Improving the students’ reading comprehension by using authentic materials

In learning English, there are four skills. They are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The four skills mentioned are diveded into receptive and productive skills. Speaking and writing are productive skills, while listening and reading are receptive skills. Beside the four language skills above, reading is of great importance to students show mother tongue is not English, because they almost do not have opportunity to hear or to speak that language. Comprehending English is a difficult thing for students if they do not have basic knowledge , especially in comprehending reading text.

Reading is a process of recognition or interpretation of written materials. Widdowson (1979:213) stated that reading is a process of getting information via printed materials. It involves letters, words, phrases, and clauses. Through reading, we can imcreaese our experience, develop new concept, solve our problem,study how the words are used, how to implement the grammatical rules, and get many knowledge. In teaching reading, teacher should introduce other materials as an alternative to give various situations to students in classroom process. These materials can be a media; it can be to stimulate the students’ motivation during the classroom process. In the other hand, most high motivation is needed to learn reading.