Background of the Problem

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

This chapter discusses the introduction of the study which is divided into six sections. Those are background of the problem, identification of the problem, delimitation of the problem, formulation of the problem, research objective and significance of the problem.

A. Background of the Problem

As a foreign language, English is one of the most important subjects learned in schools. The most sensible reason of that is because English already becomes the international language. People use English around the world. It is studied and learned seriously specially in the countries where the language becomes the second or foreign language. People consciously take many English courses and because of the importance of the language. In junior high schools, the students do not only learn words or simple sentences in English but also start to learn the series of the sentences. According to English curriculum at junior high schools, English teaching covers four skills, namely reading, listening, speaking and writing. All of them cannot be separated each other. Besides, as a skill reading is clearly one of the important. However, some students in learning English do not understand the way to increase their achievement on reading subject. According to Hornby 1995: 27, “reading is the action of a person who read 16 a sentence or it can be describe as an attempt to make a meaning from what an author has written” Reading is one of the most important language skills should be developed inside and outside the classroom, it is also one of the most common ways to get information. Harmer, 1991: 183- 184 the reader employs a number of specific skills when reading and their success in understanding the content of what they see depends on a large extent on these specific skills. The six skills of reading are: the predictive skill, extracting specific pictures, getting specific pictures, extracting detailed information and discourse patterns, deducting meaning from context. The students of English as a foreign language should understand the process of reading when they read an English reading text. Th e level of students‟ achievement is determined by some factors, like approach, strategy, and method. In learning reading, there is one of the good methods can improve students‟ reading achievement. Teaching reading skills for junior high school students need more attention. It is because they begin are expected to infer meaning from what they have read with their background knowledge. The teacher has to provide many texts that are used by the students in practicing their skills. Moroever, the text that are presented to the student in the classroom are not only related to the classroom occasion, but also related to the real word. The English teacher needs to select the appropriate materials and media to deliver the text types that the students need to learn in line with the current curriculum. The teacher also has to provide many sources for the materials used in the classroom. 17 However, the result of teaching reading is not satisfying yet; it is not as well as it should be. It should have been able to be improved. This condition is, of course, caused by various factors. These factors can be background experience, language abilities, thinking abilities, reading purpose and affections, which cover interest, motivation, attitudes, believe, and feelings Harris Smith, 1980: 207. So, in teaching reading skill, teachers need to have innovation of teaching learning activity, so it will be interactive and interesting for the students in teaching learning process. English teen magazine are considered to be one type of sources that can be used for teaching. It can provide the students‟ needs both in intensive reading and extensive reading. They learn new vocabulary and get actual information. Also, they can get meaning of the words or noun phrase by using their background knowledge when they already known of the topic of discussion in the text. On the other hand, they can infer meaning from the context even when they do not have a clue at all. With regard to this condition, this study is research on the efforts to improve the reading comprehension of seven grade students of junior high school by using an English teen magazine.

B. Identification of the Problem