THE EFFECTIVENESS OF WAYGROUND APPLICATION ON STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION OF NARRATIVE TEXT

This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of the Wayground application in improving students’ reading comprehension of narrative texts. This research employed a quasi-experimental design. The participants were ninth-grade
students of an Islamic Junior High School in Indonesian at the Academic Year 2025/2026, with the population f 90 students. This research was carried out in two
classes, namely experiment class that was taught using Wayground and a control class that was taught using conventional methods. The data were gathered through
tests which consists of pre-test and post-test as the primary instrument, and field note as secondary instrument. The researcher took IX-A as the experiment class and
IX-B as control class, each class consists of 30 students. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and inferential statistic to analyzed the data
including normality, homogeneity, and t-test to verify the hypothesis by using IBM
SPSS v.30. The results revealed that the students in the experimental group showed a significant improvement in their post-test scores compared to the control group.
The mean score of the experimental class increased from 41.07 in the pre-test to 88.27 in the post-test, while the control class did not show a significant
improvement. The t-test result confirmed that the use of Wayground application had a statistically significant effect on students’ reading comprehension (p < 0.05).
It can be concluded that the Wayground application is effective in enhancing students’ reading comprehension of narrative texts. The interactive features of the
application motivated students to actively engage in the learning process and helped them build a deeper understanding of narrative elements such as plot, and moral values. Therefore, Wayground can be considered an alternative digital learning tool to improve students’ reading comprehension in English classes.