Abstrak
ABSTRACT Dea Restian Putri, “A Causal Comparative Study of Dictionary Consultation And Contextual Guessing Strategy At SMA N 2 Bukittinggi” A Thesis, State Islamic University of Sjech M. Djamil Djambek Bukittinggi, 2025. This study aimed to examine whether there was a significant difference in reading comprehension achievement between eleventh-grade students who predominantly used Dictionary Consultation Strategy and those who predominantly used Contextual Guessing Strategy at SMAN 2 Bukittinggi. It also aimed to identify which strategy was more frequently used by students when encountering unfamiliar vocabulary during reading. The study was motivated by the unclear use of both strategies, making it difficult to determine which contributed more to students' reading comprehension achievement. This study employed a quantitative causal-comparative design. The participants were 72 eleventh-grade students enrolled in the Advanced English elective subject from classes XI F2 and XI F8 at SMAN 2 Bukittinggi. Data were collected using a 25-item multiple-choice reading comprehension test and a 30-item Likert-scale questionnaire. Based on the questionnaire results, students were classified into the Dictionary Consultation group (n = 33) and the Contextual Guessing group (n = 39). Since the reading comprehension scores were not normally distributed, the Mann–Whitney U test was used for data analysis. The findings revealed no statistically significant difference in reading comprehension achievement between the Dictionary Consultation and Contextual Guessing groups (U = 564.000, Z = −0.909, p = .363). The questionnaire results showed that Contextual Guessing Strategy was used more frequently. However, this higher frequency did not result in significantly better reading comprehension achievement. These findings suggest that both strategies contributed similarly to students' reading comprehension. Therefore, English teachers are encouraged to apply both strategies flexibly according to students' needs, reading purposes, and text difficulty.