The Effect Of “Think-Aloud” Strategy On Students’ Inferential Reading Comprehension

There are four skills in English, namely speaking, writing, reading, and listening. One of those skills is reading which perceived a written text in order to understand its contents. To understand the contents of the text, the students faced many problems. Some of them don’t understand about the meaning of the words and lack in vocabularies and some of them think that reading is boring activity. This condition and situation caused some of the students feel bored when they joint in the reading class. In this research, the researcher was aimed to find out the effect of think-aloud strategy in teaching inferential reading comprehension at a vocational school SMK PELAYARAN SAMUDERA INDONESIA MEDAN in academic year 2021/2022. The method of this research is an experimental research. The researcher took data from the eleven (XI) grade students of nautical class A and B as the sample of the research. The nautical class A as experimental group and the nautical class B as control group. Each class consists of 30 students. Dealing with the research instrument of collecting the data, the researcher used a test which consisteds of pre-test and post-test and conducted before and after treatment. To analyze the data, the researcher applied the t-test. The result of this research showed that the students mean scores in reading comprehension who were taught by think-aloud strategy is higher, while the students mean scores in reading comprehension who were taught by the Group Discussion strategy is lower. The result of t-test computation pointed that tobservation is high while the value ttable is low . It shows that tobservation is higher than ttable ( to>tt). Therefore the alternative Hypothesis (Ha) is accepted while the null hypothesis (Ho) is rejected. In other word, it can be concluded that think-aloud strategy is effective to to increase the students inferential reading comprehension of students at SMK PELAYARAN SAMUDERA INDONESIA Medan.

Reading is one of the language skills that play an important role inforeign language acquisition. Richard said (1992:306) "Reading perceivesa written text in order to understand its contents. The understanding thatresult is called reading comprehension".
According to Snow (2003:15) reading does not occur in vacuum, itdone for a purpose to achieve some ends. During reading the readerprocesses the text with regard to the purpose. To be a good reader, thelearner must learn how to comprehend and understand the passage. So, heror she can achieve the purpose of reading is done.
Nowadays, there are lots of books, movies, advertisements, newspapers, magazines and products use English as their language.Students have to understand the meaning what they read to add theirknowledge. One of the purposes of reading is getting more informationand knowledge. It will give much information that useful for life. Harmer(1998: 68) says that many of the students want to be able to read texts inEnglish either for their careers, for study purposes or for simply pleasure. By reading, the students can get new grammar and vocabularies.Moreover, reading is one of essential skills in learning a languageincluding foreign languages. Through reading, one can open his mind andbroaden his knowledge. Beside, having ability to read in a foreignlanguage can give better opportunities to get better jobs, access toliterature or whatever (Nuttal, 1989: 3). The students will have no knowledge without reading. With reading, students are expected to grabthe idea and understanding what the meaning of the reading text.
To teach reading in every grade of school, teachers are not enoughto give explanation to her students, but it is necessary for them to makesure that their students can practice the language in their social life. The teachers need appropriate method and technique of teaching learning English which is enjoyable and acceptable by the student, so they canintegrate into reading English. Sometimes, the teachers used strategywhich make the students feel bored and not effectives to learn English. This situation makes the teaching learning process in vain. False Strategyalso makes the students passive to learn English.
According to Hammer (1998: 69) to teach reading, one of teacher'smain functions when training the students is not only to persuade them onthe advantages of skimming and scanning, but also to make them see thatthe way to read vitally important. As the teacher, he always expects thestudents to concentrate on the minute of what they read to get the detailinformation and comprehend the text. Moreover, Hammer (1998: 70-71)stated six principles behind the teaching of reading, as follows: 1. Reading is not passive skill. Reading is incredibly active occupation.To do it successfully, the students have to understands what wordmean, see the picture of words are painting, understand the arguments,and work out of if agree with them. 2. Students need to be engaged with what they are reading. When theyare really fired up of the topic, or the task, they get much more what isin front of them. 3. Students should be encouraged to respond the content of reading text,not just to the language. The meaning of the text, the message of thetext is as just important and the teacher must give the students changeto respond the message in some way. 4. Prediction is major factor in reading. teacher should give the students"hints" so they can predict what is coming to. It will make thembetter and engaged reader. 5. Match the task to the topic. Teacher should choose dgood readingtask, the right kind questions, engaging and useful puzzle, etc. 6. Good teachers exploit reading text to full. Good teacher integrate thereading text into interesting class sequences, using topic fordiscussion, and further task, using the language for study and later for activation.
The Strategy of teaching reading will be effective if the teacherwants to get good result for the students. One of strategy to teach readingis think-aloud strategy. Think-aloud means that readers reporttheir thoughts while reading, but they are not expected to analyze theirbehavior as in introspection (Cohen,1987). By means of asking theirsubjects to say whatever goes through their minds, researchers hope to a more direct view of the mental processes readers are engaged in whilereading (Rankin,1988).
In this study, the researcher is interested in conducting an experimental research. The research was carried out in SMK PELAYARAN SAMUDERA INDONESIA Medan in two class, one class will be experimental group and the otherclass will be the control group, to see the significant difference between the students who are taught inferential reading comprehension by using thinkaloud strategy and the students are taught inferential reading comprehension by using group discussion strategy.

LITERATURE REVIEW
A. The Nature of Reading Reading Reading is one of the language skills. The researcher used it asthe skill to know and measure the students' ability. This part discussedabout the definition of reading, the purpose of reading, the definitionof reading comprehension, the levels of reading comprehension, themodels of reading, the phases of reading, micro and macro skill inreading, techniques of reading, the factors that influence students'reading, and teaching reading.

B. The Definition of Reading
Winerbrenner ( 1996: 79) says that reading is the ability ofgetting meaning from the printed words. In line withWinerbrenner, Nunan (1989: 79) says that reading is decodingprocess of written symbols, working from smaller units ( individualletter) to larger ones ( words, clauses, and sentences). In line withthem, Heilman ( 1961: 8) says that reading is a process of gettingmeaning from written symbols.
Another Experts, Nuttall (1982: 4) stated that reading is the way of the reader gets a message from the text. Furthermore,Brown (2003: 189) defines reading as a process of negotiatingmeaning; understanding it, and in take is the product of that interaction. According to Carrell and Eisterhold (1987) in Fauziati( 2010: 32), reading is an interactive process between the reader'sbackground knowledge and text.
Based on the definition above, it can be concluded thatreading is a process of interaction between reader and text to getinformation and respond to a message from the text. The process ofgetting meaning influenced by background knowledge andexpectations of the reader.

C. The Purpose of Reading
According to Rivers and Temperly in Nunan ( 1989: 33 -34), the purposes of reading are to obtain information andinstructions; to act in play; to keep in touch with friends bycorrespondence or to understand business letters; to know when orwhere something will take place or what is available; to know whatis happening; and for enjoyment or excitement. Nuttal (1982: 3) stated that reading has purposes to getsomething from the writing such as facts, ideas, and enjoyment.Furthermore, Harmer devided the purpose of reading into twogeneral purposes. First, reading for pleasure, people reading theinteresting materials, such as comics, novels or magazine. Second,reading for usefulness text, people read because they need theinformation contained in the text, such as book, newspaper,encyclopedia and so on. ( Hammer, 1991: 182).
Hence, there are the purposes in reading, they are: to getinformation, to obtain the instructions, and for pleasure. If thepeople want to read for spending time, it means that reading is justfor pleasure. It is different went they read a textbook or a recipe.They read it because we need information. In this case, reading isto get information.

D. Models of Reading
The scientists describe what happen to the reader when theyuse the model they created (Aebersold, 1997: 7) Bannet inAebersold and Field (1998) provides a through summary of threemain models of how reading occur, they are:

1) Bottom-up theory
It means the reader constructs the text from the smallestunit, from letter to words to phrases sentences, etc. and thenautomatic, readers are not aware of how it operates. Decodingis earlier term in this process. Here some features of bottom-upmodel of reading. boothe (1999) says, as follows:a) Identify letters features;b) Link these features to recognize letters;c) Combine letters to recognize spelling pattern;d) Link spelling pattern to recognize words; and e) Proceed to sentence, paragraph and text-level processing.

2) Top-down theory
It argues that the reader brings a great deal ofknowledge, expectations, assumptions, and questions to thetext, and given a basic understanding of vocabulary, theycontinue to read as long as the text confirms their expectations.Then, Gove in Boothe (1999) says that in topdown modelreading has some features. They are: a) Readers can comprehend a selection even though they donot recognize each word; b) Readers should use meaning and grammatical clues toidentify unrecognized words; c) Reading for meaning is primary objective of reading ratherthan mastery of letters, letter/sound relationships, andwords; d) Reading required the use of meaning activities rather thanthe mastery of a series of word recognition skills; e) The primary focus of instruction should be the reading ofsentences, paragraphs, and whole selections; f) The most important aspect about reading is the amount andkind of information gained through reading.

3) The interactive school of theory
It argues that both bottom up theory and to down theoryare combined when read a text. They occur alternatively or inthe same time depending on the type of the text as well as onthe reader's background knowledge, language proficiency level, motivation, strategy use and culturally shaped beliefsabout reading.
There are three models of reading such as bottom-upmodel, top-up model, and interactive model. Bottop-up modelthat is reading is basically a matter of decoding of writtensymbol, while top-up model emphasizes the reconstruction ofmeaning rather that decoding of form, and the interactivemodel is combining between bottom-up and top-up model sothat readers use both models in their reading activity.

E. Approaches in Reading
The range of approaches to teaching reading in theclassroom may include several aspect within the skills to wholelanguage instructional continuum. A major approach to shouldmeet to basic criteria; observable in actual classroom and derivedfrom theoretical base that top-down, bottom up, or interactive.Adhering to these criteria, there are four major approaches to theteaching of reading;prescriptive approach, basal readingapproach, language experience approach, and literature based approach.

1) Prescriptive Approach
According to Mukhroji (2011) prescriptive approach isa kind of individualized which is often favored by teachersdevote large chunk of the reading period to work on phonic.They focus on sound-letter relationship instruction. This approach of teaching reading has come to mean two verydifferent approaches to teachers.

2) Basal Reading Approach
Based on Mukhroji ( 2011) states, basal reading is kindof approach occupying the central and broadest position on thereading instructional continuum. This approach used basalreaders to teaching reading. Basal reading program comes tothe closest to an eclectic approach. That is, within the basalreading program itself some elements of the othe approachesare incorporated.

3) Language Experience Approach
Language experience approach needs students toexperience reading as rewarding and successful process. It isdifficult to assemble an adequate supply of literature for thewide range of abilities found in every classroom, especially ifsome of the students are not proficient in English. Thisapproach is tied closely to an interactive or top-down theory ofreading. It is considered a kind of beginning reading approachalthough strategies of teaching are often connected to writingprocess.

4) Literature-Based Approach
Literature-based approach is also named a wholelanguage approach in which students engage in reading forenjoyment and for the purpose of locating information, rather that in order to earn a good grade. Mukhroji (2011) state atliterature-based approach is an approach that the individualuses to provide individual students interesting and enjoyment.In this approach, teachers encourage the students to personalityselect books that they want to read and then share and compareinsight gained. Reading instruction emanates from assumptionabout the reading process is interactive and top-down.
F. The Phases of Reading According to Fauziati (2010: 40-42), there are three mainphases needed to be followed in reading activity, namely: 1) Pre-reading The activities during pre reading may serve aspreparation in several ways, namely: to assess students'background knowledge of the topic and linguistic content ofthe text; to give students the background knowledge necessaryfor comprehension of the text, or activate the existingknowledge that the students posses; to clarify any culturalinformation which may be necessary to comprehend thepassage; to make students aware of the type of the text theywill be reading and the purposes for reading; and to provideopportunities for group or collaborative work and for classdiscussion activities.

2) While-Reading
In while-reading activities, students check theircomprehension as they read. The purpose for readingdetermines the appropriate type and level of comprehension. 3) Post-reading 4) Post-reading activities function as a closing mark for areading class. The followings are advisable activities for post-reading: a) Answering question to show comprehension of messages tomultiple-choice or true/false questions. b) Students are given several possible summary-sentences andasked to say which of them fits to the text. c) Writing as follow up to reading activities related to passage.We can also ask students to write a summary with severalguided questions. d) Speaking as follow up to reading activities, for examples,debate interview, discussion, role play, etc. Associated withthe passage they have read.
G. Techniques of Reading Francoise Grellet (1981: 4) states that there are the mainways of reading as follow:

1) Skimming
Skimming is quickly running one's eyes over a text toget the gist of it. Skimming is used to gather informationquickly. The reader skims in order to satisfy a very general curiosity about a text. It also helps the readers to recognizetheir thought and specify what information they can get a book,so that their subsequent reading is more efficient. For example,reading a newspaper (quickly to get general news of the day),business and travel brochures( quickly to get the information).

2) Scanning
Scanning is quickly going through a text to find aparticular piece of information. Scanning occurs when a readergoes through a text very quickly in order to find a particularpoint of information ( Williams, 1999:100). For example, aconference guide and airplane schedule. Scanning involvesthese steps:a) Determine what key word to look forb) Look quickly through the text for those wordsc) When you find each word, read the sentences around it tosee if they provide the information being saught.d) If they do, not ret further. If they do not continue scanning.

3) Extensive reading
Extensive reading is reading longer texts, usually forone's own pleasure. This is fluency activity, mainly involvingglobal understanding. The text is always to be read forcomprehension of main ideas, not for every detail word. Forexample, reading business books.

4) Intensive reading
Intensive reading is reading shorter texts, to extractspecific information. This is more an accuracy activityinvolving reading for detail. In this way, each text is readcarefully and thoroughly for maximum comprehension. Forexample, a contract, a book keeping report.

H. The Factors that influence Students' Reading
There are two factors that influence the students' readingcomprehension achievements and they are related one another,they are: internal factor and the external factor. ( Brown, 2001: 74-76) :

1) The Internal Factor
The internal factor means the factor which come fromreader himself. It is usually known a personal factor, becausethe factor has existed inside the reader. This factor deals withselfmotivation and interest a) Motivation It is accepted for most fields of learning thatmotivation is essential to success that we have to want to dosomething to succeed at it. Without such motivation we willalmost certainly fail to make the necessary effort.Motivation plays an important role in comprehending thetext. The students will be motivated to read when they fellthat they need something from the text.

b) Interest
Interest is one of the important factors in order toincrease the students' reading comprehension achievement.If one has interest to read, it means that he or she will get agood achievement. On the other side, if the reader has noany interest to read, it can influence his or her achievement.

2) The External Factor
The external factor has a close relationship to readingmaterial and teacher of reading. they are related one another.

a) Reading Materials
The students' achievements in reading depends onthe level of the difficulty of the text. Thus, it can influencestudents' achievement if the text given is not at the rightlevel of the difficulty of the readers or the students.

b) Teacher
The teacher of reading should be careful in choosingthe text and giving the tasks because they are related to thestudents' reading comprehension achievement. c) Questioning Strategies The most important key to create an interactive learning is the initiation of interaction from the teacher byusing question. The question has different functions, such as: i. Teacher questions give students the opportunity toproduce language comfortably without having to riskinitiating language themselves. ii.
Teacher question can serve to initiate a chain reactionof students interaction among themselves. iii.
Teacher questions giving immediate feedback aboutstudent' comprehension. iv.
Teacher question provide students with opportunities tofind out what they think. As they are nudged into responding to questions about, say, a reading, they can discover what their own opinion and reactions are. This selfdiscovery can be especially useful for a pre-reading activity.
I. Testing Reading Similar to listening skill, reading skill is a receptive skill.The task of language tester is, then to set reading task which result in behavior that will demonstrate their successful completion.The reading macro-skill (directly related to courseobjective) are scanning text to locate specific information, skimming text obtain general idea, identifying examples presented in support of an argument. The micro-skill underlying reading skill are identifying referents of pronouns, using context to guess meaning of unfamiliar words, and understanding relations between part of the text.
There are several ways of testing reading, ranging from multiple choice items, true or false items, matching items, re-arrangement items, completions items, completion table of items, and open-ended question (Heaton, 1989:107).

J. Reading Comprehension a. Definition of Reading Comprehension
According to T Lince (2005:71) reading comprehensionrefers to read for meaning, understanding and entertainment. It involves higher order thinking skill and is much complex than merely decoding specific word. Reading comprehension possible (Grellet, 1998:182) Kennedy (1981: 192) states that reading comprehension is athrough which a reader aware of an idea, understanding in term oftheir experimental background and interprets it in relation is not askill or ability that can be develop once and for all at any level of instruction.
From the statement above, it can be concluded that reading comprehension is an active process of understanding a text which has specific purpose as efficiently as possible that is aimed to get more information in term of reader's experimental background and it is used by the reader to interpret what he or she has got from reading that text.

b. Level of Reading Comprehension
According to Longman dictionary of Applied Linguistics(1990: 233), there are four types of reading comprehension often distinguished based on reader's purpose and types reading used.These are the levels of reading comprehension, as follows: i. Literal Comprehension Reading is in order to understand, remember or recall the information explicitly contained in a passage. ii.
Inferential Comprehension Reading is in order to find information which is not explicitly stated in passage using the reader's experience and intuition and by referring. iii.
Critical Comprehension Reading is in order to compare information in a passage with the reader's own knowledge and values iv.
Appreciative Comprehension Reading is in order to gain emotional or the kind or valued response from a passage. From the statement above, the achieve comprehension in reading, in literal comprehension the readers has to know the information explicitly. In interpretative comprehension the reader has to retain the information implicitly. The last, in the critical comprehension, the reader has to be able to evaluate the information by giving a question and critique the information.

c. Strategies for Reading Comprehension
Reading comprehension is primary a matter of developing appropriate, efficient comprehension strategies. Some strategies are related to bottom-up and top-down process.
The following strategies, Brown (2001:306) states that there are strategies for Reading comprehension, such as: i.
Identifying the purpose in reading ii.
Using grapheme rules and patterns to aid in bottom-upaccording iii.
Using efficient silent reading technique iv.
Skimming the text for main idea v.
Scanning the text for specific information vi.
Using semantic mapping or clustering vii.
Guessing when you are not certain viii.
Analyzing vocabulary ix.
Distinguishing between literal and implied meaning x.
Capitalizing on discourse markets to process relationship

K. Think Aloud a. The Definition of Think-aloud
The implementation of think-aloud strategy as an instructional approach can help readers to comprehend more easily what are they read. Afflerbach and Johnston cited by McKeown and Gentilucci (2007), claim that think-aloud (1) served as a method of measuring the cognitive reading process as metacognitive tool to monitor comprehension. It means think aloud is suitable for this research because through this strategy the students can monitor their comprehension process.
Another definition of think-aloud strategy is provided by pressley et al. In McKeown and Gentilucci's (2007) work: "think-aloud is one of the "transactional strategies" because it is a joint process of teachers and students to work together to build understanding of text when they are being interacted with it". By the interaction, a better understanding of the texts may emerge in the classroom. Think aloud is also process in which readers report their thoughts while reading (Wade 1990). It helps students to reflect upon their own reading process.
Similarly, Keene & Zimmerman, (1997) declare that"think aloud is a technique in which students verbalize their thoughts while they were reading". This strategy is very useful because students are verbalizing all their thought in order to create understanding of the reading texts. Another illustration about think aloud is provided by Tinzmann in Teacher Vision website (2009), he said that: When students use think aloud with teachers and with one another, they gradually internalize dialogue. It becomes their inner spech which means that they direct their own behaviors and problem-solving processes. Therefore, when students think aloud, they learn how to learn, and develop into reflective, metacognitive and independent learners.

b. Teacher's Thinking-aloud
As students learn better when they see a good model, teachers can voice their own thoughts by drawing attention to the important points for those who having the weaknesses of comprehension ability while reading aloud [8]. In this strategy, teachers open up their minds when they read aloud. Meanwhile, students are quiet listeners will focus on how their teachers explaining. In this way, they learn how the strategy is used and how the comprehension occurs.
The steps in the implementation process of the thinking-aloud strategy are explained by Davey [8] as follows : i. Make predictions. (Show how to develop hypotheses.) ii.
Describe the picture you're forming in your head from the information. (Show how to develop images during reading.) iii.
Share an analogy. (Show how to link prior knowledge with new information in text.) iv.
Verbalize a confusing point. (Show how you monitor your ongoing comprehension. This process, starting with the modeling of the teacher and progressing on the way that the student is an independent user of the thinking-aloud strategy, is very useful in terms of enabling teachers to make internal and external observations. Teacher's thinking-aloud leads students' thinking-aloud.The main purpose of the thinking-aloud strategy is to enable students to acquire the ability of thinking-aloud.

c. Student's Thinking-aloud
The thinking-aloud strategy is the most effective strategy to inform readers who have problems in reading comprehension, especially reading process. By means of this strategy, students can be asked questions to think by the teachers during reading, and students' thoughts can be observed. Teaching the thinking-aloud strategy ensures that students are aware of their own comprehension processes. Thanks to this awareness, they can be independent readers.
The following five steps should be taken into account when using the thinking-aloud strategy: 1 The think-aloud strategy which includes both teachers' and students can help to develop individual reading comprehension skills. This argument encloses all the issues that imply think-aloud in a reading process. Think-aloud are also used to model comprehension processes such as making predictions, creating images, linking information in text with prior knowledge, monitoring comprehension, and overcoming problems with wordrecognition or comprehension (Gunning, 1996 in teacher vision).These sub-strategies will be defined in the ensuing sections.
The think-aloud is a technique in which students verbalize their thoughts as they read and bring into the open of strategies they are using to understand a text (Baumann, Jones, &Seifert-Kessell,1993; Davey, 1983); Wade,1990). Readers'thoughts might consist of commenting or questioning the text, bringing their own prior knowledge to bear or making inferences or predictions.These comments reveal reader' weakness as well as their strengths as comprehend and allow the teacher to assess their needs in order to plan more effective instruction.

d. Using of Think-aloud
When the teachers make the invisible mental processesvisible, they arm readers with powerful weapon, I stop often to think out loud for my students. I describe what is going on in my mind as I read. When I get stuck, I demonstrate out loud the comprehension strategies I use to construction meaning." (Tovani,2000,p.27) Below are steps you should consider when using think-aloud with your students. i.
Chose a short section of the text (or a short text). The text should be interesting to students and reflect the content of your classroom. The text should also be challenging and present some difficulty to most of your students. Keep in mind the mental processes you will be modeling for your students. Consider what about the text might cause students problems and select which strategies you will model. Give each student a copy of the text. You might also consider projecting a transparency of the text. ii.
Introduce the text by explaining that you will be modeling are adding strategy, explain why the strategy is important, and when the strategy should be used.

iii.
Read the text out loud and stop often to share your thinking. Think-aloud the connections you are making, the images you are creating, the problems you are having with understanding, and the ways you are fixing those problems. Tell your students explicitly what you are doing. You might establish some kinds of signal that identifies for your students when you are reading and when you thinking aloud the processes that are occurring in your head. Record your thinking on overhead.Think aloud example such as: 1.1 "Good readers use their background knowledge when they read. The think about what they know before they begin to read." (Tovani,2000,p.28) 2.1 "I am confused when I read (word from text), so I am goingto (specify the strategy you are using to clear up theconfusion) to get unstuck. Good readers recognize confusion and know how to repair meaning when confusion sets in." (Tovani,2000,p.28) 3.1 "I can picture these three little pigs in my mind because Iwent to a state fair and saw three pigs that looked just likethe ones described in this sentence. I can remember exactly how they smelled, felt and sounded. I have activated my prior knowledge, and it will assist me in understanding themost important points in the next sentence." (Block &Israel,2004,p.158) 4.1 "When I have read two pages of a book, I pause to askmyself where I think the author is going. In this way I beginto feel that I am on same train of thought as the author.Then, I turn to the text page and see if I was correct inidentifying what was important to the author. I continuereading. I related the things I read to the big idea, moral, ortheme that the author is conveying. Usually, after I haveread three or four pages, I can figure out why the authorwrote this particular book. The way I figure out the author'sbig idea is by seeing how all main idea in one paragraphmay connect to the next paragraph. If I am readingnonfiction, another way I connect to the Author's big ideais to keep the title of the book in mind as I read. The title ofnonfictional books usually names the author's big ideas."(Block & Isreal,2004,p.158) 5.1 "When I read I think, 'Is this making sense?' I might...askquestions about the story and reread or retell the story…Iwas asking myself, 'Is this making sense?' and I was askingif what would happen next without reading the next page."(Baumann,Jones,&Seifert-Kessell,1993,p.187) 6.1 After modeling think-alouds a few times, allow students tobecome more involved in the process. Ask students to clarifyyour thoughts using tally sheet like the one shown below.Using the sheet below, you are then able to assess if they candistinguish one strategy from another. This sheet engagesstudents in the think-aloud you are modeling. 7.1 Allow students to try using think-aloud strategy with a partner.One students should do all the reading and thinking-aloudwhile the other partner tallies or writes note about the otherstudent's use of think-aloud. The teacher should circulatethrough the room and provide intervention and assistance asneeded. Provide a time where students can discuss using thethink aloud strategy with their partner and as a whole class.Another option is to have students reflect on how thinking-aloud has changed their reading habits, this can be done eitherorally or in writing.

8.1
The end goal is for students to apply these strategies independently and think in their heads whenever their encounter a text.

METHOD
In this research, the researcher used an experimental research with a quantitative approach to analyze the data. Creswell (2009: 19) states that, experimental research to determine whether using treatment can influence a research. It means that experimental design is a research design that is used to find the influence of one variable to another. The purpose of the experimental research is to manipulate treatment conditions by reveal posible conditions occured to the objects of the research and how many of those condition have contribute to the observe result. This research would not be a true experimental, but a quasi experimental. The type of quasi experimental design of this research is nonequivalent control group design. A quasi-experimental is used because the researcher would not randomly assign subjects to experimental treatments for a study.
Quantitative approach stresses the analysis to the numeric data that was processed by statistical method. It explains the result of pre-test and post-test. An experimental research involved two groups: experimental group and control group. The samples of experimental group and control group were consisted of eleven grade students of SMK PELAYARAN SAMUDERA INDONESIA Medan. An experimental group received a new treatment while control group received a group discussion tmethd.
In the teaching and learning process, the topics of the lesson taught to both groups were same. In the experimental group, the students were taught by think aloud strategy while the control group was given by small group technique. After the treatment to the experimental group, both groups were given a post-test to measure the improvement of the students' reading skill. The scores of the post-test become the data to be analyzed. T-test was used to analyze the use of think aloud strategy and small group technique. The experimental group was given the treatment. In experimental group, the students were given pre-test to know their reading comprehension treatment and post-test after treatment by using a Think-Aloud strategy. The pre-test and post-test was conducted for control and experimental groups. The treatment is expected for giving good significance and influence to students' reading comprehension. Meanwhile, in control group the students were taught by using convensional method namely Group Discussion method.

A. Result
The Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test was applied to find out whether there was a significant difference between the students's infferental reading comprehension in pre-test and post-test scores of the experimental group students who were taught by think-aloud strategy as presented in these table below. According to Table 1, there is a statistically significant difference between the pre-test and posttest scores of the experimental group [z = -2.285; p <0.05]. The reality that the difference scores are in favor of the positive ranks suggests that the strategy of thinking-aloud has a significant effect on the reading comprehension ability of the students. The application of the Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test was to find out whether there was a statistically significant difference between the reading comprehension pre-test and post-test scores of the control group students as presented in Table 2 above.
According to the results of the Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test above, it can be seen that the Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test was conducted to determine whether there was a difference between the pre-and post-test scores of the control group students, there was no statistically significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores of the control group students as presented in Table 3 [z=-0.080; p>0.05].
The Mann Whitney U Test was applied to find out whether there was a statistically significant differences between the students' inferential reading comprehension gain scores of the experimental students who were taught by think-aloud strategy and the control group students 'who were taught by group discussion method as presented in Table 3 below. whether there was a statistically significant difference between the gain scores of the groups included in the post-test, there is a significant difference between the groups in favor of the experimental group [U=39.50; p<0.05]. This result showed that the thinking-aloud strategy has a positive effect on the students' inferential reading comprehension.

B. Discussions
The aim of this research was to examine the effect of the "think-aloud" strategy on the students' inferential reading comprehension of eleven grade of maritme school students in SMK PELAYARAN SAMUDERA INDONESIA Medan. The obtained-results were presented below: According to the results of the Wilcoxon Signed Rank, test was conducted to determine whether there was a signifant difference between the pre-and post-test scores of the experimental group students who were taught by think-aloud strategy and also to the control group students, there was a statistically significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores of the control group students [z=-2.285; p<0.05]. The fact that the difference scores were the positive ranks suggests that think-aloud strategy has a significant effect on the reading comprehension ability of the students.
According to the results of the Wilcoxon Signed Rank, test was conducted to determine whether there was a difference between the pre-and post-test scores of the control group students, there was no statistically significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores of the control group students [z=-0.080; p>0.05].
According to the results of Mann Whitney U test, test was applied to determine whether there was a statistically significant difference between the reading comprehension gain scores of the experimental and control groups, there was a significant difference between the groups of the experimental group [U=39.50; p<0.05]. This result shows that the think-aloud strategy has a positive effect on the students' inferential reading comprehension. And according to the findings above, it could be seen that the think-aloud strategy positively had increased the students's inferential reading comprehension.

CONCLUSION
There is significant difference between the students who were taught by using think-aloud strategy and those who were taught by using group discussion method. The students were taught by using think-aloud strategy have better inferential reading comprehension than the students were taught by using Small Group Discussion.
Based on the average scores of reading narrative text in experimental class is higher than control class at the eleven grade students of SMK PELAYARAN SAMUDERA INDONESIA Medan in academic year 2021/2022. The students' inferential reading comprehension in the experimental class is higher than the students' inferential reading comprehension in control class. It means that there is a different comprehension of students who were taught by using think-aloud strategy has higher scores than those who were taught by using small group discussion.
The result of the calculation using t-test shows that t-value > t-table for the level significance. It means that Ha is accepted while Ho was rejected. It can be concluded there is significant difference in inferential reading comprehension between students who were taught by using think-aloud strategy and those who were taught by using small group discussion. Therefore, from the clarification above it can be known that the use of the think-aloud strategy is more effective than small group discussion.