Elfansa, Kenzo, Evaz. 2025. The Effect of Comic Strips on Reading Comprehension of Narrative Text for Eighth-Grade Students at SMP Negeri 14 Banjarmasin. Sarjana’s Thesis, English Language Education Study Program, Faculty of Teachers’ Training and Education, Lambung Mangkurat Univeristy, Banjarmasin. The first advisor: Emma Rosana Febriyanti, M.Pd., the second advisor: Eka Puteri Elyani, M.Pd.

Keywords: comic strips, instructional media, narrative text, reading comprehension

Reading is a crucial skill, with comprehension being essential for understanding the meaning of a text. However, many eighth-grade students at SMP Negeri 14 Banjarmasin struggle with reading comprehension, which affects their overall English proficiency and classroom achievement. To address this issue, the use of teaching media has increasingly proven effective in enhancing students' learning outcomes. Hence, this study tries to find an effective way to improve students’ reading comprehension through learning media by investigating whether or not there is an effect on students who are taught reading comprehension by using comic strips and those who are not at eighth-grade of SMP Negeri 14 Banjarmasin.

This study employed a quantitative approach with quasi-experimental design on the fifty five students who were divided into experimental class and control class through cluster sampling. The primary instrument for data collection was a reading comprehension achievement test, which comprised a pre-test and post-test. The collected data were subjected to the Independent Sample T Test using SPSS 21.

            The results reveal that there is a different effect between two classes, with the experimental class students achieving higher post-test score compared to those in control class. It is then proven by a significance value of 0.032, below the significance level (0.05), indicating that the null hypothesis is rejected and the alternative hypothesis is accepted. It can be concluded that comic strips has positive impacts on the students, especially in their scores. Therefore, it is suggested for the teacher to use and explore comic strips to improve students reading comprehension achievement.