IMPROVING THE STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION THROUGH ROLE,
AUDIENCE, FORMAT AND TOPIC (RAFT) STRATEGY
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. Background
English is an international tool of communication. It is
used to communicate with each other by people from different countries all over
the world. English plays an important role because it is a tool of
communication in all aspects in most of the part of the world, whether in
social in interaction, science technology, politics, economics, cultural, and
education. It is intended to enable the students to communicate and express
their ideas in English and have a good command in reading comprehend text book
and information written in English for the shake of national development in the
field of education.
In learning English there are four skills that should be
mastered by the students, they are listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
These skills always become the target of the final learning objectives. In
other words, the four language skills are the result of a long process of
learning; they are the application of the knowledge of language that the
learners get during process.
Reading is one important aspect in learning English. Reading
itself is complex and complicated process because it involves the internal and
external factors of students. The internal factors are everything from the
students which can be taught; as a result of an interaction in reading process
external factors are all the factors from outside of the students (Nunan, in Ilvirah,
2010:2).
Worther in Ilvirah (2010:2) says that reading is an active
process of identifying important ideas, comparing, evaluating and applying
them; therefore in reading paragraph we have to try to comprehend. Without
comprehending the paragraph, it will be very difficult to understand what we have read or
what the writer means in reading material. In relation to the condition of the
teaching of English reading comprehension faced by secondary school students.
The students, who come to????
