aim to improve several aspects of reading comprehension in certain contextual conditions. The strategy used by the students is depend on which strategy that suits with them. Brown (2001, pp. 306-310) provides several strategies for reading comprehension.

Identify the purpose in reading
Effective reading consists of identify the purpose of reading clearly. In here students shall know and be able to identify the purpose of their reading. This strategy is important because by find out the purpose of reading allows students to easily get the information that they are searching and looking for in the text and also get rid of potentially distracting information in the text. The easiest way to find the purpose of reading is the teacher explains to the student about the purpose of reading according the type of reading text and look for main ideas in each paragraph.

Use grapheme rules and pattern to aid in bottom-up decoding (beginning level)
In many cases, students are familiar with the spoken language. They also have difficulty in English spelling terms. Students may need an explanation of certain English orthographic rules and their characteristics. This is because not all grapheme-phoneme correspondences can be obtained easily. In addition, they have to use the rules and patterns of graphemes that are made to fit between spoken and written English.
3. Use efficient silent reading strategy for relatively rapid comprehension (for intermediate to advanced levels) This strategy is not suitable for the first level because the learners at this level still have limited vocabulary and grammar pattern mastery. In the reading process, intermediate to advanced students do not need to read fast because the teacher can aid them to increase their efficiency by teaching silent reading. Focus on words that are important for global understanding, skip unnecessary words and try to deduce the meaning of the context.

Skim the text for main ideas
Quick skimming directs the student's gaze across the text to find the gist of the reading text. Skimming aids students to predict the goal of, the main topic, the message in the reading, and maybe some ideas that develop or support the text. The teacher provides several questions related to the reading content and asks students to read the text to answer the question.

Scan the text for specific information
The aims of this strategy are to find specific information without reading the entire text. Scanning reading focuses students on phrases that contain important information and leaves phrases that are deemed unimportant to make it easier to find detailed information. The teacher can instruct students to do the scanning exercise related to search the name of the characters, setting of place, setting of time or to list some sentence/word supporting details.

Use semantic mapping or clustering
Semantic mapping strategies or grouping ideas into meaningful clustering, can help students organize and minimize reading clutter. Semantic map making can be done independently, but with productive group work techniques make the students pushed 19 collectively and can make mapping into sections so the student easier in reading comprehension.

Guess when you are not certain
In this strategy the teacher can help students become accurate guessing. The teacher can use this strategy by liken reading as a guessing game. When students are able to understand the guesses in the reading, the students' reading comprehension ability is very good.

Analyze vocabulary
The teacher can use this strategy when the student cannot analyze of the vocabulary. The students who have difficulty understanding the meaning of vocabulary need an easy way to analyze vocabulary. To analyze vocabulary the student can search prefixes (like inter-, and un) to give clues of words, search suffixes (like -tion and -ally) to find the type of part of speech, search roots that are familiar with the student, search grammatical contexts that might key information, and search the semantic context for clues in analyzing vocabulary.

Distinguish between literal and implied meaning
This needs the application of top down skills. Not all languages can be interpreted with regard to literals and syntax. The implied meaning should usually be derived from pragmatic information processing. Many students find it difficult to distinguish between literal and implied meanings because the student lack of vocabulary, pragmatic and syntactic mastery. This strategy can help students to have the ability to understand literal meanings but also to understand discourse analysis.

Capitalized on discourse makers to process relationship
Many discourse makers in English hint at the relationship between ideas expressed through phrases, clauses, and sentences in the reading text. Understanding that is so clear can improve reading efficiency for readers. Such clear understanding can improve reading efficiency for readers. The teacher can choose the strategy that is most likely to help students understand the text well. Teacher must pay attention to student abilities, student reading difficulties, reading levels, and student assessments. In teaching reading, teacher have responsibility to help students achieve reading goals. The teacher can provide, select or create texts that are appropriate with the lesson plans and students' abilities, design of reading assignments that are useful for students to understand reading texts, organize effective learning activities, and create a supportive environment for practicing reading.

Strategies on Teaching Reading Comprehension
Strategy in teaching plays an important role to achieve the goal of learning. Brown (2004, p.229) mentions several strategies on teaching reading comprehension.
1. The teacher needs to identify the purpose of the reading This is very important to help teacher choose the right reading books for learning. Having a clear purpose of the reading can also help students find a reading text that suits their requirement. They will sort out the reading texts that are useful to them and ignore reading that is not important. Efficient reading that consists of identifying the purpose of reading can help them to get accurate information and ignore information that has the potential to damage the purpose of reading.
2. Ensure that there are graphics and pictures in the reading to help young learners in decoding and capturing the meaning of the reading easily. Graphics and pictures can also attract young learners to read. In addition, can use efficient silent reading techniques to read and understand the reading quickly. This applies to intermediate to advanced readers who are already accustomed to reading. The use of creative strategies makes students more active and interested in learning reading comprehension. There are many strategies on offer to help teacher teach reading comprehension. Strategies on teaching reading comprehension can be used according to teaching needs. It is adapted to the student's background, the genre of text and the problems that appear in teaching reading comprehension.
In this research, researcher chooses an English teacher of 7 th grade of junior high school class as research subject. Based on the interview with the English teacher, it is known that the teacher used several strategies in teaching reading comprehension. One of the strategies used is L-R-D (Listen, Read, and Discuss) strategy. In listen step, the students listen to the materials explanation and instructions from the teacher that will be learned via WhatsApp Group application. In read step, the students read the text after receiving explanation and instructions from the teacher. In discuss step, the teacher and students do discussions together when students do not understand the material and after the students did exercises. The teacher also said that METHOD This descriptive qualitative research intended to describe the teaching strategies used by the English teacher, the problems faced and the solutions in teaching reading comprehension during the covid-19 pandemic at SMP N 2 Manyaran, Central Java. The English teacher was the subject of the research. Observation and interview were applied to collect the data. Miles and Huberman's interactive model is used to analyze the obtained data.

Teacher's Strategies to Teach Reading Comprehension during the Covid-19 Pandemic
From classroom observation and interview with the English teacher to apply certain strategies to teach reading comprehension, the data are obtained. The observations are conducted four times to figure out the strategies of the English teacher's strategies to teach reading comprehension as the covid-19 pandemic forces the teacher to adjust the way of teaching from face to face into online learning.
Teaching reading comprehension in online class was shorter than in normal class. The teacher focuses on exercises and tasks to explore the students' reading comprehension. The activities during learning in the classroom consist of opening, main activity, and closing. The results of observation and interview with English teacher, there are five strategies used the teacher to teach reading comprehension during the covid-19 pandemic at SMP N 2 Manyaran, Central Java. The strategies are identifying the purpose in reading, skimming the text for main ideas, scanning the text for specific information, analyzing vocabulary and applying L-R-D strategy.

Strategy to identify the purpose of reading
The teacher conveys the purpose of reading according to the material being studied through PowerPoint with audio. The selected text is recount text which is about telling an experience. To find the purpose of reading on text being studied, she asks students to read the text and looks for keywords related to the title of the text. The aim is to encourage the students to identify the genre of the text and to know the purpose of the text.

Skimming Strategy
The teacher explains how to skim a text to find a main idea. The teacher directs students to skim a text by giving question about the main idea. The teacher invites the students to discuss the answers in whatsapps group.

Scanning Strategy
Firstly, the teacher explains how to scan or locate specific information intended to find. He directs the students to scan the text by giving question about setting of time and place and detailed information. The platform used is whatsapp group. The teacher invites the students to discuss their answers.

Strategy of analyzing vocabulary
This strategy is applied by asking the students to find 10 words that they are not familiar. The unfamiliar words lead to the students' difficulty to know the meanings. They are asked to use dictionaries to find the meanings of the words. But before they use a dictionary to look for the meanings, they are asked to deduce the meaning of a word from context.

L-R-D (Listen-Read-Discuss) Strategy
Using slides of Power Point, the teacher explains the genre of a text he will discuss. Recount text is the genre. Firstly, in Listen step, the students listen to the audio on Power Point about recount text (definition, the purpose of the text, general structure, language features and examples of text). Secondly, in Read step, the teacher asks the students to read a text of recount on the worksheet pay attention to the text related to the material on Power Point. Thirdly, in Discuss step, the teacher invites the students to discuss their answers of the questions given to them. The teacher gives feedback to the answers and together with the students comes to the conclusion to the correct answers.
The student's level of reading comprehension becomes a reference in choosing suitable strategies to teach reading comprehension. The level of comprehension of the 7 th grade of junior high school is considered as literal comprehension level. Literal comprehension is a basic level of reading comprehension. At the level of literal comprehension, the information and fact contained in the text include main ideas, causal relationships, sentence patterns, etc (Kennedy, 1981). Based on this level, the teacher applies strategies to help students finding ways to analyze the information available in the text quickly such as the purpose of reading, main ideas and specific information. The teacher applies several strategies based on Brown (2001, pp.306-310) that strategies for reading comprehension for beginning and intermediate level of learners in reading comprehension are identifying the purpose in reading, skimming the text for main ideas, scanning the text for specific information, guessing word meaning, analyzing vocabulary.

Problems in implementing strategies on teaching reading comprehension during the Covid-19 Pandemic
Teaching English as a foreign language in Indonesia is a challenge as English is not used in daily life. Every teacher in different environment supposes to adjust his or her teaching based on the conditions. In this case, teacher encounters problems in implementing the strategies in teaching reading comprehension.

Problem in identifying the purpose in reading
The students are reluctant to read and understand the text that has been given from the teacher. They do not understand the material well because they are not familiar with some words in the text.
"The problem is that the students are reluctant to read comprehensively. To know the purpose of the text, the message of the text should be conveyed. However, in covid-19 pandemic, the interest of reading is decreased because when they get problem in understanding the text, they also reluctant to ask. Probably it is because online learning that they could not directly ask the teacher face to face" (Interview on Monday, 12 April 2021)