CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
Today students learn English at school, they will learn the four skills namely, listening, speaking, reading and writing. All of these skills must be practiced by students and cannot be separated from one to another if one expects to be able to communicate freely in English. However, it cannot be denied that English is still a crucial problem for Indonesian students. As a matter or fact, until today most students from Junior High School up to University level have difficulties in all of these skills.
Reading skill is essential both in the target and the native language. Students may not find any difficulties when reading a text in the source language, but what happens to the students is the other way when they read texts in the target language. In my experience as a teacher candidate, many of the students become frustrated when they have difficulties in reading the target language. There is no specific teaching technique that focuses on the teaching of reading comprehension. When it comes to reading, the teacher only asks the students to read the text and answer the comprehension questions provided in the book. As the result, the students tend to have poor reading skill and habits. The matter arises because of some factors: (1) Students do not have good motivation to read because the text is not interesting, the teaching technique is boring or the text is too hard, (2) they believe that when comprehending the text, they must comprehend every word in the text, so they keep on looking up the words in a dictionary to find out the meaning of the words, (3) they have very limited techniques and strategies in reading, (4) they read aloud which slows them down and which may inhibit comprehension.
The above factors, which are actually the students’ problems, need to be overcome. Therefore, the writer proposes one technique that can be used to improve students’ comprehension. The technique proposed is Reciprocal Teaching. Reciprocal Teaching, which was developed by Pallinscar and Brown (1984), is an instructional procedure to enhance students’ reading comprehension of a text.
(http://teams.lacoe.edu/documentation/classrooms/patti/2-3/teacher/resources/reciprocal.html)
Reciprocal teaching which covers the strategy of summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting is introduced as a technique to improve students’ reading comprehension of a text while involving them in a verbal exchange of ideas (Gerry Hewitt, “ Toward Students’ Autonomy in reading Reciprocal Teaching,” English Teaching forum Vol. 33 No. 4)
It is characterized by a structured-dialogue between the students and the teacher, where each taking turns in the role of dialogue leader. The purpose of this technique is to provide opportunities for students to practice all the English skills, mainly reading, with or without the teacher. This technique also gives a chance to the students to monitor their own reading as well as their comprehension. This technique has several benefits, i.e, it can help improve students’ reading ability and increase their cooperation. Give them bigger opportunity to practice the four language skills, and give them more self confidence and motivation.
However, empirical evidences on its effectiveness need to be found, especially in the context of teaching reading comprehension. To obtain such evidences, the research need to be conducted.
1.2 The Problem of the Study
Based on the background of the study, the research problem is formulated as the following:
“is the students’ reading comprehension taught by using reciprocal teaching is higher than that taught by using conventional method in reading?”
1.3 The Objective of the Study
The objective of this study is to investigate the influences of reciprocal teaching toward students’ reading comprehension.
1.4 The Scope of the Study
The writer thinks it is essential to limit this study. The writer wants to explain the teaching of reading subject but the scope of this study is introducing reciprocal teaching in teaching reading comprehension to the first year students of Senior High School.
1.5 The Significance of the Study
The findings of this study are expected to be useful for:
a) the teaching of English as a foreign language especially in teaching reading
b) giving useful information to the teacher so that he/she will be more creative in implementing the reading comprehension learning, and
c) providing information for those who are interested in conducting in depth study of reading comprehension learning.
CHAPTER II
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
2.1 Theoretical Framework
In conducting a research, theories are need to explain some concepts applies concerning to the research. The terms must be clarify to avoid confusion. The following terms are used in this study.
2.1.1 Reciprocal Teaching
Reciprocal teaching, which was developed by Pallinscar and Brown (1996), is an instructional procedure designed to enhance students’ reading comprehension of a text. It is characterized by:
- A dialogue between students and teacher, each taking turns in the role of dialogue leader,
- Reciprocal: interaction where one person acts in response to the other
- Structure dialogue using four strategies: questioning, summarizing, clarifying, and predicting.
Pallinscar and Brown as cited by Reongude Soonthornmanee (1984:126) define reciprocal teaching as an effective way to help learners transfer strategies to new academic contexts. Incorporating reciprocal teaching in EFL programs may help EFL readers develop strategies useful for applying to mainstream contexts. Pallinscar (1987:126) as quoted by Soonthernmanee confirms that reciprocal teaching is not the same as teaching reading skills. What makes it successful is its focus on discussion and critical thinking.
Don Mayfield (1995) states that reciprocal teaching is a technique used to develop comprehension of expository text in which teacher and students take turns leading a dialogue concerning sections of a text. Four activities are incorporated into the technique predicting, questioning, summarizing, and clarifying complex section of the text.
(http://www.sdcoe.kl2.ca.us/score/promising/tips/rec.html./
Meanwhile Hewitt (1995:29-30) defines reciprocal teaching as a strategy to improve students’ comprehension of the text while involving them in a verbal exchange of ideas. She also explains that reciprocal teaching provides models and requires interactions and feedback to engage learners and reinforce comprehension in jointly reconstructing the meaning of text.
Pallinscar (1986:29-30) describes the concept of reciprocal teaching as follows: “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, assuming the role of the teacher in leading this dialogue.”
Based on the theories discussed, it can be assumed that reciprocal teaching is a strategy which enables the students to improve their reading comprehension by having a structured dialogue between the students and the teacher using the four strategies: summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting. This technique requires the interaction among the students to enable them to gain the feedback of the activity by making a text to be discussed.
2.1.2 Purposes of Reciprocal Teaching
Pallinscar (1986) states the purpose of reciprocal teaching is to facilitate a group effort between teacher and students as well as among students in the task of bringing meaning to the text.
(http://sdcoe.kl2.ca.us/score/promising/tips/rec.html)
Mayfield explained that the purpose of reciprocal teaching is to help students with or without a teacher, actively to bring meaning to the written word. The strategies chosen not only to promote reading comprehension but also to provide the opportunities for the dialogue and interactions of the group members which require that all students participate and foster new relationship between students at different ability levels.
According to Miller and Perkins (1990:88) reciprocal teaching has a two-fold purpose: (1) it teaches students how to maintain a balance of rights between individuals, groups, and the teacher and (2) it teaches students to monitor their own reading and comprehension.
It can be concluded that the purpose of reciprocal teaching is to provide opportunities to students to practice the English skills, mainly reading, with or without the teacher. By implementing reciprocal teaching, the students will be able to monitor their own reading as well as their comprehension.
2.1.3 Strategies of Reciprocal Teaching
Pallinscar (1986) selected the four skill areas to activate and monitor the reading comprehension:
- Summarizing
The strategy provides the opportunities for the students to identify, paraphrase, and review important information in the text. The purpose of this strategy is to enable the students to check their understanding of the text by summarizing it.
- Questioning
When questioning, the students are exploring the meaning of the text. It involves the students thinking about what they do not know, need to know, or would like to know about the passage. The students first identify the kind of information that is significant enough, so that it could provide the substance for a question. Then, they turn this information into a question form and ask themselves to make sure that they can answer their own questions.
- Clarifying
When clarifying, the students are dealing with the reasons why the text is difficult to understand, e.g.: new vocabularies, or a text that is structured in an unfamiliar way, or difficult concept. After recognizing these blocks, students are trying to solve the problems by re-reading ahead, or asking for help. This strategy makes the students aware and alert to things that do not make sense in the text and to do many necessary actions to solve problem.
- Predicting
The students are anticipating what will come next in the text. In order to do this successfully, they must activate the relevant background knowledge that they already possess regarding the topic of the text. Besides encouraging students to think ahead actively, predicting also gives a purpose for reading, to confirm or reject their hypothesis.
(http//www.ncrel.org/3drs/areas/issues/students/atrisk/atdlk.38/html)
Babigian (2003) states that using the above strategies help students to construct meaning from the text and monitor their reading to ensure that they understand what they read. She also develops set of cards that can be used as a helpful guide for the students while applying this technique.
2.1.4 Reading
Considering the fact that everyone has his/her own opinion and view about something, many reading experts also give their opinions and view about reading. Reading
Godman (1995:12), as quoted by Carrel states that reading is a receptive language process. It is a psycholinguistic process. In that it starts with a language surface representation encoded by a writer and ends with meaning that the reader constructs. In other words, there is an interaction between language and thought in reading. The writer puts thought as language in printed form and the reader analyzes language to thought. Patricia L. Carrell (1995:12) says “from the process, the reader receives the massage that the writer conveys.” Whereas Badrawi (1992:16) notes that reading is more than just receiving in a literal sense. It involves bringing an individual’s entire life experiences and thinking powers to be able to understand what the writer has encoded. Badrawi (1995:16) means that when someone is reading, his brain will work actively. The reader brings all kinds of knowledge he has about the world (schemata) and relates to the text that he is reading at the moment so that he is able to understand the writer’s ideas.
While John F. Savage and Jean F. Mooney (1979:1) says that reading is language activity, a process of moving through printed language to meaning. And William Grabe and Fredricka L. Stoller (2002:9) says that reading is ability to draw meaning from printed page and interpret this information appropriately. Another definition comes from Beatrice S. Mikulecky (1990:2) who states that reading is practically synonymous with reading comprehension.
Briefly, the writer would like to say that reading is an activity to understand the printed language and interpret the information into the reader’s understanding appropriately.
2.1.5 Reading Comprehension
The first point to be made about the reading process is that reading comprehension is not essentially different from other kinds of comprehension. The mental tasks involved are not peculiar to reading but fundamental human cognitive acts. Comprehension of any kind depends on knowledge. There are some definitions of reading comprehension:
He Ji Sheng (2000:13) says that reading is a process of communication from the writer to the reader. It involves the recognition of letters, words, phrases, and clauses, and in some respects, it can be considered a simple process than comprehension. Comprehension, on the other hand, is a process of negotiating understanding between the reader and the writer. It is a more complex, psychological process and including linguistic factors, such as psychological, syntactic elements, in addition to cognitive and emotional factors. Whereas John F. Savage and Jean F. Mooney define that reading comprehension is the process of acquiring or deriving meaning and understanding of printed language; involves cognitive functioning related to what one reads. While Francois Grellet (1994:3) states that reading comprehension is understanding a written text means extracting the required information from it as efficiently as possible, further, locating the relevant advertisement on the board and understanding the new information contained in the article, demonstrates that reading purpose in each case has been successfully fulfilled. Another definition comes from Eskey (1986:5) who says that reading comprehension is most likely to occur when students are reading what they want to read, or at least what they see some good reason to read.
From the statement above, the writer concludes that reading comprehension is to understand a written text containing information to find what he or she wants to know and get the information of what he or she needs. It can also be concluded that reading is the first step for someone to get the meaning of the text, while the second step is comprehension, which requires more effort of the reader to interpret and get deeper understanding.
2.1.6 Level of Comprehension
Some expert in reading have been develop taxonomies of comprehension skill or task. It can be divided into four categories:
1) Literal Reading
Literal reading is getting the ideas, information or massage explicitly stated in the passage. In this level, the reader know the words meaning, able to paraphrase or recall of details directly in own words.
2) Interpretative Reading
Interpretative reading is identifying ideas or information not explicitly stated in the passage. In this level, the reader able to infer factual information, main idea, comparison, causes-effect relationships which is not explicitly stated in the passage.
3) Critical reading
Critical reading is evaluating what is read. The reader analyze, evaluate, and react his personal information to the information presented in a passage. In other words, the reader compares his previous experience in the element of the new material of the passage.
4) Creative Reading
Creative Reading
2.1.7 Conventional Method
Sabri (2005) stated conventional method is the common method used by the English teacher. This method is used in giving teaching material orally. In this method, teacher held the most important role. When the teacher use this method continuously is teaching learning process, especially in reading class, it will gives negative effect for the students. The student can be bored during the teaching activities because everything they do just follow the teacher’s instruction. Sometimes, student find difficulties in reading such as lack of vocabularies, doubt on the point of the passage he get, lack of self confidence in asking or answering question that make the student be passive. All of these, influence students’ comprehension on the reading passage.
It is a very common phenomena while the teacher would teach their students, they just ask their student to read the text and see their dictionary to find difficult word and ask them to memorize words as much as possible, and ask them to answer the question. They also ask the student to remember five to ten words everyday without teach a specific technique how to make it easier and faster, or without teach how to read effectively and more understand.
Although reciprocal has spread widely, but conventional method does not recognize it. Conventional method just read the text, memorize the new words, ask the student to answer the question and the student just put on the spot to find the teacher’s right answer. From the phenomena, the writer can conclude that if someone want to improve his reading comprehension, he must practice in a long time, because the method is not fast. It will influence his capability in reading comprehension.
The procedure of conventional method was used in the research based on the teacher done as usual in the class.
2.1.8 The Measurement of Reading Comprehension
Much more is measured in reading tests than just grammatical/structure accuracy and the amount of vocabulary the students know. Although students will be marked down by all exam boards for answer with structure and vocabulary errors that prevent them conveying the desired massage, or which are regarded as below the level of the content, main idea, structure and vocabulary, language use and mechanical skills are by no means the only aspects of read communication that students need to master. The aspect of reading comprehension that will be test are
Finding : the meaning of difficult words, main idea, choose and reflect relation sheet, definition of statement, the answer of question that is not directly stated in the text, ect. And than, to measure of students reading comprehension, give 30 multiple choice test will be use aim to finish the test will be 30 minutes.
2.2 Conceptual Framework
In teaching process, when teacher use reciprocal technique, it means teacher gives chance and new ability to the student to be actively participated in the reading process, in which the student has a role act in the group work. Student will get new ability as predictor, summarizer, clarifier, and questioner and it better than one. When they find difficulties in getting the point of the passage, unknowing concept or vocabulary. Etc, they can discuss it with the number of the group and with the other group.
Relating with this, reciprocal give the student chance to improve their achievement in reading comprehension. As the result, student will get the new ability in reading comprehension and make reading activities more interesting.
Finally, it hope that the using of reciprocal technique in teaching reading comprehension by the teacher can be applied and has effect to the students in order to improve the students’ comprehension in reading.
2.3 Hypothesis
Based on the theoretical framework and conceptual framework above, the hypothesis can be formatted “The students’ reading comprehension taught by using reciprocal teaching is higher than that taught by using conventional method in reading”.
CHAPTER III
RESEARCH METHOD
3.1 Research Design
This study will be conducted using experimental design, it is intended to test and prove a hypothesis by giving a treatment to the sample. It is applied to answer the problem of the study in Chapter One. Whether there is significant difference in the achievement of the students’ reading comprehension taught by reciprocal teaching and that taught by using conventional way
Table 3.1 The Research Design
Group
|
Pre-test
|
Treatment
|
Post-test
|
Experimental
|
Y1
|
Reciprocal teaching
|
Y2
|
Control
|
Y2
|
Conventional Method
|
Y2
|
3.2 The Population and Sample
3.2.1 The Population
The first year students of SMA N I Deli Tua, will be chosen to be the population of this research. There are four classes of first year class, there are 40 students in each class, so the total number of students is 160.
3.2.2 The Sample
From the population, 25 % will be taken as the sample. This is in accordance with Arikunto’s suggestion (1998:190) “if the subject of the population consists of a large number, the sample that will be taken is 10%-15% or 20%-25% of population or more, depending on the researcher’s time, energy, and fund. So from the four classes, the writer will take only two classes as the sample of the research. In the experimental group, the writer will present a lesson by using reciprocal teaching and in the control group without using reciprocal teaching.
3.3 The Instrument of Collecting the Data
The instruments for collecting data are:
- Multiple choice test. 20 items will be taken from (soal-soal uji kompetensi SMA, tim studi guru SMA) and each item is scored 2, so the total score of this type is 40.
- Essay test. 10 items will be taken from (Communicative English for SMA, Yudhistira) and each item is scored 6, so the total score of this type is 60.
3.4 The Procedures of the Research
3.4.1 Pre-test
Before starting the experiment, a pre-test is needed to know how far the students know about the subject that will be taught. The pre-test is a multiple choice consisting of 25 items.
3.4.2 Treatment
The treatment will be conducted after the administration of the pre-test. There are two treatments conducted in this research, the experimental group will be taught using reciprocal and the control group will be taught by using conventional teaching.
TABLE 3.2
Treatment in the Experimental Group
First Meeting (1 x 45 minutes)
|
The process of reading will be slow. So that the discussion will be continued in the second meeting.
|
Second Meeting (1 x 45 minutes)
|
|
Third Meeting (1 x 45 minutes)
|
|
Fourth Meeting (1 x 45 minutes)
|
|
Fifth Meeting (1 x 45 minutes)
|
1. Put the students in groups of four
2. Share one note card unique role to the students in a different way from the past
3. Share a new text to the students
4. Students read and discuss the passage by themselves and there are no questions concerning the techniques as well as the passage.
5. Teacher act as an observer
6. After reading discussing the passage, the teacher and the students discuss the contents of the passage.
7. Teacher will give the students reading comprehension exercise as the post-test consisting of ten essay questions and five multiple choice questions.
|
TABLE 3.3
Treatment in the Control Group
First Meeting
|
|
Second Meeting
|
|
Third, Fourth and Fifth Meeting
Those meetings have similar process and description with the first and second one. Just the passage will be different.
|
3.4.3 Post-Test
After the treatment, post-test will be given to the sample. The test items in the post-test are exactly the same as those in the pre-test. It is intended to know the mean scores of experimental and control groups.
3.4.4 Scoring System
After giving the post-test which is the last test, all the answer sheets will be checked and scored. In this case the writer will give 4 points for each item, and there are 25 items. So if all the answers are correct the student will get 100.
Score = right answer x 4
3.5 The Validity and Reliability of the Test
3.5.1 The Test Validity
Best and Khan (2002:208) define validity of the test as the quality of data gathering instrument or procedure that enables it to measure what it is supposed to measure. In other words a test is said to be valid if it measures accurately what it is intended to measure.
In this study, the writer will apply content validity which is concerned with how well the test measures the subject matter and learning outcomes covered during the instructional period. The test is used primarily to describe the students’ performance on a given domain of achievement by giving the sample of items adequately as the major concern.
To know if this test is valid or not, this study will apply the formula:
r
= 
=
where :
r = Coefficient of point biseral correlation
= Coefficient of point biseral correlation
Mp = Mean score for group scored 1
Mt = Mean total score
St = Total Standard Deviation
P = Proportion who get score 1
Q = Proportion who get score 0 (q = 1-p )
3.5.2 The Test Reliability
Reliability of a good test refers to the consistency of the measurement. It means if the test is repeated on different occasions and to different people, the outcome should not fluctuate too much.
Therefore, to find out whether the test is reliable, the writer uses the formula of Kuder Richardson 21 (KR – 21), as follows:
R = 
Where:
R = reliability
M = the means of the test scores
K = the number of items in the test
S = standard deviation
To obtain the reliability of the test, first the mean (M) and the standard deviation should be counted. According to Aruan (1983: 132) the value of the reliability is as the following
0.0 – 0.40 = the reliability is low
0.41 – 0.70 = the reliability is fair
0.71 – 1.00 = the reliability is very good
3.6 The Technique of Data Analysis
In the study, the data obtained from the experimental group and control group. After having the treatment, the data were analyzed by comparing the mean of control group and experimental group. In testing the difference the mean between the group, the t-test formula is used. (Furchan, 1982:216)
3.7 Statistical Hypothesis
Based on the narrative hypothesis in chapter two, it could be transformed into statistical hypothesis. This statistical hypothesis could be tested:
Ho: µ. X1= µ. X2
Ha : µ. X1 > µ. X2
Where : µ : The Mean of Population
X1 : The Mean of the students achievement taught by using reciprocal teaching method.
X2 : The Mean of the students achievement taught by using conventional method
1 comment:
izin save ya k.. buat referensi tugas
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