| Reading is a basis of language learning. Although reading is important, some students get problems in mastering good reading skills, such as: lack of vocabulary and inappropriate strategy used in reading activity. Therefore, in order to improve their reading skills, students have to find helpful strategy which enriches their word knowledge and creates positive atmosphere in comprehending a text (Sedita, 2005). This study investigated the effect of semantic mapping comparison to dictionary treatment to compregend descriptive and expository text in lexical, literal and interpretive levels of reading comprehension. The reading activities consists of prereading, during reading and post-reading. In the post-reading activity, the students were asked to answer reading comprehension questions in order to find out whether the students could comprehend the reading texts or not. The findings reveal that both treatments could improve students' reading comprehension of both descriptive and expository texts; however, the semantic mapping treatment could help students more successfully than the use of dictionary. The data shows that the subjects who applied the semantic mapping treatment could get correct answers that the subjects who used the dictionary. However, to comprehend expository texts in literal level, both treatments are balance to help the subjects comprehend the literal reading questions. The results of this study provide a strategy for teachers and students to comprehend easy text type which is descriptive and a more difficult text type which is expository. From the results, the writer suggests that the other researcher can examine the next level of comprehension, such as: critical or evaluative comprehension level in reading descriptive and expository texts. |