CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. Background
English is an
international language. It has an important position in the world communication
today. This position makes English is most widely used all over the world in
all aspect of human lives. In Indonesia, English plays an important role in the
international communication and development of education. Indonesia as a
developing country gets to involve in many aspects of international lives and
it cannot be denied that the mastery of English is necessary for Indonesian
people. In Indonesia, English is a foreign language which functions to support
the development of knowledge, technology, culture and art. It also improves a
close relationship with the other countries.
The main goal of
teaching English in Indonesia is to enable students to use English for
communication and for reading book reference written in English. English has
been taught at the senior high school and event at the elementary school. At
the senior and junior high school, the four skills of language namely speaking,
writing, listening and reading has been taught. But in this sense the writer
will be focus to discuss about reading skill. Reading is the priority because
reading can cover the three other skills (Achsin, 1985).
Reading is an active
process of identifying important ideas, comparing and applying them. Therefore
in reading paragraph we have to try to comprehend the main idea of the reading
material. Without comprehending the paragraph, it will be very difficult to
understand what we have or what the writer means in the reading material.
There are some common
problems that the teachers find with teaching reading such as learners lack of
motivation, teachers are uncertain as how they should carry out the language
preparation teachers are unsure about selecting and devising reading related
activities. This fact indicated that student’s motivation and teacher’s
preparation are very important to be considered.
Based on the result
interview of the English teacher at VIII of SMPN 2 Lembang said that the mean
score of the students’ achievement in reading English at 2012 - 2013 academic year especially in reading is very low, it is about 5.5 mean score and the
target score is 7.5.
In
this case, the students have to read critically, and the teacher must select
the suitable technique or strategy to teach it.
By looking this fact,
English teachers are expected to always think and variation of teaching strategy in
reading. In this case, the writer is going to discuss one variation in teaching
strategies namely Number Head Together
(NHT) Technique.
Numbered Heads Together (NHT) is another small group
learning method using student teams. NHT is similar to STAD because
heterogeneous groupings of students are used (Bawn. S. 2007 : 43-44). Arrangement of four students
per learning team, with each team counting off from one to four is the
beginning of Numbered Heads Together. There is one high achieving
student, one low achieving student and two average achieving students on a ?????
