The Effectiveness of Merdeka Mengajar Platform towards the Learning of English Reading Comprehension as the Implementation of Independent Curriculum at UPTD SMPN 19 Barru

This research aims to find out students' reading comprehension abilities before and after being taught using the Merdeka Menagajar Platform. This study used a one-group pretest-posttest design. There isn't any control group. Researchers give pre-tests to students, and then researchers give students treatment of reading comprehension using the Merdeka Mengajar Platform. The sample of this research was seventh-grade students of UPTD SMPN 19 Barru, a total of 21 students. The results show that the average pre-test score of seventh-grade students at UPTD SMPN 19 Barru experienced a significant increase in the post-test after being taught using the Merdeka Mengajar Platform on treatment. The average student score in reading comprehension on the pre-test was 55.00 and on the post-test was 84.29. So there is an increase in students' reading comprehension. This study shows the value of the t-test is higher than t-table values (14,496 >2.09302). The results of the t-test calculation of student learning before and after being taught using the Merdeka Mengajar platform are greater than the t-table. Can it be concluded that the null hypothesis (H0) is rejected and the alternative hypothesis (H1) is accepted? Researchers concluded that the use of the Merdeka Mengajar platform is a learning method that can improve reading comprehension ability in learning English.


Introduction
The Era of Digitization, often known as the Modern Era, has arrived in Indonesian education (Sudarmo et al., 2021).In the current era of digitalization, there has been a decrease in the use of physical books due to the existence of E-books (Digital Books), and there is also a platform issued by the government, especially for teachers and school principals, this platform is the independent teaching platform or abbreviated as PMM (Kemdikbud-Ristekdikti., 2022).Learning and teaching are no longer monotonous or only one way (central teacher).
English as an international language gives access and connection for each human issue to have a good future career within the digital era.It is simple that the 5.0 Revolution will come because the majority are already using technology as an everyday necessity (Siregar & Mustomi, 2022).It has become clear from a variety of technologically enhanced learning frameworks and resources that educational practices need to be updated and developed.However, it is vital to conduct study on the use of technology in education (Rauf et al., 2023).
The existence of technology itself should be incorporated into the learning process with the goal that students have the understanding to face the Fourth Business Revolution (Ghory & Ghafory, 2021).But the reality is that most students particularly in Indonesia, still have difficulty learning English as their foreign language.This is essentially due to the fact that books and teachers are the most effective principal sources to help students' English learning (Barus et al., 2021).
At the beginning of the student's acquaintance style observation, it was seen that students were permitted to bring mobile phones (Smartphones) into class, in accordance with the teacher's assumptions (Tasks et al., 2021).However, while mobile technology is allowed in schools, it poses a challenge because most pupils are not proficient cell phone users.As a result, the findings of the UNESCO research suggest that reading on mobile technology shares approaches with mobile phones that are useful for enhancing language acquisition in settings where literacy levels, including reading, are still low (Al-Ansi et al., 2021).In order to solve reading comprehension, the researcher makes use of a Merdeka Mengajar platform.
Reading as the principal attention of education is on the heart of all formal learning skills.students' achievement or failure in reading comprehension resonates the course of the rest in their future lives (Shintia et al., 2021).Reading also permits students to advantage information, knowledge, and skills they need existence.The quality of reading abilties has a strong impact on English proficiency.The more students have reading comprehension, the more they will be open to new worlds, increase their vocabulary, develop language, and get used to various writing patterns (Ahmad Baaqeel, 2020).
In Indonesia, reading comprehension is stated in Permendikbud No. 59 of 2014.that is also intently related to the 2013 Curriculum which has been implemented most schools in Indonesia.Contents of Permendikbud No. 59 of 2014 gives three principal components of being able and capable of reading.First is the understanding of social function, which refers to feature of the text in a social context or real life.the second is understanding the structure of the text which focuses on how the facts in written texts are prepared.The latter is the information of the linguistic factors referred to as linguistic factors that support the meaning of the possibility for the development of the internet and technology to become a momentum for learning independence.because it could hack into an inflexible or non-liberating education system (Fadhil, 2020).
Reading motivation is essential for improving reading comprehension (Kuşdemir & Bulut, 2018).Since they will pay attention and manage their time well during instruction and learning, motivated learners are more likely to engage in learning activities that will help them learn and accomplish their learning goals.So, in order to finish reading comprehension, reading motivation is essential (Yu et al., 2018).Teachers should provide a dynamic and enjoyable learning environment for all students by including students in the teaching and learning process (Dörnyei & Muir, 2019).The teacher must encourage students to read more while also fostering a fun learning atmosphere (A.D. Wardani et al., 2020).
The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) results show that 70% of students aged 15 years are below the minimum competence in understanding simple reading.This PISA score has not experienced a significant increase in the last ten to fifteen years.The study shows large disparities between regions and socio-economic groups in terms of the quality of learning.This is exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
To overcome this, the Ministry of Education and Culture simplified the curriculum under special conditions (emergency curriculum) to mitigate learning loss during the pandemic.The effectiveness of the curriculum in special conditions reinforces the importance of changes in curriculum design and implementation strategies in a more comprehensive manner.In the recovery of learning, schools are now given the freedom to determine which curriculum to choose: 1) the full K13 curriculum, 2) the emergency curriculum, namely the simplified K13 curriculum, 3) the independent curriculum.
Based on observations made by researchers at UPTD SMP Negeri 19 Barru, the learning outcomes of seventh grade students were not optimal.This can be seen from the average daily test scores of seventh grade students in semester 2 of the 2022/2023 school year, currently there are still many students who have not reached the minimum completeness criteria (KKM) score limit, whose score is 70 because grade VII junior high school students are still beginners.in knowing English, vocabulary is still lacking, causing students to feel confused and not interested in learning, especially in reading material.As a result, almost all students' reading comprehension scores on every assessment made by the English teacher are still very low.seen from the KKM or abbreviated KKM determined by the teacher, which is 70, but the average student assessment results are still below the KKM of around 57 because seventh-grade students lack interest, lack concentration and focus, and lack mastery of strategies and methods of understanding language texts English, reduced vocabulary mastery, and the habit of reading English texts is not formed, causing the dominant students to have difficulty understanding English texts.On the other hand, a lack of understanding of grammar, and good reading habits are not formed.Therefore, researchers want to conduct research at the UPTD school of SMP Negeri 19 Barru as a guide so that schools that implement an independent curriculum can use.Therefore, researchers want to conduct research at the UPTD SMP Negeri 19 Barru school as a guide for schools that implement an independent curriculum can use the Merdeka Mengajar platform application to conduct reading comprehension research as a learning tool for the learning process in class.The purpose of this study was to determine students' ability to read comprehension after using the Merdeka Mengajar platform in seventh grade at UPTD SMPN 19 Barru The Merdeka Mengajar Platform encourages teachers to continue working and provides a platform for sharing good practices (B.G. P. Wardani, 2022).Another feature is work, where this feature is to provide "Proof of Work" which is best practice from the results of learning implementation, especially related to best practice learning in the Independent Curriculum, teachers and education staff can build portfolios of their work so that they can share inspiration and collaborate so that teachers can forward together.
The Merdeka Mengajar Platform that was developed is expected to be a friend for teachers in implementing the Independent Curriculum with a spirit of collaboration and sharing (Kemdikbud-Ristekdikti., 2022).The contents developed by the Ministry of Education and Culture provide more understanding during implementation and learning in educational units that have participated in the Implementation of the Independent Curriculum.
However, learning English in reading comprehension using the Merdeka Mengajar Platform will be carried out by research at UPTD SMP Negeri 19 Barru.Therefore, researchers will conduct a study about the effectiveness of Merdeka Mengajar Platform towards the Learning of English Reading Comprehension as the Implementation of Independent Curriculum at the UPTD SMPN 19 Barru

Reading
Reading is a technique that allows us to view a collection of written symbols (letters, punctuation, and spaces) and understand their meaning before converting them into words, phrases, and paragraphs that explain something to us and help us determine the main topic and ideas included in the reading.According to (Gurning & Siregar, 2017) Reading is one of skills in English to make the people get an information from what they read, and information from a text, it needs a thinking process in order to be able to reach the comprehension.But some of people argue that reading some article or textbook is easy but read with comprehension is more difficult (Ajideh, 2006;Ayu & Indrawati, 2019;Education, 2023;Gilbert & Holmes, 1955).Actually, Reading skill is very important for students such as; the students can get information from they read, the students can add their knowledge, students can enlarge the way of their thinking by reading any text (Okkinga et al., 2018).So, the students should have skill in reading to add their information and enrich their knowledge.
Reading comprehension is the ability to understand what is contained in the text and know its meaning clearly.According to (Vieira, 1986) reading comprehension is a developmental skill in ascribing idea beginning at the word level and proceeding to attaching meaning to an entire reading selection.
According to (Grade & Stoller, 2002), the purpose of reading are: 1. Reading for general understanding Reading for general understanding is the most basic purpose for reading.Reading for general understanding is also found as the most complex than it commonly assumed.

Reading to search for simple information
Reading to search for information is a common reading ability.The reader only read the surface to look for the simple information without must think the material deeply.In reading to search, the reader typically scans the text for a specific piece of information or a specific word.So, it can be said that reading to search is useful for the readers to find as well as to figure out the information needed by scanning and skimming the text.

Reading to learn from the text
Reading to learn typically occurs in academic and professional context in which a person needs to learn a considerable amount of information from a text.4. Reading to integrate information, write and critique text Reading to integrate information requires additional decisions about the relative importance of complementary, mutually supporting, or conflicting information and the likely restructuring of a rhetorical frame to accommodate information from multiple resources.

Teaching Reading Comprehension
In reading there are namely predicting, skimming, scanning , inffering guessing of new words, self monitoring (Wu & Liu, 2019).

Merdeka Mengajar Platform
A view of the Merdeka Mengajar platform from (Kemdikbud-Ristekdikti., 2022) .The use of technology in the classroom is now widespread and is proving to be profitable for educational institutions.Teachers who specialize in teaching English as a second language (ELT) rely on a variety of technical tools that have changed traditional chalkand-board sessions into current Information and Communication Technology (ICT)based programs.
The independent curriculum according to (Kemdikbud-Ristekdikti., 2022) has undergone a number of improvements to the curriculum structure, according to Education in Indonesia.Government initiatives to make it better include altering and offering innovative curricula.The KTSP/2006 Curriculum, the 2013 Curriculum, and the Freedom to Learn Curriculum are a few of them.The 2013 curriculum has been implemented starting from the 2013/2014 school year (Bebasari et al., 2022).Early application is carried out, especially in schools that already have A accreditation.The implementation of the 2013 Curriculum at the SMA/SMK/MA level is certainly very suitable because the curriculum designed contains effective, innovative, creative values, and can explore the potential and interests of students in learning (Jaedun et al., 2014).
Freedom to learn is a policy of the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Indonesia (Christanti & Sukoco, 2022).The Independent Curriculum is applied with the aim of training students' independence in thinking (Kharismawan et al., 2018).The most important core of freedom of thought is addressed to the teacher (Henriksen et al., 2020).If the teacher in teaching is not independent in teaching, of course, the students are also not free in thinking.
Studies about the use platform in learning English reading comprehension have been conducted by some researchers.The study found is the study conducted by Priyanti et al., (2019) found that platform Quizizz that affected students' reading comprehension.The study found is the study conducted by (Kim, 2020) The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of real-time remote video instruction using Zoom on learners' English reading achievement.The study also sought to identify the efficiency of Zoom video lectures and consider supplementing them by surveying learners' opinions and satisfaction regarding Zoom video lectures.To this end, control and experimental groups were set up, and two achievement tests and a questionnaire were conducted.The study's results demonstrated that Zoom video lectures positively affect learners' English reading achievement.
All previous studies above conducted research about using platform in teaching reading comprehension, which also will conduct research about using platform in teaching reading comprehension.However, the differences between this present research and previous research are the subject of the research and the learning tool used in this research.The previous research was done in online learning at home while this present research will conduct research by offline learning but in the classroom using online learning an independent teaching platform for teaching reading comprehension.

Research Method
The authors of this study employed quantitative research methodologies, which are described by the research design.Quantitative research, defined by Sugiyono (2017), is "a research method based on the positivist philosophy, used to examine specific populations or samples, collecting data using research instruments, data analysis is quantitative or statistical, with the aim of testing established hypotheses."Because only positive facts discovered during the research process are used, this type of study is known as positivistic research.
Researchers employed a one-group pretest-posttest strategy in this investigation.Three phases are often involved in a one group pretest-posttest design, according to (Chan & Holosko, 2020) delivering a pretest to measure the dependent variable, applying an experimental treatment to the study, and then giving a post-test to evaluate the dependent variable are all steps in the research process.By comparing pre-and post-test results, the change brought about by the application of the experimental treatment is assessed.
There is no control group in the design of this study.Students take a pre-test from researchers before receiving reading instruction through the Merdeka Mengajar Platform program.The study's post-test was administered to participants after receiving treatment.This research was conducted at UPTD SMP Negeri 19 Barru which was carried out in the even semester of 2022/2023 on reading material about fables.The study was conducted for 2 weeks, with the order of giving a pretest, treatment, and posttest.
The population of this research had been students of class VII UPTD SMPN 19 Barru.Thestudents were taken as the population of this study because they were given low scores in reading based on the consequences of the midterm exam from the English teacher.The number of seventh-grade students was 21 students .The sample is a small group to be analyzed taken from a population (Belay Zerga, 2016).The researcher used VII.1 class as the sample of this research.The total of this class are 21 students.
Instruments have an important feature in this research.The instrument is one of the essential steps in conducting this research.An instrument is a tool or facility utilized by researchers.Therefore, researchers ought to select several instruments in the data collection process.An instrument is a tool to accumulate data needed in research.The instrument in this study is reading comprehension test that goals to measure students' reading comprehension and the progress of reading to measure rubrics for reading skill and the motivation using a questionnaire, (Sofyan et al., 2020) The reading comprehension test is used to measure students' reading comprehension of the material given, rubrics for reading used to measure progress reading , and a questionnaire is used to measure the motivation of students (Chaiprasurt, 2019).
In this research, there are 2 variables, namely the independent variable and the dependent variable.The variables in this study are:Independent variable: Independent variables are variables that influence or cause change.The independent variable in this research is the effectiveness of the merdeka mengajar platform.Dependent variable: The dependent variable is the factors that arise as a result of the independent variable.The dependent variable in this study is the student's ability to read comprehension Data collection techniques used are test techniques.Data collection using test techniques in this study was carried out twice, namely pretest and posttest.Pretest is done before learning is given.Posttest is done after learning is given.Reading comprehension test is administered using the SPSS statistical 27, which increases its accuracy in determining of the students' reading comprehension .Two categories of statistics are employed, namely: Inferential statistics consisted of three tests, i.e. test of normality, test of homogeneity, and test of hypothesis.Before conducting the hypothesis, the researcher applied a pre-analysis test, namely a test of normality and a test of homogeneity.Test of the hypothesis was used to answer the research hypothesis that dealt with the significant difference in reading comprehension achievement between the seventh-grade students of UPTD SMPN 19 Barru who were taught by using merdeka mengajar platform It is clearly explained below.a. Pre-Analysis test 1) Test of normality This test is aimed at analyzing whether the data will meet normal distribution or not.The writer employed the Kolmogorov-Smirnov formula.Dmaximum {F0 (x) -SN (x)] (Siegel, 1997) In which: D = normality of the test F0 = the observed cumulative frequency SN = the expected commutative frequency 2. Test of Homogeneity The test of homogeneity was used to analyze whether the population of the scores was homogeneous or not.The F-test formula was employed as follows.
Fobs = S 2 Between S 2 within ( Hatch and Farhady (1982:130) In which: S 2 within = Error variability or within-group variance S 2 between = Error variability + treatment effect or between-group variance.

Test of Hypothesis
Test of Hypothesis was used to show whether the hypothesis of this study was accepted or not.The criteria for the hypothesis testing is a follows:

Findings and Discussion
Students' reading comprehension ability before and after being taught by using the merdeka mengajar platform.The result showed that the pre-test had a Sum of data 1155.The lowest score on the pre-test was 40 and the highest score was 70.The mean of data was 55.00.and the result showed that the post-test had a Sum of data 1770.The lowest score on the post-test was 70 and the highest score was 95.The mean of data was 84.29.
Thus, it can be concluded that the result of the pre-test had Sum 1155 and the posttest was 1770.Moreover, the mean of the pre-test was 55.00 and the post-test was 84.29 It can be concluded that the gained score between the pre-test and post-test was 615 and the gained mean score was 29.29.a. Analysis inferential 1. Normality Test a. Pretest Normality Test The normality test was carried out whether the data from the pretest results of the experimental group and the control group were normally distributed or not.In this study, researchers used the help of SPSS 27 for Windows in calculating the normality test of pretest results which functioned to determine whether the distribution of data was normally distributed or not.Data normality test uses the Kolmogorov-Smirnov method.The requirement for a data to be normally distributed is if the significance or value of ρ The posttest data normality test was also carried out to find out whether the data was normally distributed or not.In this study, researchers used SPSS 27 for windows to calculate the posttest results normality test which serves to determine whether the distribution of data is normally distributed or not.Data normality test uses the Kolmogorov-Smirnov method.The condition of a data is said to be normally distributed if it is significant or the value of ρ > 0.05.Posttest data normality test results from the two study sample groups can be presented in the following table:

Lilliefors Significance Correction
Based on the results of the data normality test above shows that the post-test results for the experimental class are significant at 0.177 with Kolmogorov -Smirnov.This shows that the data is normally distributed because the significance is 0.177 > 0.05.So it can be concluded that the post-test results of both the experimental class normally distributed.

2.
Homogeneity Test Homogeneity test was carried out to find out the results of the experimental class.The data to be tested for homogeneity are the data from the pretest and posttest results of The criterion for testing the hypothesis is if the significance of the t test > 0.05 then H0 is accepted and H1 is rejected if the significance of the t test <0.05 then H0 is rejected or H1 is accepted.Apart from looking at the results of its significance, the t test is also seen from the calculation results of t count and t table.If t count is greater than t table then H0 is rejected or H1 is accepted and if t count is less than t table then H0 is accepted and H1 is rejected.The table below is the result of testing the pretest and posttest research hypotheses in the experimental class.Based on the table above, a tcount of 14.496 is obtained with a significance level of 5%, a ttable of 2,093 is obtained.The decision criteria are if tcount < ttable, then H0 is accepted and H1 is rejected, and if tcount > ttable, then H0 is rejected and H1 is accepted.Because tcount > 2.093 then H0 is rejected and H1 is accepted.This means that there is a significant the students' reading comprehension ability before and after being taught by using of the merdeka mengajar platform in the seventh grade UPTD SMPN 19 Barru The average score on the pretest may be used to determine how well the Merdeka Mengajar Platform is working to improve student's reading comprehension abilities in English learning.On the pretest, student English instruction performed low.The reading test has a 60-minute time limit for students.The reading test performed by students is evaluated by the teacher.This demonstrates that students were unable to clearly communicate their thoughts in both the reading and the replies.Their initial responses were really bad.The students still struggle with reading comprehension.It is clear that the student's responses have nothing to do with the reading assessment.Without understanding what the text means, they simply accept it.As a result, individuals have trouble understanding the reading material, which causes their reading outcomes to fall well short of expectations.considering the 55.00 pre-test average.
After taking the reading exam, students' reading comprehension was still inadequate, as evidenced by the pre-test.As a result, after obtaining instruction from the teacher, students can enhance their reading comprehension abilities using the Merdeka Mengajar platform.he post-test only contained fable-related information, yet the outcomes of their English acquisition were excellent.Students have 60 minutes to do their assignments.SPSS 27 was used to organize and assess the students' worksheets.Students' reading comprehension after studying English showed various improvements after receiving treatment.
The post-test research revealed an improvement in the student's reading comprehension scores for learning the English language, which was 84.29 (Good).The experimental class's average score between the pretest and posttest was 29.29.as can also be seen from the significant findings, which generated a t-count of 14.496 and a t-table of 2.093 at a significance level of 5%.The selection criterion is that H0 is accepted and H1 is rejected if t-count > ttable, while H0 is rejected and H1 is accepted if tcount > ttable.H0 is rejected while H1 is allowed since the t-count is 14.496 > 2.093.In the seventh grade of UPTD SMPN 19 Barru, this indicates that there is a considerable difference in students' reading comprehension abilities before and after being taught via an independent teaching platform.This leads us to the conclusion that implementing the Merdeka Mengajar platform to teach English is a wise decision.From this platform, we can assess how much students' reading abilities have improved after doing a pretest and posttest.
The findings indicate that students' reading comprehension has improved to the point that they may now receive high scores after previously receiving low ones.In conclusion, the Merdeka Mengajar platform offers several advantages to teachers, administrators, and students together.This Merdeka Mengajar Platform allows educators to evaluate students' reading comprehension abilities.Additionally, this platform makes it simpler for them to comprehend the information presented by students.The Merdeka Mengajar Platform may be utilized everywhere and at any time since it is simple for teachers to use in the classroom learning process.All they have to do is download the platform on their laptop or smartphone.Because the platform offers strong features and performance to support English, this application may be a useful teaching tool for teachers.
In line with the findings, Wijaya (2022) stated that the use of the merdeka mengajar platform show changes and effect on homogeneous learning outcomes.The results of the conclusions obtained indicate that there is an effect of using the merdeka mengajar platform before and after the test.Based on the research of Asmara et al., (2022), Kim, (2020), and Wijaya & Marini, (2022), students' reading ability using other learning media such as Quiziz, Zoom and video.shows an increase in reading ability.Therefore, it is revealed that the ideal platform application can improve students' reading comprehension.

Conclusion
Students' reading comprehension ability before and after using the Merdeka Mengajar platform in seventh grade UPTD SMPN 19 Barru from the pretest with an average score of 55.00 after processing the data the average posttest score obtained in the experimental class was 84.29.So it can be concluded that the posttest results of the experimental class that was given the treatment showed an increase in scores from the previous pretest results.So it can be seen that there is a significant difference in students' reading comprehension.beforeand after the use of merdeka mengajar platform .Can be proven by t-count value (14.496) is higher than t-table value (2.093).so that it has been proven that there is an effectiveness of using the merdeka mengajar platform for learning reading comprehension in class VII UPTD SMPN 19 Barru.

Table 3 .
The descriptive data of students' score of reading from the experimental class based on the pre-test and post-test as follows: The pre-test and post-test scores of the experimental class consisted of 21 seventh-grade students of UPTD SMPN 19 Barru.Table 4.1 Descriptive Data of Pre-test and Post-test Experimental Class( VII.1)

Table 4
Multiple modes exist.The smallest value is shown > 0.05.The results of the pretest data normality test from the two research samples can be presented in the following table:

Table 4
results of the data normality test above, it shows that the pretest result of the experimental class is 0.131 significant.This shows that the data is normally distributed because the significance is 0.131 > 0.05.So it can be concluded that the pretest results of the experimental class normally distributed.theexperimentalclassThedecision making criterion is if the significance is more than 0.05.This analysis uses the SPSS 27 for windows program.Based on the results of the data homogeneity test above, it shows that the Based on Mean significance level is 0.491.So with the results of the homogeneity test above it can be concluded that the variances of the experimental class is homogeneous because 0.491 > 0.05.3.Hypothesis Test Testing the hypothesis using the t test aims to determine whether there is the students' reading comprehension ability before and after being taught by using merdeka belajar platform.Data analysis by t test using the SPSS 27 for Windows program, namely Paired Samples Test.