THE USE OF WORD SQUARE TO IMPROVE THE
STUDENTS READING COMPREHENSION IN NARRATIVE MATERIALS
A. BACKROUND OF THE STUDY
English is an important means of
communication, which is used by many countries in this world. It plays an
important role in the process of modernization as an International
language. This is why the Indonesian government chooses English as the first
foreign language to be taught in schools (Ramelan, 1992:3). By putting it
as one of the subjects in the curriculum, hopefully, students will have an
ability to use English, and when they have mastered it, the way for them to
get in touch with the International community is wide open.
Recently from kindergarten to Senior High
School (SMA), students learn English in formal and non-formal ways. They
realize how important English is in this life, so they intend to master it such
a way that they can use that language to communicate with other people. Based
on curriculum of 2004, the scope of teaching English at Junior High Schools
includes four language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. In
this paper, the writer will perform reading by looking at the
consideration that success in reading will be very important to students
both for academic and vocational advancement.
Although English has been taught for a
long time, the result is still considered unsatisfactory especially in reading
comprehension. It is because the Indonesian students spend little time to read
and discuss books. They think that they can get the knowledge more easily
obtained from non-book sources than from books. However, reading helps students
in their study. In other words, their study depends much on how well they read.
Practically, it is not easy for students
to read materials in foreign language than in their native language. They have
to face new vocabularies and structures that are different with that they
have in their own language. They sometimes also have to face long, difficult,
boring, and uninteresting passages both in the textbooks and in the test
papers. Those things can make the students frustrated and lose their motivation
to learn English. The reason for reading will finally simply become learning to
read instead of reading to learn.
From this situation, the teacher should
not remain passive or give up all efforts to make improvements. According to
Grabe (Simanjuntak, 1988:36), the role of the teacher is to facilitate reading,
raise consciousness, build confidence, ensure continuity and system, show
involvement, and demand performance. It means they should try to get students
to read and to develop skills aimed at improving their ability to read. He
should be able to be a good facilitator in creating and building an effective
reading class. One beginning step for him to do is by providing understandable
and interesting reading materials. An understandable text will prevent students
from translating it word by word, and it will lead them to have a contextual
understanding of a whole text, or at least on sentence by sentence.
According to Burns, Roe, and Ross
(1984:148), the objective of all reader is comprehension of what they read.
Therefore, it is clear that the goal of all reading is the comprehension of
meaning. The “word by word” translation that is usually done by students in
Indonesia will not bring them to comprehend the text’s content well. The role
of a teacher is important to help students in determining how much and what
subject they should????????
