The Effectiveness of Differentiated Learning on Reading Skills at the Eighth-Grade Students of a Junior High School

Abstract

Although differentiated learning has been widely implemented in English language teaching, limited studies have investigated its effectiveness in improving junior high school students' reading skills, particularly in the Indonesian EFL context. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the effectiveness of differentiated learning in improving the reading skills of eighth-grade students at SMP Negeri 2 OKU. A pre-experimental one-group pre-test and post-test design was employed. The sample consisted of 33 students selected through total sampling. Data were collected using a multiple-choice reading comprehension test and analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics version 27 through normality and Paired Sample T-Test analyses. The findings revealed that the students' mean score increased from 62.06 to 80.36. The Paired Sample T-Test showed a significance value (Sig. 2-tailed) of less than 0.001, indicating that differentiated learning significantly improved the students' reading skills.