Diah Permata Kusuma W. 4C (1802109076)
Diah Permata Kusuma W. 4C (1802109076)
Diah Permata Kusuma W. 4C (1802109076)
4C (1802109076)
1. Background of Study
Learning media are now getting more and more, but not all teachers know what
media are suitable to use when the teacher teaches so that students understand what they
are teaching. There are many media that teachers can use when they are teaching reading.
Some of them are by using storybooks, folklore, pictures, posters and flashcards. Reading
is the process of looking at a series of written symbols and getting meaning from them.
From all definitions above, it means that a general understanding of reading can
be derived as an active process of getting meaning. This process is done by knowledge
and influenced by nonlinguistic internal and external variables. Besides that, reading can
be taken as a life skill which is relevant to immediate as well as long term life success
and reading generally serves as source of information and enjoyment. There are four
skills in learning process; listening, reading, speaking, and writing. In this research, the
writer will focus on reading skill, because in the fact there are many students have
problems in reading text. Reading becomes one of the skills that is very helpful to
improve abilities in three other aspects. When reading English texts, we will find
vocabulary that we may never know before. The vocabulary that we get from reading we
can use in applying active skills such as speaking and writing. In addition, the more we
get used to the vocabulary, we will not feel strange when listening to the vocabulary
when used by others in conversation, or when we want to use it in other writing.
In the process of teaching reading, usually used the media such as using
storybooks, folklore, pictures, posters and flashcards. Not all of these media will be
effectively used for all students because each student has a different learning style. There
are 4 learning styles namely auditory learning styles, which means children will quickly
understand and learn something just by listening. Visual learning styles, children with
visual learning styles will easily absorb material and information by seeing. Tactile
learning style, children who have tactile learning styles understand something by
touching. And the last is kinesthetic learning style, kinesthetic learning style is a learning
style that involves both physical and body movements. In fact, the use of storybooks,
folklore media, flashcards, posters and pictures has not been effective because it turns out
students' reading skills ability is still low, there are students who are still not interested to
English, and the vocabulary of students are still few. To overcome these problems, songs
are chosen to improve students' reading skills because learning the words using song is
fun we can also singing and acceptable goal for teens and sub-teens.
There are many reasons why the use of songs is effective for improving reading.
The first reason is, the song has short lyrics. This short length makes song lyrics ideal to
develop specific skills intensively, or to zoom in on a particular learning approach skill.
Lyrics usually follow a similar structure – songs are often predictable in their structure,
especially pop songs, which are most often used in the language classroom. They may
raise questions and give background context first, before building up to a chorus that
might answer those questions and express how the singer feels. Because students are
often familiar with the structure of song lyrics, it allows them to concentrate on meaning
and overall comprehension. Lyrics may express emotion – students can identify with the
singer’s feelings or relate to their situation, which often encourages meaningful
discussion in class. Lyrics are often vague – the language in song lyrics is often open to
interpretation. Mysterious references are perfect for critical thinking skills, since they
generate a lot of discussion and place students at the center of the learning process, by
making the content personal. And when the text can be understood differently by
different people, the number of creative follow-up tasks is not only higher, but always
much more engaging.
Fountas and Pinnell once wrote that our students should "sing songs of such
delight that the lyrics remain in the memory forever". But, teachers often use songs in the
language classroom for teaching reading like 'gap-fills' (finding the right word to fill a
gap in a sentence), re-ordering words so they make sense, or matching related words. In
these media, students have to listen for words or phrases connected to a specific
grammatical focus or semantic field. This approach involves working with individual
sounds, words and phrases, rather than the text as a whole. Song lyrics make great mentor
text to use to teach theme, author’s message, and character traits, learn the alphabet, the
sounds of letters, develop phonemic awareness, build phonics skills and vocabulary and
visualization and inferring. We can also use songs to develop broader comprehension and
critical thinking skills. Rather than focusing on individual words or sounds, students can
make predictions about meaning, and then confirm or reject these predictions as they read
or listen to the lyrics. Students who may not connect with a book or article in class just
may connect with a song they are familiar with when you make it part of instruction.