Improving the Students’ Reading Comprehension of Narrative Text Through Reciprocal Teaching Strategy

 Improving the Students’ Reading  Comprehension of Narrative Text Through Reciprocal Teaching Strategy

(An Classroom Action Research)

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A.    Background of the Study

Language is important in our daily communication. People communicate with other or express their feelings, by using language. Language is foremost a means of communication, and communication almost always takes place within some sort of social context. This is why effective communication requires an understanding. It means that language is very important for communication in our daily life. And language is one of the instrument of communication. Language is a means of communication. By using language, people can express ideas, thoughts, opinions and their minds. Language in the world is the most important means in life because it is impossible for people to communicate with other and carry on their daily activities without using language[1].

Based on the National Education System, there are four skills which must be acquired by students in learning English, they are reading, listening, speaking and writing. Furthermore, English also has three components that are vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation.  Among the four basic skills, reading is one of the most important skills in learning language because the success of their learning depends on the greater part of their ability to read. Reading is the process of deriving meaning from text. For the majority of readers, this process involves decoding written text. Some individuals require adaptations such as braille or auditorization to support the decoding process. Understanding text is determined by the purposes for reading, the context, the nature of the text, and the readers’ Strategy, strategies and knowledge[2].

One  of  strategies  which  should  be managed and applied by teachers in the classroom in reading is Reciprocal Teaching Strategy. Reciprocal Strategy is a reading comprehension Strategy that focuses on the areas of predicting, clarifying, questioning, and summarizing. Model for students how you complete the Four Door Chart and then have them write on their forms and share with their partners. Give students time to decorate their Four Door Charts and write the names of the four strategies, one on each door[3]

B.     Identification of the Study

There are 11 genres of text in reading. They are descriptive, report, procedure, explanation, analytical exposition, hortatory exposition, narrative, recount, spoof, anecdote and news item. Knapp and Watkins defines Narrating is the process of sequencing people and events  in  time and  space commonly used in personal, recounts, historical recounts, stories, fairy tales, myths, fables and narratives[4].

Based on the important of teaching reading, there are so many methods and Strategy to teach reading proposed by the experts. They try to find out the best method for reading. Among of these methods are reciprocal reading, puzzles, story-mapping Strategy and following instruction Strategy, etc. However, the teacher must select the best one for her/his students. He/she must adjust the students’ characteristic and level toward he method they choose. It has the aim to reach the effectiveness of the chosen method.

The success of teaching and learning process, including teaching and learning reading is greatly influenced  by some components namely the teacher, students, method, motivation, and the linguistic factors. Learning reading can be done effectively if the whole influencing components support each other to reach the goal. So identifying the problems and the causes of the problem in learning reading is very important. So that the reading class will run well.

Realizing to explnation above the researcher will use Reciprocal Strategy in Narrative text. Reciprocal Teaching Strategy requires students to work in group, in which they share their ideas to others  and  exchange  them  with  other  groups, to obtain  the  best  understanding of  the  text.  The  students  will  work  in  group  then  they  will  try  to  share  what  the group has comprehended to other groups by using predicting, clarifying, questioning, and summarizing.

C.    Limitation of the Study

The limitation of the study is the research will be focus to improve the students’ ability to in reading comprehension the contents of Narrative text at the students at the teaching and learning process dealing content and organization by using Reciprocal Teaching Strategy

D.    Formulation the Study

It is important to state the problem of this research in order to clarify and to precise direction on how to deal with the subject matters related to this research. Based on the background of the research, the problems of this research are as follows:

1.      How is the implementation of teaching reading skill using Teaching Strategy in Narrative text to the students at the teaching and learning process?

2.      How is the effect of teaching reading skill using Reciprocal Teaching Strategy in Narrative text to the students at the teaching and learning process?

E.     Benefit the Study

The result of the research is expected  to be able to give some advantages  for the teacher, students, researcher and other researchers.

1.      The English teachers

This  research  result  is  expected  can  improve  the  English teacher‟s knowledge on the use of various Strategys in teaching English,  especially  reading  comprehension  through  Reciprocal Teaching Strategy in Narrative text.

2.      The students

The students know how to using Reciprocal Teaching Strategy in teaching and learning process especially  in reading  comprehension.

3.      The next researchers

This research result is expected facilities the next researcher to  be  a  reference  in  conducting  further  studies  by  using Reciprocal Teaching Strategy on  other  language  skills  or  language components.  The  result  of  this  study  is  expected  to  be  used  as  a reference to conduct further more study in the same or other place. 

4.      The researcher

This  Classroom Action research  could  be  used  as  process  to improve the teaching performance both teacher and researcher