NPM : 07211210414
2010
INTRODUCTION
This chapter gives a brief description of some fundamental reasons underlying the
topic of the research. In detail, this chapter consists of background statement of the
problem, the scope of the research, the aim of the research, hypothesis, research
method, research procedure.
Background
Not all teachers realize the important of teaching reading. In teaching reading,
there are some teachers that just say “Please turn to page 34. Read the passage
and answer the questions.” The teachers who start the lesson in this way are hardly
likely to motivate students to read. It can make students just read the text and do
not comprehend the text; while in the competence standard, it is stated that
students have to comprehend the text.
There are some research such as The Effects of Pre-Reading Activities on ELT
Trainee Teachers’ Comprehension of Short Stories, Increasing Comprehension by
Activating Prior Knowledge and Sehema Theory-Based Pre-Reading Tasks: A
Neglected Essential in the ESL, Reading Class that investigate the effectiveness of
pre-reading activity in improving students’ reading comprehension. And the result
of their researches showed that the use of pre-reading activity in improving
students’ reading comprehension is effective. The researchers use different reading
activity for the different subject.
Through this process, the teacher moves students from memorizing information to
meaningful reading activity and begins the process of connecting reading activity
rather than remembering bits and pieces.
In this research, referring to those descriptions, writer would like to observe the
effectiveness of previewing as pre-reading activity to improve students’ reading
comprehension ability.
Research Question
In order to reach the aims of the research, it is a must for the writer to select the
problem that is going to be investigated. According to Arikunto (1998), to enable
the research to be conducted appropriately, a researcher should formulate the
problem as clear as possible.
Relating to the theory above, this research address the following questions:
In conducting the study, the researcher has aims to achieve. There are two aims as
follow :
Hypothesis
Research Method
To get the empirical data, the quantitative method was employed since the goal is
to find out the effectiveness of previewing to improve students’ reading
comprehension, the experimental study used is quasi-experimental design. This
category of design is most frequently used in the evaluation of education program
when it is not possible for the researcher to use random assignment (Gribbons and
Herman, 1997).
This design was used due to the reason that there is limited of time. As Hatch and
Farhady (1982:23) state:
G1 : Experimental group
G2 : Control group
X : Treatment
T1 : Pretest
T2 : Posttest
Research Procedure
Data Collection
1. Library research
The writer read lot journals, research papers, books, and other literary related to the
research.
b. Preparing questionnaire
3. Giving a pretest
4. Treatment
5. Giving Posttest
6. Giving questionnaire.
A group of subjects who were chosen as a population was simply a group that had
or more similar characteristic in common. In this research, the population was the
second year students of SMP NEGERI 12 Bandung. The samples of this research
were two classes which were selected based on the classification made by school.
Instruments
The instruments used in this study were reading comprehension test and
questionnaires. The reading comprehension test was used in pretest and post test.
The pretest and posttest ware given to both experimental and control groups. The
pretest was conducted at the beginning and the post test was given at the end of
the research. The purpose is to measure students’ reading comprehension. The
questionnaire was given only to the experimental group to investigate students’
perceptions toward previewing.
Data Analysis
The data analysis performed in this research involved several statistical processes.
First, analyzing the students’ scores on try-out test to investigate the validity and
reliability of the instruments. Second, analyzing the experimental and the control
groups’ scores in the pretest and post test using t-test formula to investigate
whether the tow groups are equivalent or not. Third, analyzing the scores of pretest
and posttest of each group to investigate whether there was a significant
improvement in students’ scores. Fourth, analyzing the students’ perceptions using
percentage. The last is interpreting the research findings.
Clarification of Terms
In this study, there are some terms need to be clarified to avoid misinterpretation
and unnecessary misunderstanding of the terms used in this paper. Some terms are
clarified as follow:
a. Previewing: predict or make some educated guesses about what is in the text by
using several stimuli in a text such as title, photographs, illustrations, or subtitles.
b. Pre-reading: the activity that introduce the topic of the text, motivate the
learners to read, and provide some language preparation for the text.
d. Reading comprehension: the process of inferring the ideas and information that
depends on that depends on the information contained and the background
information available with the reader.
Moreover, Mackay and Mountford (1997) make inferences from the definition
proposed by Goodman above as follows:
.….texts do not contain meaning; rather they have potential for meaning. This
potential is realized only in the interaction between text reader. That is, meaning is
created in the course of reading as the reader draws both on existing linguistic and
schematic knowledge and the input provided by the printed or written text.
In addition, Jones (2003) states that the keys to comprehension are the activation of
background knowledge, active engagement in content, and metacognition.
Furthermore, Hayes and Tierney (1982) states that presenting background
information related to the topic to be learned help readers learn from texts
regardless of how that background information is presented or how specific or
general it is.
Reading is an activity with purpose. A person may read in order to gain information
or verify existing knowledge, or in order to critique a writer’s ideas or writing style.
Grabe & Stoller (2002:18) says that reading is always purposeful not only in the
sense that readers read in varied ways derived from differing reading purposes, but
also in the sense that some individual purpose or task, whether imposed internally
or externally, activate any motivation to read a given text. According to Grabe &
Stoller (2002:18) there are seven purposes of reading, those are reading to reach
for simple information, to skim quickly, to learn from text, to get an integrate
information, to search information needed for writing, to critique texts and to
achieve general comprehension.
Lastly, both teachers and students need to recognize the knowledge of reading
definition and purposes. It facilitates teachers to determine the appropriate
approach for teaching reading. For students, it helps students’ awareness of reading
process and reading strategies.
Reading is an interactive process that goes on between the reader and the text,
resulting in comprehension. The text presents letters, words, sentences, and
paragraphs that encode meaning. The reader uses knowledge, skills, and strategies
to determine what that meaning is. According to Solomon (1990:12) there are
several characteristics of good readers. Those characteristics are:
c. Leaving out unknown words when fluency is more important than accuracy
d. Make predictions
Reading Comprehension
Grabe & Stoller (2002:17) state that reading comprehension is the ability to
understand information in a text and interpret it appropriately. Reading
comprehension is the process through which the dynamic interaction of the reader’s
background knowledge, the information inferred from the written language, and the
reading situation context is constructing meaning (Dutcher 1990).
Brown (2001: 315) states that reading technique is divided into three activities; pre-
reading activity, during-reading, and after reading activity. Pre-reading activity is
the time for introducing a topic and activating students’ schemata (students’
knowledge). During reading activity is the time for acquiring the information from
the text. After reading activity is the time for checking students’ reading
comprehension.
Reading strategies play an important role in reading process. According to Duke and
Pearson (2005) there are six reading strategies that can be used by teachers in
helping students improving their comprehension, those are prediction, think aloud,
text structure, visual representation of text, summarization, and questioning.
Effective language instructors show students how they can adjust their reading
behavior to deal with a variety of situations, types of input, and reading purposes.
They help students develop a set of reading strategies and match appropriate
strategies to each reading situation.
Furthermore, Parviz Ajideh (2003) says that pre-reading activities have tended to
focus exclusively on preparing the reader for likely linguistic difficulties in a text;
more recently attention has shifted to cultural or conceptual difficulties. However,
pre-reading, activities may not just offer compensation for second language
reader’s supposed linguistic or socio-cultural inadequacies; they may also remind
readers of what they do, in fact, already know and think, that is to activate existing
schematic knowledge.
There are many kinds of pre-reading activity that can be used in reading teaching.
The experience-text-relationship (ETR) method of Au (1979) consists of students
expressing their own experience of knowledge about the topic prior to reading.
After the student have adequately shared their knowledge, the text become the
focus of the class. During this segment of the lesson, the teacher asks the students
to read short sections of the text and then questions about the content. The teacher
must be sensitive to those text areas that could elicit misunderstandings and work
through any difficulties that the students may have. In the final stage, the teacher
aids the students to draw relationships between personal experience and the
material discussed in the text stage. This provides an opportunity for each student
to make comparisons and contrasts with what they already know and to
accommodate the new information into their preexisting schemata. Through this
process, student’s schemata become redefined and extended. The teacher has the
responsibility of leading the students to the appropriate answers without giving
them too much information, so the task becomes one of self-discovery and
integration.
In addition, Auerbach and Paxton (1997) states the following pre-reading strategies
of which three major ones as a good indication of schema-theory-based pre-reading
tasks/strategies more favor us in this study.
2. Writing your many into reading (writing about your experience related to the
topic)
4. Semantic mapping
One type of pre-reading strategy is previewing. Swaffar et. al. (1991) state that
previewing techniques have benefits that allow students to formulate hypotheses
about text. According Chia (2001) the purpose of previewing is to help readers to
predict or make some guesses about what is in the text and thus activate effective
top down processing for reading comprehension. Several stimuli in a text, such as
the title, illustrations, photographs, or subtitles, are usually closely connected to the
author’s ideas and content of the text.
The make more specific predictions students apparently need more guidance. The
following guidelines are used in previewing.
1. The teacher asks the students to read the title of the text. Do they know anything
about the subject?
2. Then ask them to see the picture in the text which is related to the content of the
text. Do they know anything about the picture?
3. After that, ask the students read the first few paragraphs, which generally
introduce the topics discussed in the text. Can they determine the general themes
of the text.
4. Then ask them to read to first sentence of cash paragraph, usually the topic
sentence, which gives the main idea of the paragraph. Can they determine the
major points of the text.
5. After that ask them to read the last paragraph, which often reveals the
conclusion of the author. Let the students to discuss how the author organizes the
information to present his point of view.
6. The last, the students then read the entire article for more detailed information.
As they already have an overview of the text, they can understand the rest of the
information much more easily.
REFERENCES
Nugroho, Bhuono A. 2005. Strategi Jitu Memilih Metode Statistik Penelitian dengan
SPSS. Yogyakarta: ANDI Yogyakarta.
Robinson, H. A. 1977. Teaching Reading and Study Strategies: The Content Area.
New York: Hofstra University.