The Effectiveness of Get Epic as Digital Comics on Ninth-Grade Students’ Reading Comprehension of Narrative Text at an Islamic Boarding School

Abstract

This study tried to figure out how ninth-grade boarding school students could read narrative texts using "Get Epic" digital comics. This study involved 34 students where a pre-experimental research design with pre and post tests was used. To evaluate students' reading comprehension, a multiple-choice test was designed with five indicators: the main idea, specific details, word references, contextual meaning, and inference. The normality test used was Shapiro Wilk and the paired sample test was used to assess the effect of reading digital comics on students' reading comprehension. This study used the calculation of the effect size (Cohen’s d). The use of "Get Epic" digital comics improved reading comprehension from a pre-test average of 65.88 to a post-test average of 79.41. There was a significant effect from the pre-test to the post-test at a significance level of less than 0.05. It was also found that the effect size of 1.091 showed that reading comprehension of students was improved by the use of digital comics. Based on the study, because of the integration of text and images, comprehension of narrative texts can be improved by digital comics.