Background of the Study

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

This chapter presents the background of the study, reason for choosing the topic, statement of the problem, objective of the study, statement of hypothesis, significance of the study, and the organization of the study.

1.1 Background of the Study

Playing an essential role in the global communication, English is not only used by a single country but also almost of the country in the world have used the language. Therefore, there are many information and knowledge written in books, journals, magazine, newspapers, and internet written in English. That’s the reason why understanding English source through reading is a must nowadays. Standing on this real fact, Indonesian government place English as the first foreign language in order to face the globalization era. English has become a compulsory subject in every education level in Indonesia. Regarding with the language, there are two types of language viz. They are spoken and written language which developed rapidly in the world of communication. Nowadays, along with the development of science and technology, we can see that written language seems to be dominant. It is due to the fact that most of information and knowledge are provided in the written form. People should read the written sources in order to get what they want to know as the basis for them to maintain their lives by communicating with other people. Furthermore, in the world of education, most of book and handouts are in the written form. It means that students should read them so that they can absorb the knowledge from the source. By reading, we can also recast the knowledge into different way in order to give a favour in our life. For example, when we are talking to each other about any topics in our daily life, we use our prior knowledge that we get from the written source by reading. Moreover, reading can improve our knowledge excessively so that we can easily express something in writing. On the other hand, writing is another basic skill in language learning. It is a productive skill while reading is a receptive skill. Both of them are two skills which are interrelated each other. In other words, reading and writing are integrated skills which can not be separated one another. They simultaneously work. When someone can read written source effectively and efficiently, they can get the gist of the written source. Thus, they can recast the knowledge from what they have read into writing activity easier. Meanwhile, there are still poor reading and writing comprehension skills existing in English teaching learning in Indonesian senior high school. Seemingly, reading is a simple activity that every English learner can do it. Nevertheless, reading is not a skill which is easy to master. It demands certain skills from the reader. Nunan 1989:33 states that “reading needs identification and also interpretation process which requires the reader’s knowledge about the language structure used in the text and his knowledge about a given topic.” This complexity makes English learners reluctant and less interested in this kind of activity. Thus, they find it difficult what the passage talks about since they don’t know the method should be used to help them reading effectively and efficiently. Having not accomplished this problem yet about reading, students must face the other complex problem of writing. They have to write some topics based on what they have read. This could be a big pressure for students if they do not find a suitable way to cope with it using an integrated way. Standing on that account, I try to decrease the problem in reading and writing by conducting an experiment on the implementation of CIRC Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition in teaching reading and writing. CIRC is one of cooperative learning that is conducted by setting the students in group discussion in which they discuss together the reading material such as, reading to each other, finding the main idea, predicting how stories will end, summarizing stories, writing responses, and practicing spelling, decoding, and vocabulary. This hopefully could reduce the students’ problem in reading and writing process which finally could improve their comprehension in reading and writing.

1.2 Reason for Choosing the Topic