CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

In English foreign language teaching, reading is one of the most

important factors in assessing a learner’s linguistic competence. Reading is a

receptive language process. It is the process of recognition, interpretation, and

perception of written or printed materials. Reading proficiency plays a great

role in understanding a written statement accurately and efficiently. Reading

serves as an important tool in every field of professional service.

Children are prepared for reading at an early age by listening to stories,

being read to, and interacting with adults and others about the stories they

hear. This is done not with the main purpose of preparing a child for reading

but as a way that parents and others interact with, give affection for, and

entertain and educate children. The interaction involves asking questions

about what is going to happen in the story, getting the child to complete

sentences in a known story, talking about the interesting and scary parts of the

story, and generally having fun.

The first reading problem is the child lacks the ability to group words

into thought units which are necessary for comprehension and fluency. He is

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handicapped in attempting to identify news word by use of context clues,

because the vocabulary load of unknown words is too great. Here, there are

several causes of this problem. The children have limited reading experience

in their daily life. This problem also occurred because the child over use of

alphabet and phonic methods in beginning of instruction. These following

suggestions are suggested by reading specialist in order to overcome this

problem. Firstly, the teacher should use basic reader at easy level of difficulty

to make the child easy to understand the text. Secondly, the teacher should

use workbook pages that emphasize word recognition rather than making

analysis on the text.

Visual analysis skills are important for interpreting, analyzing

and manipulating visually, presented information accurately and quickly. But

some children tend to consistently make mistakes in specific part word such

as at the initial part, middle part or at the end of the word. Here the causes of

visual analysis skills difficulty. Firstly, the child has limited knowledge of

vowel sounds of word. It can make the child a little bit of confusing.

Secondly, the child has faulty approach to word recognition such as letter by

letter spelling or sounding. According to the reader expertise, he suggested

several techniques in order to overcome this problem. Firstly, the teacher

should use discovery technique with groups of words having the same affixes

whether it is prefixes or suffixes. He also suggests to rewriting sentences

where the child are given a number of sentences containing words with

prefixes or suffixes then the teacher asks them to identify the word with a

prefix and rewrite each sentences with a new word or phrase to give the same

idea.

The students must be able to apply phonic analysis to both easy and

difficult words. The purpose of these phonic skills is the recognition of

unknown words in meaningful context. Students confused phonic sound and

words that students read cause it do not know the meaning of the word is

contextually. This problem arises when students are unable to associate

sounds with letters that read the words. The problems of decoding thus

become more severe. The possible causes of this problem are lacks auditory

acuity, lack of phonic training, child was not ready for phonics training and

deficiencies in instruction where child learned sounds of letters and

memorized rules without being shown how to apply them. Here there are

some suggestion activities to overcome this problem which are the teacher

needs to guide formulation of generalizations in child’s own words and note

exceptions to those phonetics generalization. For example, teacher teaches

phonetic families derived from sight word already in child’s vocabulary.

Guessing at words is defined as a reader saying a word without regard

to any decoding elements contained in the word or passage being read orally.

But in this problem, some child is unable to use meaning suggested by the
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story or sentence to anticipate new or unfamiliar words. The ineffective use of

context clues forces the child to analyze carefully many words that should be

identified with a minimum inspection. This slows down his reading. The

possible causes of this problem are the child is not exposed or lack of training

in using clues, the teacher does not make use contextual instruction and the

last one is the material that provided by the teacher is too difficult to

understand.

Recommendations for this problem are if the student guesses at

phonetically regular one-syllable words, administer a Phonics Assessment

and provide help where needed according to the results of the test. If the

student guesses at words of more than one syllable, administer a Structural

Analysis Assessment and, again, give the student instruction on those aspects

of structural analysis in which she is weak. Because an inability to use

context clues can cause the student to guess at both one-syllable and multi

syllable words, testing for the student’s ability to use context clues is also

recommended.

Secondly, while the student is reading orally, the teacher should call

attention to the words at which she guesses. At the same time, the student

should be taught how to systematically attack unknown words. The most

effective way to do this is by teaching the student to use the word-attack

strategy and the last but not least is the word-attack strategy teaches students
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to examine the words that both precede and follow a difficult or unknown

word and sound out at least the first one or two sounds of the unknown word.

This strategy teaches students to use both the context of the sentence and the

letter sounds (or structural parts) of the unknown word. Thus, students learn

to use more than just the first letter or syllable of the unknown word as the

need arises.

However, it is a common problem for some students to complain about

having trouble with how to read efficiently. Students always feel confused

about the main idea of the passage even if they can get a full mark to the

questions following the passage. In addition, some teachers also find

difficulties in increasing efficiency in reading classes. So, therefore some of

approaches for teaching reading that teacher have to follow them and some of

reading techniques.

Reading comprehension is the heart and goal of reading, since the

purpose of all reading is to gather meaning from the printed page. The

decoding of the written word is a very important aspect of the reading act.

Without being able to decode the written word, reading comprehension is

impossible. This explains why some children can “read” without

understanding what they are reading. There are possible causes of this

problem such as lack of general reading ability, lack of training to gain

meaning form print and the last is not interested in the materials because lack
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of motivation and concentration. While the ways to overcome this problem

are the child should be trained to gain the meaning from reading materials as

soon as possible. They should be give practice in three levels of materials

such as literal, interpretation, and assimilation.

Normally developing children raised by caring adults develop speech

and language abilities naturally and without effort. Learning to read is a

different process because it involves learning about a symbolic system

(writing) used to represent speech. Before children begin to learn to associate

the written form with speech, they need learn the vocabulary, grammar and

sound system of the oral language. There is a close connection between oral

vocabulary, pronunciation and early reading ability. The ability to attend to

the individual sounds within words (phonological and phonemic awareness)

is also an oral skill that is closely associated with reading ability

Phonological awareness refers to the ability to attend to the sounds of

language as distinct from its meaning. Studies of both alphabetic an non-

alphabetic languages show that phonological awareness is highly correlated

with reading ability. For alphabetic languages, phonemic awareness is

especially important because the letters of the alphabet map onto individual

sound units (phonemes). Students who are able to attend to the individual

phonemes in alphabetic languages are much more likely to learn the

alphabetic principle (how letters map onto phonemes) and, therefore, learn to

recognize printed words quickly and accurately.

For alphabetic languages, many studies have shown that phonemic

awareness is closely associated with reading ability in the early and later

years of schooling. Furthermore, reading instruction and phonological

awareness mutually reinforce each other. Phonological awareness helps

children to discover the alphabetic principle. At the same time, learning to

read alphabetic script also develops phonological and phonemic awareness.

For non-alphabetic languages, research has shown that phonological

awareness is also associated with reading ability. Regardless of the writing

system, there appears to be a universal phonological principle in reading.

Fluency is important because it is closely related to comprehension.

Fluency in reading means being able to read text accurately, quickly and with

expression. Fluent readers can do this because they do not have problems

with word recognition. As a result, they can focus on the meaning of a text.

Recent research shows that fluency also depends on the ability to group

words appropriately during reading. This means fluent readers recognize

words quickly, but also know where to place emphasis or pause during

reading.

An essential part of the reading skill is the skill of being able to

recognize written forms and to connect them with their spoken forms and their
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meanings. This involves recognizing known words and also deciphering

unfamiliar words.

Many studies have shown that good readers have good vocabulary

knowledge. In order to understand a text, readers need to know the meanings of

individual words. They construct an understanding of the text by assembling

and making sense of the words in context. Vocabulary knowledge is difficult to

measure. It is, however, very important in learning to read and in future reading

development. Words that are recognized in print have to match a reader’s oral

vocabulary in order to be understood. This is important for children who are

developing oral proficiency, as well as for non-native speakers of a language.

In later reading development, when students read to learn, they need to learn

new vocabulary in order to gain new knowledge of specific subject matter.

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.

Recent studies have focused on how readers use their knowledge and

reasoning to understand texts. The term ‘comprehension strategies’ is

sometimes used to refer to the process of reasoning. Good readers are aware of

how well they understand a text while reading. Good readers also take active

steps to overcome difficulties in comprehension. Students can be instructing in

strategies to improve text comprehension and information use.

Reading and learning are the two things that determine the success of a

child during his school career. First he learns to read. Then he reads to learn.

Because the child with reading problems and reading difficulties battles to

read, he is therefore also hampered in the learning situation. The researcher

have identified two major problems in reading that can cause a pupil may be

left behind in their subjects. That is insufficient sigh vocabularies, inability to

use context clues and inadequate comprehension skills.

A reader reads a text to understand its meaning, as well as to put that

understanding to use. A person reads a text to learn, to find out information, to

be entertained, to reflect or as religious practice. The purpose for reading is

closely connected to a person’s motivation for reading. It will also affect the

way a book is read. We read a dictionary in a different way from the way we

read a novel. In the classroom, teachers need to be aware of their students’

learning needs, including their motivation for reading and the purpose that

reading has in their lives.

Reading is useful for language acquisition provided that students more

or less understand what they read, the more they read, the better they get at it.
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Reading also has a positive effect on students’ vocabulary knowledge, on their

spelling and on their writing.

As an English teacher we must make decision to choose language

teaching method will be most effective. Especially in teaching reading, the

researcher will propose a case of study that teach reading through

Communicative Language Teaching Method (CLT) at grade eight of SMP

PGRI 35 Serpong.

In reading from various sources that are relevant, the researcher can

make a conclusion that the process involves reading cognitive and experiences

involving past. If someone has a problem in reading it will affect particularly in

the daily life and always will be missed than students who do not have

problems in reading. Teachers should be sensitive and wise in addressing this

problem. Although various studies have been conducted expected at

addressing reading problems among school students but this problem still

interfere with students at the school. Handle this problem immediately so that

students do not feel ostracized and humility of their friends.

B. Identification of the Problem

Based on previous background, the researcher would like to identify

the problem, as follows:

1. How to teaching reading make positive effect on students’ vocabulary

knowledge, on their spelling and on their writing?

2. How can teacher do to motivate students improve their reading ability?

3. What are the goals of teachers who use the Communicative Language

Teaching Method to improving reading ability?

4. How does reading have a positive effect on student’s reading ability?

5. How significant is the influence of using the Communicative Language

Teaching Method on students reading skill?

6. How to improve students’ reading skill through Communicative Language

Teaching Method more effective?

C. Limitation of the Problem

Limitation of the problem and this thesis, the researcher would like to

improving students’ reading skill through Communicative Language Teaching

Method at eighth grade of ………………………...

D. Formulation of the Problem

Based on the limitation of the problem above, the researcher

formulates the study as follow: “How does to improve student’s reading skill

through Communicative Language Teaching Method at eighth grade of SMP

………………?” To know the result of improving their reading skill, the

researcher uses the classroom action research.

E. Benefit of the Study

The researcher would like to encourage English Teaching reading is

would beneficial, by doing this research, the writer would like to hope that the

result of this study could give some benefits.

For the students, this research will give a motivation to learn English

more easily and motivates and encourages students to practice reading

English. It makes them enjoy expressing their feeling, ideas, opinion and even

in messages and suggestions. Since it is fun activity, especially when the

students use some media to practice in reading skill, it helps students to take

part in practice.

For the institution, in which this research was held in SMP ………….

this research will give an alternative method in improving English, especially

in reading. The researcher hopes that this thesis can develop education

institution to perform a language laboratory and library enrichment, teacher to

use the approach and method properly in teaching reading to their students; it

can be refer for English teacher in studying which guidelines of the better

ways to achieve the successful English Study.

For the teacher at SMP ……………, the method and the technique

from the research can be used for material of the study and for the researcher

herself, this research will give much information about English especial in

reading skill through Communicative Language Teaching Method, which is an

important skill that must practiced in order to be fluently in English.

The students of STKIP ………… can have a good reference and

material of the study for their knowledge and someday they will make tries

connected with learning reading. Then they may make some references of this

thesis because this thesis can be put in the library of STKIP …………… and

everybody can read it.