A. Research Background Based on the researcher’s teaching experience in SMA Negeri 10 Pontianak, the researcher found that Narrative text was still complicated for the second year students to be comprehended. It was shown by their score of Narrative exercises. Most of them did not pass the standard minimum score of English, that was 70; which meant they got below 70. Whereas, the students have learnt this text since junior high school; logically, if someone has learnt something for some years, he / she, of course, has mastered what he / she has learnt. However, the fact is the second year students of SMA Negeri 10 Pontianak still cannot comprehend; even interpret about the content of Narrative text. There are 2 main problems underlying this case: first, the students are not interested in reading the text given by the teacher. When the teacher gives them a task to read and to find the content of narrative story, the students feel very displeased and uninteresting. They complain toward the task given because they say it is complicated for them. Furthermore, the text is about Narrative story that has some 1
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A. Research Background
Based on the researcher’s teaching experience in SMA Negeri 10 Pontianak, the
researcher found that Narrative text was still complicated for the second year students to
be comprehended. It was shown by their score of Narrative exercises. Most of them did
not pass the standard minimum score of English, that was 70; which meant they got
below 70. Whereas, the students have learnt this text since junior high school; logically, if
someone has learnt something for some years, he / she, of course, has mastered what he /
she has learnt. However, the fact is the second year students of SMA Negeri 10 Pontianak
still cannot comprehend; even interpret about the content of Narrative text.
There are 2 main problems underlying this case: first, the students are not interested in
reading the text given by the teacher. When the teacher gives them a task to read and to
find the content of narrative story, the students feel very displeased and uninteresting.
They complain toward the task given because they say it is complicated for them.
Furthermore, the text is about Narrative story that has some difficulties : such as the use
of past tense and the implicit moral lessons or main ideas of the text.
Psychologically, when someone feels uninterested toward something and is not
motivated with it, his / her self-unconsciousness will be formed that she / he has no
capability to do the thing. It has the same case when the students think that reading is
complicated and uninteresting, unconsciously, they have formed they incapability toward
reading. They inactivate their ability and interest to know and comprehend the text given.
It will be terrible for them since reading comprehension takes most of the part of English
material that is taught at school.
Second problem, the students did not have enough knowledge and skill to solve the
text given. This problem is related to their lack of vocabulary and their sensitive sense
toward the content of text while they read it in order to interpret what the story is about.
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The lack of vocabulary, surely, influences the students’ skill to comprehend the text since
they do not know the meaning of the text. On the other words, knowing the meaning of
the vocabulary that strings up the text is also very crucial because English is still foreign
language for them that they have not mastered yet. As Spancer and Hay (1998) in
Alyousef (2006) said that word recognition is an essential component inmastery the
reading. They showed that having vocabulary is very important to chain and construct the
meaning of the text.
Moreover, the level of reading for the senior high school students is adult reading
level which is more difficult than the previous level they have been. When they have
known the meaning of the words on the text, they absolutely are able to comprehend the
text because they translate the text into Indonesian. However, actually, there is another
factor that can help them to comprehend the text although they do not know most of the
meaning of the words on the text, that is sensitive sense of reading comprehension.
Sensitive sense of reading means that the reader can relate his / her previous
knowledge with the content of the text. So, when he / she reads the text, even the title of
the text, the reader can have an interpretation what the story is about. As Palinscar and
Brown (1984) said that reading comprehension is the product of three main factors:
considerate text, the compatibility of the reader’s knowledge and the text content, and the
active strategies the reader to employs to enhance the understanding and retention and to
circumvent the comprehension failures. Unfortunately, most of the students of SMA
Negeri 10 Pontianak do not have this factor. In fact, when they have this sensitive sense,
they will be helped to comprehend the text eventhough they do not recognize most of the
vocabulary on the text.
Those problems get the researcher curious why such kind of these crucial problems
toward reading comprehension can be happened. Whereas reading comprehension is one
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of English skills taught at school that takes most of the part of lesson materials. The fact
is both in final examination and daily activity in class room, reading comprehension
becomes the mainly test for them. It is very rare for the teachers to take speaking or
listening test to the students. It is because reading comprehension test is much simpler
and accurate to measure students’ mastery of the materials.
Besides, the importance of reading comprehension can be felt by the students when
they are able to comprehend the text. As Kendeou, et al. (2006 : 28) said that the ability to
read and to comprehend is critically not for long-life learning but also for adequate
functioning in society. It means that in comprehending a text, in this case is narrative text,
the readers do not only get an entertainment, but also they get the moral lessons which are
beneficial applied in society. When they have comprehended the story and get the moral
lessons of the text, they can learn what are the correct and incorrect behavior and attitude
that they should have in them.
Furthermore, comprehension is a unitary phenomenon but rather a family of skills and
activities (Kintsch & Kintsch, 2005; Rapp & van den Broek, 2005; van den Broek et al.,
2005 in Kendeou et al., 2006). The experts show that comprehending something is a
unitary activity that can improve other skill at once. Therefore, the reading
comprehension is much needed for the students to help them both as the subject material
and tool to improve English.
Based on the problems faced by the students, the researcher found that the technique
which was being used by the teacher could not attract the students’ sympathy and
motivation to focus on the narrative text; as the result they cannot get the main point of
the story given. The technique was boring and time consuming. It was ineffective to be
used for senior high school level. Thus, in this research, the researcher proposes an active
and an effective technique for the teacher; a technique that can improve the students’
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motivation to focus on learning narrative text in order to comprehend the story. The
technique is called Reciprocal Teaching Technique.
Reciprocal Teaching Technique is actually not a new technique in education.
Palinscar and Brown introduced this technique in 1984 as the solution for the learners to
comprehend the reading text. Reciprocal Teaching is an instructional strategy based on
modeling and guided practice, in which the instructor models a set of reading
comprehension strategies and then gradually cedes responsibilities for these strategies to
the students (Brown and Palinscar, 1989, cited in Young, 2006). In this teaching
technique, the teacher and the students will have dialogue around the text given before
they do the exercise with their group. The function of this dialogue is to help the students
to identify the content of the text easier. The students may ask any information related to
the story. This will extent their knowledge to comprehend the text.
In reciprocal teaching, the students will be introduced four strategies: predicting,
questioning, clarifying, and summarizing. These four strategies drive the students to dig
more detail about the text content. The teacher will be the model for the first time, and
after that the students play the role among them with the same four strategies that have
been modeled by the teacher. The researcher believes that this teaching technique can
improve the students’ comprehension on the narrative text because it is a powerful
technique. It can solve the problems stated before, as well as build students’ critical
thinking in order to comprehend the narrative text. Furthermore, in reciprocal teaching
technique, the students are the center of the classroom activity which will get the students
to learn independently; but still cooperatively because they share the information needed
with the other students.
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B. Research Problems
In order to restrict the research, the researcher focuses on the process of the classroom
activity while conducting the Reciprocal Teaching Technique, as well as the result of the
students’ achievement after the technique has been applied that will show the
improvement of the students’ score and the effectiveness of the this technique.
Because of that, there will be two possible problems on this research :
1. HOW IS THE CONDITION OF THE CLASSROOM WHILE THE RECIPROCAL
TEACHING TECHNIQUE IS BEING CONDUCTED ON THE FIRST YEAR
STUDENT OF SMA NEGERI 10 PONTIANAK?
2. WHAT IS THE RESULT OF THE STUDENTS’ ACHIEVEMENT AFTER
CONDUCTING THIS TECHNIQUE ON THE FIRST YEAR STUDENT OF SMA
NEGERI 10 PONTIANAK?
C. Research Purpose
The purpose of this research is to improve the reading comprehension on Narrative
Text on the first year students of SMA Negeri 10 Pontianak.
D. Action Hypothesis
According to Kerlinger (1973) in Cohen (2006), hypothesis is one of great importance
in scientist. Hypothesis is an intelligent and logical expectation about the possible
differences, relationships, causes, and solutions toward the research problem being
formulated by the researcher. In this research, since it is an action research, so the
researcher formulates an action hypothesis. Action Hypothesis is a hypothesis that
specifies immediate actions that could be taken to solve the problem in action research.
The action hypothesis of this research is Reciprocal Teaching Technique can improve the
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students’ reading comprehension on narrative text on the second year students of SMA
Negeri 10 Pontianak..
E. Frame of Concept
Reading comprehension is about the students’ understanding toward passages given
by the teacher as the measurement of their learning achievement in English. It is applied
more often than other skills as a tool for measuring the students’ achievement, especially
in genre of texts. Even, in national examination, reading comprehension takes 50% for the
whole sections; the rest is 25% for listening comprehension and 25% for structure. It is
because most of the questions are genre text based that needs comprehending to answer
them; and narrative text is one of those genres text. That is why, the students should have
mastered reading comprehension.
Unfortunately, many of them are not able to comprehend the text given. It can be seen
in their daily activity in the classroom. When the teacher gives them daily test or task in
form of reading narrative text with the instruction they have to find the main idea, moral
value, and cause-effect condition, and so on, they are difficult to accomplish it. It is
shown by their score for the task which does not reach the minimum standard score : 70.
The fact is pathetic that they cannot do well what they, in fact, must master.
There are some factors underlying this case: lack of vocabulary that strands the story,
lack of motivation to read the text, and no sensitive sense or enough knowledge toward
the story. These are found based on the teacher’s score recapitulation upon the students
and also the activity in the classroom.
Concerning on the factors mentioned above, in this research, the researcher really
would like to help the students to be able to comprehend the narrative text. That is why,
the researcher proposes a powerful technique to solve this problem, that is Reciprocal
Teaching Technique which includes all the solutions for the factors which have been
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mentioned. The main reason for choosing this technique is because the approach is closer
to KTSP. Reciprocal teaching technique adopts an active approach that the students are
the center of the classroom process.
Besides, in this technique, the students are encouraged to think more critically toward
the content of the narrative story given by the teacher. The students are led on four
instructions: predicting, clarifying, questioning, and summarizing; in which each
instruction lets them to interact with their mates since it is a group technique. Grouping is
meant to motivate the students in learning, and to feel secure in giving their opinion
toward the text because their groups’ mates are their peers. As the result, the
comprehension of the narrative story is completely achieved.
In this research, there will be some techniques of data collecting that will be used :
observation and questionnaire. Observation is done to record the students’ activity in
classroom action. There will be some tools related to observation : observation sheet, and
camera recorder. Furthermore, questionnaire is applied to measure the students’
motivation on reading comprehension whether it has improved or not after Reciprocal
Teaching technique has been applied. Moreover, the researcher will also conduct another
testing tool, that is an essay questions related to story. The purpose is to get the data of the
improvement of the students’ achievement in reading comprehension of narrative text in
form of score.
F. FRAME OF THEORY
1. The Nature of Teaching
Teaching is the act of providing activities that facilitate learning. It is an
activity that takes place only when learning does. No matter what the teachers is
doing in her classes, if the student are not learning something significant, she is not
teaching, when the student fails, the teacher fails more. On the word, to teach is to
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cause to learn. According to Thornstorn (1979), teaching leads to learning which has
some characteristics : instructions as motivation, assigner, interrogation clarifier,
illumination, evaluator, and director of intellectual exchange. Her definition toward
teaching shows that teaching is a complete activity that leads the learners to learn
something with a good motivation and critical thinking.
As stated in National Board for Professional Teaching Standard (1998) in
Guillaume, good teaching is neither obvious nor simplistic. It means that there is an
active process that creates linkage of knowledge in the process of teaching that makes
the learners knowing something from nothing. It is not a simple thing to be done
because there are many preparations in constructing a good teaching.
Teaching cannot be separated with teacher. Teacher is someone who teaches
the learners. He / she gives information and knowledge about phenomena or issues by
using certain methods or techniques. According the conceptualization by Howee
(1970 cited in http://www.oppapers.com/essays/The-Nature-Of-Teaching/634213,
2011), the teacher is not a dispenser of knowledge nor a person in change of the
education that goes on in the classroom. Furthermore, he described the role of teacher
is one of producing the climate, providing the resources, stimulating the students to
explore, investigate and seek answer, and becoming a guide and facilitator than a
director. Silberman (1966 cited in http://www.oppapers.com/essays/The-Nature-Of-
Teaching/634213) states that teaching is both art and science. It is an art because it
calls for the exercise of talent and creativity; meanwhile, teaching is a science for it
involves a repertoire of techniques, procedures and skills that can be systematically
It is different with the above discussion that discusses about the teaching is
neither obvious nor simple, Doyle (1986) in Guillaume stated that teaching is difficult
partly because classrooms are complex. His opinion is that there are some
complexities happen in the process of teaching : firstly, the teachers are to serve
several roles. They need to serve as coach, active director, supply master, evaluator,
and confidante. Teacher needs to think their students’ safety, their learning, and their
other needs simultaneously, while they also need to consider about their own personal
and professional issue. Second, classrooms are complex because the students tend to
overlap. Many things happen at once and quickly. Third, every learning situations are
different although particular classrooms teachers have to make quick judgment
without benefit of time to reflect and weigh their consequences of their actions. The
last, classroom are complex because affects each other; the act of teaching is
inherently uncertain. The teacher cannot predict with certainty of how a class will
respond to a lesson. The classroom is also unpredictable because the teacher may
persue goals that still unclear; even sometimes the teacher is not sure about the
outcome of their learning.
However, the main important thing of teaching is the readiness of the teacher.
The teacher needs to expertise all the supporting aspects of teaching. Below is a brief
tabled explanation of teacher expertise:
The Domain of Teacher Expertise
Subject Matter Knowledge Teachers know the subject matter they
teach and make it accessible to learners.
Planning Teachers consider their goals for students
learning and their knowledge of students
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and the subject matter as they develop
and sequence learning activities.
Instruction Teachers address learning goals through
meaningful activities that draw on the
students and encourage powerful
learning.
Assessment Teachers collect varied kinds of
information related to learning goals and
involve students in assessing their own
progress.
Classroom management and Discipline Teachers establish and maintain safe
environments that promote fairness,
respect, and responsibilities.
Professional growth Teacher engages in self-analysis to foster
their own development, and they act as
members of learning communities.
(Adapted from California Department of Education, 1997, and National Board for Professional Teaching Standard, 1998)
2. The Importance of Reading Comprehension
2.1 The nature of Reading
Reading is one of the English skills which is very close to the knowledge of
the learners toward English. It is an interactive process between the readers and a
text which leads to automaticity (fluency). There are two kinds of ways of readers’
interactions toward reading in which the reader tries to elicit the meaning and
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where the various knowledge are being used : linguistic or system knowledge
(through bottom-up processing) and schematic knowledge (through top-down
processing). Grabe (1991) in Alyousef (2005) argues that there are many
researchers attempt to understand and explain the fluent reading process by
analyzing the process into a set of component skills in reading. The intended a set
of components are automatic recognition skill, vocabulary and structural
knowledge, formal discourse structural knowledge, content / world background
knowledge, synthesis and evaluation skill, and the metacognitive knowledge and
skills monitoring.
Reading is an active process of comprehending (where) students need to be
taught strategies to read more efficiently (e.g., guess from context define
expectations, make inferences about the text, skim ahead to fill in the context, etc.
(Grabe, p. 377 in Alyousef, 2006). It emphasizes that reading is not only a passive
skill about reading aloud or text-based reading. Instead, reading is more about the
cognitive principle which is related to the reader’s knowledge about the passage.
Reading skill, in general, consists of two major focus : reading aloud and reading
comprehension. Reading aloud lets readers read the text given; while reading
comprehension concerns with the readers’ knowledge or understanding about the
content of the passage or the text. In this research, the researcher focuses on the
reading comprehension.
2.2 The Importance of Reading Comprehension
As stated above that reading comprehension is about the readers’ knowledge
or understanding about the content of the passage or the text, it is clear already
that building students’ comprehension toward reading is the effective way to lead
the students to enrich their English. Reading comprehension was enhanced by
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teaching students a variety if techniques and systematic strategies to assist recall
of information, self evaluation of comprehension, and summarization (Walsh,
Glaser, Wilcox, 2006). On the other words, it is a combination of identification
and interpretation skill. Kamil, et al (2002, p.14) said that:
Comprehension is the process of deriving meaning from connected text. It involves word knowledge (vocabulary) as well as thinking and reasoning. Therefore, comprehension is not a passive process, but an active one. The reader actively engages with the text to construct meaning. This active engagement includes making use of prior knowledge. It involves drawing inferences from the words and expressions that a writer uses to communicate information, ideas and viewpoints.
As Kemil, et al, stated in his book entitled Teaching Reading, it can be
concluded that comprehension is about the content of the text. In narrative text,
comprehension is important to work out the moral values, main ideas, plots, and
characters of each participant in the story. By having the comprehension, the
students are aware of how well they understand a text while and after reading the
text. Goodman in Alyousef (2005, p.143), viewed reading comprehension as a
guessing game in which the readers construct, as best as they can, a message
which has been encoded by the writer. The readers try to guess what the writer’s
purpose of writing the text is.
Perfetti, Landi, and Oakhil (2004, p. 228) define the comprehension occurs as
the reader makes up a mental representation of a text message. It is a
representation of what the text is about. They, for further, explain that there are
three components of the comprehension : the sensitivity to story structure,
inference making, and comprehension monitoring. Sensitivity to story structure
concerns with the plot of the story; meanwhile the inference making is related to
the implicit content of the text, such as main idea and implicit messages of the
text. Moreover, comprehension monitoring is about the reader’s ability to verify
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his or her understanding and to make reparation in which this understanding is
sensible or not. Comprehension monitoring is like a self-assessment of reading but
it is happening within the process of reading.
3. Reciprocal Teaching Technique
3.1 The history of Reciprocal Teaching
Reciprocal teaching was proposed by Palinscar and Brown in 1986. It was
based on their study which concerned on improving the students’ ability to learn
from the text. They realized that comprehension strategies which had been used
for some years were failed. Many facts showed their assumption. First,
3.2 The definition of Reciprocal Teaching Technique
Reciprocal teaching refers to an instructional activity that takes place in the
form of a dialogue between teachers and students regarding segments of text. The
dialogue is structured by the use of four strategies: summarizing, question
generating, clarifying, and predicting. The teacher and students take turns
assuming the role of teacher in leading this dialogue. The purpose of this
technique is to facilitate a group effort between teacher and students as well as
among students in the task of bringing meaning to the text.
In Reciprocal teaching, the learners read a text section by section, pausing to
use the four explicit strategies comprehension. Explicit strategy on comprehension
is very important since the students always do the reading exercise without any
clear instructions from the teacher. It makes them often get confused of what they
have to do and what they will get after doing the task. Therefore, in Reciprocal
teaching, the students get to understand what they have to do upon within the
process, as well as the task given. The explicit strategies are also meant as the
self-regulation and self-assessment for themselves as comprehension monitoring.
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According to Young (2006), the general methodology of Reciprocal teaching
involves the instructor and the students of small group, reading in section of text.
He explains that the instructor leads the discussion of the text, while modeling the
appropriate reading strategies. During this dialogue, the instructor encourages the
students to ask questions of both of the text and the strategies.
3.3
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G.Scope of Research
1. Terminology
There are 6 terminologies which are concerned in this research:
a. SMA 10 Negeri Pontianak is a school which is located in Jl. Purnama, Gg.
Purnama Agung V/ Komplek Sekolah Terpadu, Pontianak.
b. Second Year Student of SMA Negeri 10 Pontianak is the second grade students of
SMA 10 Pontianak.
c. Improving means to make something better or increased; whether it is about the
quality or quantity. It also means to advance to a more desirable, valuable, or
excellent state. In this research, improving means making the students’ reading
comprehension better, as well the process in the classroom activity to be better
than before.
d. Reading comprehension is an active process of reading that derives the meaning
of connected text. It is about an understanding the content of a particular text.
Reading comprehension is essentially the ability to understand what has been
read.
e. Narrative Text is one kind of genres of text that concerns on the imaginative story,
such as fable, legend, folk tale, fairy tale, and myths. Narrative text is learnt as a
subject material at school. Narrative text is a text which contains about story
(fiction/non fiction/tales/folktales/fables/myths/epic) and its plot consists of
climax of the story (complication) then followed by the resolution. The function
of this text is to amuse or entertain the readers. However, there is an importance
part of narrative story that can be learnt by the readers, that is the moral values of