CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1 The Background of the Study

Reading comprehension plays an important role in human life. Its role is

realized as very substantial because it opens up new knowledge for individual.

The goal is to gain information from what the writer conveyed through a text and

uses this information to enrich his/her experiences and to improve his/her

intellectual ability.

Reading comprehension is the process of constructing meaning by

coordinating a number of complex processes that include word reading, word and

world knowledge, and fluency (Harris and Graham, 2007). Readers comprehend a

text when they are able to communicate with a text. They are able to draw the

information from written text and interpret this information appropriately. In other

words, reading comprehension is a kind of interaction between the readers and the

text through written symbol in order to grasp the information from written text.

The importance of reading comprehension is really realized by

government to make a policy in educational system; reading as one of the four

language skills must be taught for the students in the classroom especially for

senior high school students. Through teaching and learning reading, the students

are expected to be able to comprehend the reading passages they read well. This is

in the line with the objective of reading instruction in Senior High School is to

develop the students’ reading skill so that they can read and comprehend the

English texts effectively and efficiently (Curriculum 2006).

of people who are able to read out loud some texts with the appropriate

pronunciation but they do not know what they are reading about. It is because they

do not apply the way they use when reading in their native language to reading in

foreign language they are learning. They just spent their time to earn the meaning

word by word, then consult the unknown vocabularies, continue with the meaning

of each sentences.

Furthermore, based on the researcher’s preliminary research by interview

with the teachers and the students in SMA Swasta Nur Azizi Tanjung Morawa,

there are number of crucial issues concerning the teaching and learning of reading

comprehension. First of all, some students always feel bored when they are

studying reading because they do not know the technique to understand the

reading material easily and they lack of vocabulary. Secondly, students’ poor

knowledge becomes one problem that makes them difficult to comprehend the

reading text. Thirdly, the teachers do not use background knowledge to activate

their students’ schemata about what they are going to learn; the teachers do not let

their students to ask questions due to the use of traditional methods in which the

teachers take the major role to explain everything; do what the student is supposed

to do; while the students role is restricted to only listening to what is inculcated to

them by their teachers. In this situation, the students are just listeners to what the

teacher explains; they do not have a chance to articulate what they know about the

topic, what they want to know about the topic or what they have learned about the

topic. That situation makes the students misunderstand and fail to construct the
meaning. It is showed from their achievement last year that cannot get the

minimum passing grade (KKM) that is 70 in the academic year 2013/2014.

Table 1.1 Students’ Achievement in Reading Comprehension in SMA Swasta

Means of Students’ Achievement in Language Learning

The result shown by the table indicates that the achievement of the

students in reading comprehension is the lowest one among other language skills

namely speaking, listening and writing. The lack of the students in

comprehending a written text is affected by several factors: teaching strategy,

motivation, and learning style. The use of effective teaching strategy in reading

comprehension is perhaps the most important means to help the students to

improve their comprehension and learning from text. The teaching strategies

needed are those are able to connect the students’ background knowledge with the

new information in given text and to overcome the students’ lack desire of reading

comprehension in order to increase their motivation in reading. Here, there are

two simple strategies which are selected in this study. They are K-W-L strategy

and reciprocal teaching strategy.

K-W-L (Know, Want to know, and Learned) is a strategy which activates

the students’ background knowledge, establish the students’ goal and monitor the

students’ comprehension in reading (Ogle, 1986). The students recall what they

know about the topic of a text before and during reading for the purpose of

learning the content as fully as possible and linking the background knowledge to

the new knowledge. It will be used to help them to build some questions which
deepen the understanding that they have. Questions which are built from the

activating background knowledge are more interesting and intriguing. Through K-

W-L strategy the students are not only encouraged to pose some questions but

more to enlarge and deepen their understanding and comprehending actively.

They read the text to answer their questions as fully as possible and monitor their

comprehending of text by listing what they know after reading the text.

The other strategy that helps the students to increase their comprehension

is reciprocal teaching strategy. Reciprocal teaching strategy involves explicit

instruction by the teacher in the students’ use of the strategies, such as predicting,

clarifying, questioning and summarizing, to develop their reading comprehension.

As the students become more familiar with the use of the strategies, the teacher

plays a less prominent role and the students develop the ability to work co-

operatively with their peers (Wisaijorn, 2010).

Finding the worthy strategies in the process of teaching and learning

reading is not enough. Guthrie (2004:56) stated that there must be serious

attention from the teacher to know the students’ internal factors to encourage their

motivation to read. One of the students’ internal factors influencing reading

comprehension is self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is the belief in one’s own ability to

successfully something (Bandura, 1997). The students with high self-efficacy in

reading comprehension are more engaged and motivated to show greater

persistence and put more effort into task through their own capabilities. On the

other hand, the students with low self-efficacy may perform tasks with resentment

and disinterest through coercion of an external goal or reward.

motivation and learning (Pajares, 1996). He added that self-efficacy determines

how much effort the students will expend on an activity, how long they will

persevere when confronting obstacles, and how resilient they will prove in the

face of adverse situations-the higher the sense of efficacy, the greater the effort,

persistence, and resilience. Self-efficacy also influences the students’ thought

patterns, academic behavior, social and emotional reactions.

So, realizing the condition, the researcher is interested to conduct a

research on teaching strategies and the students’ self efficacy in order to develop

the students’ achievement in reading comprehension. It means that the effect of

applying teaching strategies will be proven whether they are effective towards the

reading comprehension of the students with high self-efficacy and low self-

efficacy.

1.2 The Problems of the Study

Based on the background of the study, it is concluded that the problems of

this research are formulated in questions such as the following:

1) Is the students’ achievement in reading comprehension taught by using K-

W-L strategy significantly higher than that taught by using reciprocal

teaching strategy?

2) Is the students’ achievement in reading comprehension with high self-

efficacy significantly higher than that low self-efficacy?

3) Is there any significant interaction between teaching strategies and self-

efficacy on the students’ achievement in reading comprehension?

It is necessary to state clearly what the objectives of the study in relation to

the problems posed. The objectives of the study are:

1) to find out whether the students’ achievement in reading comprehension

taught by using K-W-L strategy is significantly higher than that taught by

using reciprocal teaching strategy;

2) to find out whether the students’ achievement in reading comprehension

with high self-efficacy is significantly higher than that low self-efficacy;

3) to find out whether there is significant interaction between teaching

strategies and self-efficacy on the students’ achievement in reading

comprehension.

1.4 The Scope of the Study

There are many strategies which are probably used by the teacher for

improving the students’ achievement in teaching reading comprehension but in

this case, the scope of the study is limited on the effect of K-W-L strategy and

reciprocal teaching strategy on the students’ achievement in reading

comprehension based on self-efficacy. It means that by knowing the level of the

students’ self-efficacy whether high or low self-efficacy, it is expected that this

research will give the clear description on the effect of both teaching strategies

and self-efficacy on the students’ achievement in reading comprehension.

Narrative and analytical exposition texts are used as the reading materials

in this study. Since the texts often appears in National Examination and mostly the

students give the wrong answer to the question on this type texts. The levels of
reading comprehension used in this study are literal, inferential, and critical

comprehension.

1.5 The Significance of the Study

First of all, findings are expected to be useful for development of theory

and practice. Theoretically, it is able to give positive contribution for teaching in

overcoming problem in reading through value finding in the area of teaching

reading. Moreover, the students also use this finding to another subject. Even,

they probably also apply this strategy when reading whatever books in order to

gather the comprehension from their reading. It means that it is very useful not

only for English but also for another subject in which the key of enhancing the

knowledge is reading.

Practically, these research findings are hoped to be useful for English

teacher, especially, because it can be used as an alternative in varying the English

teaching related with reading comprehension. In hope, this research will be able to

change paradigm saying that reading is a boring activity. Hopefully, by these

strategies is able to be an interesting activity to be done by anyone.