ASSESSING LITERARY COMPETENCE: READERS’ RESPONSES TOWARD MAUPASSANT’S SHORT STORY THE DIAMOND NECKLACE

Abstrak

This thesis focused on readers’ responses and literary competence toward Maupassant’s Short Story The Diamond Necklace. The writer chose English Literature students of STBA Teknokrat who were taking Prose Analysis 2 class in even short semester in 2013. In that respect, writer assumed that they could answer all questions because they had gotten the theory to analyze a short story. For this purpose, there were sixteen readers who became the reader.  Reader Response Criticism is the approach in literature that discussed about readers who produces meaning during the reading process.  Beach and Marshall’s reader response strategy which applied as the main theory used as the standard basis to analyze readers’ responses which is validated by Cambridge Mark Scheme to assess readers’ literary competence. There are five levels of literary competence provides by Cambridge Mark Scheme Assessment: Very Little, Emerging, Competent, Good and Excellent.   Descriptive method was used to elaborate and to perform the data that have logic correlation to the problem statement. The writers’ data are readers’ answer from the questions set by concerning Beach and Marshal’s reader response strategy. Those questions are compiled in one form called as Mark Scheme Based Literary Competence Examination sheet. All of the data were collected systematically and analyzed gradually to discover the synchronous interpretation with the theoretical framework. By doing an analysis by using Beach and Marshall’s reader response strategy, the first stage of analysis found the readers’ responses through each strategy: one reader comprehends in describing setting, eight readers comprehend in engaging feeling and thought, ten readers comprehend in explaining agreement or disagreement, four readers comprehend in interpreting main idea, six readers comprehend in connecting experience, and seven readers comprehend in judging moral value. As the result of second analysis, the writer found that there are four levels which representing readers’ literary competence. The 4th and 10th readers are categorized as very little.  The 9th,15th and 16th readers are categorized as emerging. The 1st, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 8th, 11th, 13th, and 14th readers are categorized as competent. The 2nd, 7th and 12th readers are categorized as good.