Name: Oreste Luis Mario

Topic: Students difficulties in undesrtanding reading skills

A. Introduction
The objective of this research was to improve the reading skills of 8thgrade students of
at Napipine Secondary school. This study was categorized intoAction Research. The
subjects of the study were the the students of two streams A and B, of Napipine
Secondary school.
The instruments of the study were observation and interviewguidelines which were
supported by the scores of students’ reading skills tests.
The data from the observation and interview were analyzed qualitatively and the
scores were analyzed quantitatively. The steps of the study were planning, actions and
observations.
Topic and objectives of study

Based on the problem of this study, the object of this essay is:

1. Lack of willingness and active participation of the students in understandingthe

material subject taught by the teacher, which can reduce the desire ofstudents to
master the material being taught.
2. Students get difficulty in understanding the subject matter, one because
oflearning media used by teachers are less attractive to students’ willingness
inlearning become less.
3. The students are reluctant to perform reading aloud, and writing in English
since it would be so starkly displayed on public.

Critical questions

Regarding to the problems stated above, some critical questios merge in other to
overtake these postulations, such as:

1.How is Interactive Multimedia technique usedto improve the students’ reading skill
ability?

2.Why do students get difficulty in understanding the subject matter taught by the
teacher?

Purpose of study/Objectives

General objective
The General objective of this research is to improve students’ reading skill in Napipine
Secondary School.

Specific Objectives

1.To identify the main scope of the students difficulties in undesrtanding reading skills;

2.To analize students speaking abilities in different teaching activities.

Rationale

This research is expected to give contribution for students and englishteachers. To the
students, to give experience and new challenges as an effort to develop theirreading
skills. To the English teacher, as a reference to strive for innovation in developing the
teaching of reading so, the students should be motivated somehow, so as to promote
their abilities but there should have some techniques in order to comvince the students
in their perfomences not only but sometimes its necessary advice them in order to do
the study groups instead of a self study.

B. Literature review

Definition of Reading
Reading is one of the English skills as part of four essential skills such as
speaking, listening and writing. It is the way to understand written messages.
According to Nuttal (2000:2), reading means a result of interaction between the
writer’s mind and the reader’s mind. It is the way how the reader tries to get the
message or the intended meaning from the writer. In this process, the reader tries to
create the meanings intended by the writer, the reader can get the point.
According to Maxom, (2009) reading has the considerable role in the language teaching
tostrengthen the skills which are acquired by the students in listening, speaking,
andwriting. Reading skill affects the other skills learning process.
Besides, the students have to be able to achieve reading competencies as urged by the
national curriculum.
Maxom, (2009) adds that most teachers use textbooks and printedmaterials to teach
students, those materials are often delivered in a monotonous wayso that the students
are getting bored, lack of media to support the teaching andlearning processes the
availability of interactive multimedia sources, lack ofopportunities for the students to
involve actively in the teaching and learning processbecause of limited time, students’
low motivation, the students’ passiveness duringthe English teaching and learning
process, and lacked of vocabulary mastery inunderstanding texts. All of these factors
contributed to the low level of the students’reading comprehension.
Language learning is a difficult and demanding process. It not only involves
learning the structures, vocabulary items, some idiomatic expressions and
culturalaspects of the language but it also involves being proficient in the skills needed
tounderstand and communicate in the target language effectively. There are many
skillsrequired in a language but the main ones are listening, reading, writing and
speaking.
The first two are the receptive skills while the latter two are the productive ones.
Without a full mastery of the receptive skills, it is difficult to achieve mastery in
productive ones. Maxom, (2009).
Maxom, (2009), defends that reading is one of the receptive skills which is of great
importance in languageteaching and learning. There are many reasons for its being
important. Firstly, learnerscome across it a lot in their daily lives. Secondly, since the
students in this research arepreparatory school learners who are learning English for
academic purposes, it isdefinite that they will have to read a lot of long articles or
books.
Types of Reading
Reading can be categorized into some types regarding the purpose of thereaders. In this
regard, Brown (2004 :186 – 187) purpose three types of reading,namely academic
reading, job-related reading, and personal reading.Genres of reading that belong to
academic reading are textbooks, thesis,essays, papers, references material, editorials and
so on. Types of reading which arejob-related reading are such as memos, applications,
schedule, letters or emails,reports and so on. Genres of reading that belong to personal
reading are such asnewspapers, magazines, invitations, novels, short stories, etc.
Types of Classroom Reading Performance
During the reading activity, there will be some clues which inform thelearners’ reading
performance. There are some reading performancesproposed by Brown (2001:312):
1. Oral and silent reading
Brown (2001:312) explains that oral reading is the first performance done by the
learners. This is aimedto serve as an evaluation check on bottom-up processing skills,
double aspronunciation check, and serve to add some extra student participation if
theteachers want to highlight a certain short segment of a reading passage.However,
practically, the learners will find it difficult to comprehendtexts if they read orally. They
need to read silently because the readers can rehearsethe next paragraph and other
readers will not lose their attention for other readerswho are reading aloud.

2. Intensive and extensive reading

According to (Brown, 2004: 189), intensive reading attempts to focus on linguistic or
semantic details.The learners will pay more attention on the surface structure details to
get the literalmeanings, implications, rhetorical relationships, and others. This reading
issometimes called content related reading which deals with short texts.
Extensive reading gives more concentration on the general understanding of alonger
text. Extensive reading deploys to more than one page text which maybe essays,
articles, technical reports, short stories, and books.Although the learners read longer
texts, they still have to comprehend the text asthe main objective of reading. That is the
reason which the teachers motivate theirstudents to read.(Brown, 2004: 189).
Reading Skills
Brown ( 2004 : 187-188 ) says that explicit reading skills consist of two bigelements,
namely microskills and macroskills.The microskills are presented below:
1- Discriminating among the distinctive graphemes and orthographic pattern of
English
2- Retaining chunks of language of different length in short-term memory;
3- Processing writing at an efficient rate of speed to suit the purpose;
4- Recognizing a core of words and interpreting word order patterns and
theirsignificance;
5- Recognizing grammatical word classes (noun, verb, etc.), system (e.g. , tense,
agreement, pluralization) patterns, rules, and elliptical forms;
Meanwhile, macroskills include: recognizing the rhetorical forms of writtendiscourse
and their significance for interpretation, recognizing the communicativefunctions of a
written text according to form and purpose, inferring context that is notexplicit by using
background knowledge, distinguishing between literal and impliedmeanings, detecting
cultural specific references and interpreting them in a context of developing and using
patterns of reading strategies
such as scanning and skimming, detecting discourse markers, guessing the meaningof
words from context, activating schemata for the interpretation of texts, inferringlinks
and connections between supporting idea, new information, given
information,generalization and exemplification from described events, ideas, etc.

C. Methodology

1.Research paradigm

According to (Maxom, 2009: 139) reading has the considerable role in the language
teaching to strengthen the skills which are acquired by the students in listening,
speaking, and writing . Rading skill affects the other skills learning process. Besides, the
students have to be able to achieve reading competencies from the first stages of
learning, both at and at school. On my point of view, I think reading should be
considered a particular subject to be taught in schools, providing that many students go
to secondary schools without acquiring reading abilities.

2.Research Method

The place of this research took place in Napipine secondary school, in two of the first
classrooms, where younger students are found. Kemmis and McTaggart (1988), define
this as an approach to improve teachers’ teachingpractise. The teacher finds a problem
in their teaching practise, so they decide toinvestigate on that problem. Then they come
up with a plan to investigate it, put that planinto action, and finally they observe the
results. The tools I used to collect data for thisreport were questionnaires, students’
recordings and teacher reflection notes.
3. Research Design
According to Maxom, (2009: 139)‘A research design is the of stage for collection and
analysis of data in other to combine relevance to the research purpose with economy in
procedure’. In this research both qualitative approach and quantitative approach were
used. The data collection was based on interview and observations of the participants.
4.Population, participants and sample.
Maxom, (2009: 139), defines population as being any collection of Specified group of
human beings or of non-human entities such as objects and subjects. In this research,
There were a total of 50 participants, with ages between 12 and 14 years old of the two
streams. There was a sample of 10 students in each stream, totalizing 20 altogether to
perform the the research process. The methodology used to collect data for this research
was action research.
The table below has got a clear information of total universe of population and how
participants were sampled.
Class Universe Sample Total
Population

Mam Woman Mam Woman Universe Sample

population
Grade 8 A 12 13 4 6 25 10
Grade 8 B 14 11 5 5 25 10
Sub-Total 26 24 9 11 50 20
Table 1: Population and Sample

5. Instruments
The material used in the classroom were such usefull for all interactions namely grade 8
english book, some dictionaries, some glossaries books, blackboard applications and
some more other boooks related to the summaries given during the research
methodology.
6. Procedures
In implementing this classroom action research, the researcher was assisted by an
English teacher of Napipine secondary school as the collaborator. The research was
planned following the schedule of the the school and theprocess was divided into two
main parts: a) The observation stage and b) The interview stage.
a) In the observation stage the researcher assisted two lessons in each class to
observe the speaking in the classroom. The monitor was the reacher of the
subject and the researcher took appointments of his observation.
b) In the interview stage the researcher asked permission to have particular time to
interview 10 students of each class of both genders. There were 5 question to be
asked and the questions were the same for all. Below are the question handled:
Interview questions
(i).Do you like reading?
(ii). How often do you read?
(iii).Do you enjoy reading english textbooks?
(iv). Have you got some english books at home?
(v). What do you do on your freetimes at home?
7. Data analysis techniques
Released the collection of data, the researcher analyzed carefully the procedures by
listing on the observation paper how the students performed their reading in the
classroom. For the interview stage, the teacher comoared the answers of the students
and analyzed by comparing, respectively.
8. Limitations of the study
In the process of data collection, the researcher was confronted with some limitations,
mainly in while interviewing the students. First because some did not want to respond.
Others simply talked about things related to fewer lessons due to COVID-19
restrictions. Secondly because the students showed difficulties in answering in english
and had to use other local languages to respond.
D. activity plan

DATA
STAGE START END
PLANNING 27\09\2021 01\10\2021
DATA COLLECTION 07\10\2021 10\10\2021
DATA ANALYSIS 15\10\2021 23\10\2021
REPORT WRIN=TING 28\10\2021 12\11\2021
References
MAXOM, Michelle, teaching english as a foreign language for dummies, England,
2009.
ATTACHEMENT

ATTACH THE CONTENTS BELLOW

PARTICIPANTS SAMPLE

Class Universe Sample Total

Population

Mam Woman Mam Woman Universe Sample

population
Grade 8 A 12 13 4 6 25 10
Grade 8 B 14 11 5 5 25 10
Sub-Total 26 24 9 11 50 20

ATTACH THE SAMPLE BELOW

Content name position

introduction 1
Topic 2
objective 3
Literature review 4
population 5
Plan of actity 6
bibliography 7
D. activity plan

DATA
STAGE START END
PLANNING 27\09\2021 01\10\2021
DATA COLLECTION 07\10\2021 10\10\2021
DATA ANALYSIS 15\10\2021 23\10\2021
REPORT WRIN=TING 28\10\2021 12\11\2021