CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. Background
of the Study
Reading is the most
useful skill and has an important role in human being’s
life. Through reading, everyone can get information about
science, and technology that perhaps they do not know before. Reading is the most efficient way to
acquire information about many aspects in the life, since most of available information
is delivered in printed media such as journals, newspapers, magazines and books. Therefore, having a good reading
skill is needed to know the content of that information. Even in the internet,
the information is presented in written form, so the users need to read the
information.
So far, as stated
in many educational guidelines, reading is the most important skill to be
mastered without ignoring the others. As stated by Carell, Devine and Eskey in Dian Novita
Arviyani (2004: 2) for many students, reading is by far the most
important of the four skills in a second language, particularly in English as a
second language or foreign language. Certainly, if they consider the study of
English as a foreign language around the world, the situation in which most
English students
find themselves reading is the main reason why students learn the language. It is also stated in the curriculum of the lesson unit
level for the junior high school level which has been published by the
Department of Education of Cilacap District (2007: 23), the purpose of teaching
reading for the junior high school is to understand the meaning in the simple written interpersonal
and transactional discourse formally or informally,especially in the form of
recount, narrative, procedure, descriptive, and report, in the context of daily
life.
From the quotations above, the writer can see how important reading for the students are,
particularly in English as a second or foreign language. It seems, it is
acceptable when the writer refers to
learning situation for academic purposes. In order to succeed, the students
should be able to have solid reading proficiency. In reality, to
have solid reading proficiency or capability is very difficult, especially for
the students. The students’ passiveness in comprehending English texts becomes the common problems faced by the teacher in teaching reading. The students feel difficult in comprehending the
text. They also experience a lot of difficulties in answering the reading
questions. They are not active,
lazy, bored, not motivated
and tend to make a noise in the classroom, especially
when the teacher asks them to comprehend the text.
The problems also
happen at SMP Negeri 1 Wanareja. Based on the writer’s experience during teaching in SMP
Negeri 1 Wanareja especially in reading
class, it seems that the most students
are very passive, bored, and not motivated when they are trying to comprehend the
text. Therefore, they are very difficult to answer the reading questions
given by the teacher. Even although the teacher speaks loudly when he teaches
reading, sometimes he sees a student who is sleepy.
There are three causes of the students’ passiveness
in comprehending a text. First, the students do not
master the vocabulary, or have lack of vocabulary. These
problems
also make them difficult to comprehend the text because many words were new for
them. Second, a lot of students who have no dictionaries because of their
parents’s low economic condition. Even some of them feel
reluctant to bring dictionaries because most of complete dictionaries are
heavier than other books they bring. Third, especially for the students who have low competence
also need long time for thinking, so they are easy to be disturbed by his/her
friends and tend to prefer not to think. They prefer playing with his/her
friends to comprehending the difficult texts.
Dealing with the
problems above, the writer as the English teacher in SMP Negeri 1 Wanareja
needs to give positive response concretely and objectively, and tries to
motivate the students, looks for the way to make the class more interesting and thinks
what technique or approach is appropriate in teaching reading in his school, particularly
in comprehending the English text.
Based on the fact, the
students’ reading comprehension quality at SMP Negeri 1 Wanareja is still low,
and it needs a solution. To solve the problems, the writer thinks that it is
very necessary to change the students’ attitudes and behaviors in teaching and
learning process, especially by improving the students’ activeness in reading
class. So, in this research the writer does not discuss or talk about the
product or result or score. The students’ result score of reading
comprehension will not be discussed in this research. One of the alternatives the writer chooses is by implementing
a certain tehnique, that is a discussion technique. The implementation of this
tehnique would be used in a research entitled “ Improving Students’ Activeness in
Reading Comprehension through Discussion Tehnique.” ( A Classroom Action
Research at Grade 8E of SMP Negeri 1 Wanareja in the Academic Year 2011/2012). The technique which
the writer usually uses in teaching reading before is translating reading
clasically and sometimes the writer asks students to translate the reading
individually, too. In fact, most of the students look bored and passive in
comprehending the texts through translation which is conducted both individually
and clasically. It is based on what the teacher (writer) has experienced in
teaching reading comprehension in SMP Negeri 1 Wanareja since 1984. It is also proved
with the low result of students’ achievement in reading class. That is why the
writer would like to implement the discussion technique in teaching reading,
because of feeling not succesful in
teaching reading materials to the students, particularly in comprehending the
texts.
B. Reason for
Choosing the Topic
The writer chooses discussion technique to improve the students’
activeness in reading comprehension or reading class in the grade 8E of SMP
Negeri 1 Wanareja in the academic year 2011/2012 for the following reasons:
1.
Reading is the most important skill that has to be
mastered. However, the students
have problems in this skill.
2.
The
writer as an English teacher and the two other
English teachers as collaborators
agree to improve the students’
activeness in comprehending text through discussion tehnique. The writer expects the discussion technique can
improve the students’ activeness in reading class, especially in comprehending
English texts or reading
comprehension.
C. Problems
of the Research
The problem of this
research can be formulated as follows:
Is discussion tehnique able to improve the students’ activeness
of SMP Negeri 1 Wanareja in reading comprehension?
D. Aims
of the Research
Based on the problem
formulation above, the aim of this research is to improve the students’ activeness
in reading comprehension through discussion technique.
E. Research
Contribution
This Research is
expected to give some contribution to students, English teachers, and language
researchers. The contribution are as follows:
1. For Students
This researh can hopefully give motivation to the
students to be more active in reading English, particularly in comprehending
the English texts.
2.
For
English Teachers
The result of this research hopefully can provide the
information to the teachers, that using discussion technique in teaching
reading can improve the student’s aactiveness, particularly in comprehending
the English texts.
3.
For
Language Researchers
The procedures and outcomes of the research hopefully can
inspire other researchers to do research concerned with similar themes.
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