Abstract
Students' ability to understand text is very low, because of three factors. The first factor is the lack of students' motivation to read, this problem can cause the decreasing of students' effort to understand text. The lack of practice can cause students not able to comprehend the text and explain what the text is about. The second factor is the lack of students' knowledge of vocabulary and grammar that can cause them to not able to understand the meaning of sentences in the text. The third factor is the methods that teachers using in their teaching "reading comprehension" activity which still can not motivate students to active in reading. This paper offer a strategy that known as "determining importance". This strategy can help students to find the important information among unimportant information in the text. Teacher can begin the lesson activity by activating the students' prior knowledge, then teach them how to use the strategy properly. The result of this strategy can improve students' ability to comprehend the text.