Puspa, Improving Reading Comprehension Through… 49 IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION THROUGH SEMANTIC MAPPING STRATEGY FOR INDONESIAN SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS Adelia Puspa Syahrial University of Bengkulu Bengkulu, Indonesia 38371 Email : adelia.puspa@gmail.com Email : eric.syahrial@gmail.com Abstract: This research investigates how semantic mapping strategy can improve students’ reading comprehension. The subject of this research was the ten grade students consisted of 32 students. In this classroom action research, the researcher used quantitative data to see the improvement of the students’ reading comprehension, and qualitative data to explain the change in students’ behaviour during the implementation of the strategy. Based on the result of the test conducted at the end of the cycle and the analysis of the observation checklist and field notes, it could be concluded that both the students’ reading comprehension and the students’ attitude during the reading class have been improved. The students who passed the test improved from 43.75% at the baseline data to 87.5% at the end of cycle II. This improvement mostly influenced by the second and the third phase of semantic mapping strategy, which are brainstorming categorization. In this phases, the students activate their prior know and learn to visualize relationship between ideas and put them into categories. Thus, the students have a better comprehension of the text. The students also showed better motivation, interest, participation, and enthusiasm toward the learning process proven by the results of the observation. However, the materials in this present research were short reading texts. The implementation of the strategy on longer reading texts should be taken into a deeper study in the future research. Keywords: Improving Reading, Reading Comprehension, Semantic Mapping Strategy. Abstrak: Penelitian ini mendiskusikan bagaimana semantic mapping strategy dapat meningkatkan pemahaman membaca siswa. Subjek penelitian ini ada siswa kelas sepuluh yang terdiri dari 32 orang. Pada penelitian tindakan kelas ini, peneliti menggunakan data kuantitatif untuk melihat peningkatkan pemahaman membaca siswa, dan kualitatif data untuk menjelaskan perubahan sikap siswa selama semantic mapping strategy diterapkan. Berdasarkan hasil tes yang dilakukan di akhir siklus dan analisis dari lembar observasi dan fieldnotes, dapat disimpulkan bahwa baik pemahaman membaca dan perilaku siswa selama proses belajar telah mengalami peningkatan. Siswa yang lulus dalam tes meningkat dari 53.12% pada data awal menjadi 87.5% pada akhir siklus II. Peningkatan ini paling dipengaruhi oleh langkah ketiga dari prosedur semantic mapping strategy, yaitu brainstorming dan kategorisasi. Pada langkah ini, siswa menggunakan background knowledge dan berlatih memvisualisasi hubungan antar ide and mengkategorikannya. Dengan demikian, siswa menjadi lebih memahami isi teks. Para siswa juga menunjukkan motivasi, ketertarikan, partisipasi, dan antusiasme yang lebih