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PRONOUNCEMENT The undersigned

Student Name: CHALEARNSOUK DADIVONG Student No: S890809003

Study Program: Pendidikan Bahasa Ingris Institution: Seblas Maret University

Declare that, this thesis entailed classroom action research is my own write action account and has not previously been submitted for a degree to any other University or institution and the best of my knowledge it contains no previously published work or point of those cited in writing and knowledge in the references my Thesis entitled “Using Directed Reading to Improve the Students’ Reading Comprehension” (A Class action research at the 3rd year’s students of English Department, Faculty of Education, Champasack University in Academic year 2010-2011).

It is not a plagiarism or made by others, anything related to other’s work is written in quotation, the source of which is listed on the bibliography. If or then, this pronouncement proves wrong, I am ready to accept any academic punishment, including withdrawal or canceling of any academic degree.

Surakarta, February 2011

Chalearnsouk Dadivong Nim: S890809003

ABSTRACT

CHALEARNSOUK DADIVONG, Nim: S890809003 “Using Directed Reading to Improve the Students’ Reading Comprehension” A Class action research at the 3rd year’s students of English Department, Faculty of Education, Champasack University in Academic year 2010-2011. A thesis: English Education of Graduate School, Sebelas Maret University, Surakarta 2011.

This action research is carried out to improve the students’ reading comprehension using directed reading and to know what happens when directed reading are used in classroom. The problem highlighted in this action research in the low, poor and different level reading comprehension of En3/2 class at Champasak University in Lao PDR. That caused by the uninteresting text book that caused students’ low motivation.

The action research is conducted in two cycles from June – January 2011 in En 3/2 class of Champasak University in Lao PDR. The procedure of the action research consists of identifying the problems, planning the action, implementing the action, observing the action, and reflecting the result of the action research. In collecting the data, the researcher used observation notes, questionnaires, interviews, diaries and test. The tests were in the form of pre-test and post-test to answer this action research questions. In this research, the researcher acted as a teacher who conducts the action in the classroom and he was assisted by his collaborator. There were two kinds of data such as qualitative and quantitative data. In analyzing quantitative data, the researcher used descriptive statistics. In analyzing qualitative data, the research used constant comparative method.

The result of research showed that using directed reading could improve students’ reading comprehension and classroom situation. The improvement of the classroom situation was supported by data which cover the students’ participation, attendance and enthusiasm during the teaching-learning process. The improvement on the students’ reading comprehension reflected from the mean progress of pre-test and post-test. Based on the results of the research, it was concluded that students’ reading comprehension can be improve by using directed reading. It is suggested that the teacher should use other texts beside the text book in teaching language skills, the teacher should be more careful in selecting the texts. The students are encouraged to read more to improve their ability in comprehending the text. Other researcher is encouraged to do the research in using directed reading texts in other areas of language skills.

MOTTO

“Orang pemarah tidak sesuai djadi guru” “An impatient man is not suited for teaching”

“Orang pintar selalu berguru kepada sesama manusia” “A wise man always takes lesson from his surroundings”

“Mengembara adalah guru yang baik, tapi pengalaman adalah guru yang paling baik” “Adventure is good teacher, but experience is the best”

ACKNOWLEGEMENTS

The opportunity to reach a Master Degree has been provide an important experience in my personal life. Because this is the process had been relatively longer, but had exposed me to numerous challenging academic and intellectual phenomena, I never had experience before.

Furthermore, unlimited thanks to the Government of Laos PDR and Indonesia Government, which though the cooperation on Non-Aligned movement countries, bee offering me to the scholarship to do master degree me in Indonesia, and

I would like to express gratitude to all those who gave me the possibility to complete this action research study.

I would like to express of my deepest and gratitude to the director, vice director and staff worker, staff of English department and assistants of graduate school at Sebelas Maret University, Surakarta Indonesia and Champasak University of Laos PDR for their kindness and facilitation, especially The Head of English Department, Dr. Ngadiso, M.Pd my sincere thanks.

All my gratitude and deeply indebted to my academic supervisor or consultants, Prof. Dr. Joko Nurkamto, M.Pd and Drs. Gunarso S, M. Ed. Tesol who provided guidance, and largely contributed to the elaboration and comprehension of this work and support to me during the action research for my study would be run well.

Finally, I would like to express of my deepest gratitude to my parent, sisters, and my cousin for their morale patience, encouragement financial support. I also would like to thanks all my friends to gave me the support.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TITLE ………... i

APPROVAL ……… ii

LEGALIZATION ………... iii

PRONOUNCEMENT ……… iv

ABSTRACT ……… v

MOTTO ………... vi

ACKNOWLEGEMENTS………... vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS……….. viii

APPENDIX……….... xi

LIST OF TABLES………. xii

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION A. Background of the Study……….1

B. Problem Formulation………...5

C. Object of Research………...5

D. Benefit of the Research………5

CHAPTER II REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE A. Theoretical Descriptive………7

1. The Nature of Reading…………...7

2. Reading Comprehension…………...……….16

3. Directed Reading……….21 viii

B. Rationale ………...24

C. Action Hypothesis……….27

CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHODOLOGY A. Research Setting 1. Time of Research……….28

2. Place of Research……….28

3. Research Subjects………30

B. Research Design………....31

C. Data Collecting Techniques………..37

D. Data Analysis Techniques……….38

CHAPTER IV RESEARCH RESULT AND DISCUSSION A. Introduction ………..41

B. The process of the research ………..43

1. Description of the Previous Research ………43

a. Students’ Reading Comprehension ………..45

b. Class Situation ………..47

2. Research Implementation .………..49

a. Cycle 1………...51

b. Cycle 2 ………..63

3. Research Findings ………...73

C. Discussion ………79

1. The Improvement of Students’ Reading Comprehension...…79

2. The Improvement of Classroom Situation………...80

CHAPTER V CONCLUSION, IMPLICATION AND SUGGESSION A. Conclusion ………83 B. Implication ………84 C. Suggestion ……….84 BIBLIOGRAPHY

APPENDIX

Appendix 1 : Photographs………...89

Appendix 2 : Interview I ………...91

Appendix 3 : Students’ Answer Interview I ………...92

Appendix 4 : Questionnaire I ………93

Appendix 5 : Students’ Answers Questionnaire I ………...95

Appendix 6 : Pre-test………..………...97

: post-test 1………...109

: Key Answer for pre-test and post test 1……….121

Appendix 7 : Blue print for pre-test Items ………..122

Appendix 8 : post-test 2………...123

Appendix 9 : Students’ Answer for Post-test 2………136

Appendix 10 : Interview 2 ……….149

Appendix 11 : Students’ Answer for Interview 2………..150

Appendix 12 : Questionnaire 2………...151

Appendix 13 : Students’ Answer for Questionnaire 2………...153

Appendix 14 : Lesson plan 1 for the first meeting………...155

: Lesson plan 2 for the second meeting………158

: Lesson plan 3 for the third meeting………...162

Appendix 15 : Lesson plan A for the second cycle ………...165

: Lesson plan B for the second cycle ………...169

Appendix 16 : T-test for Non-Independence ……….173

Appendix 17 : T-test for Non-Independence ……….174

Appendix 18 : Pre-test of Test Validity………...175

Appendix 19 : Post-test 1 of Test Validity……….177

Appendix 20 : Post-test 2 of Test Validity……….178

Appendix 21 : The Students’ Handout ………...179

Appendix 22 : Maps of Laos………..………...185

LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1 Research Schedule ………..28

Table 3.2 Research procedures………31

Table 3.3 The System of Score Category………39

Table 4.1 Process of the research………42

Table 4.2 prior situation………..44

Table 4.3 The result of pre-test can be seen as follows………...45

Table 4.4 The grade, percentage mean score and complete questions of pre-test…...45

Table 4.5 The score of pre-test………46

Table 4.6 the result of questionnaire………48

Table 4.7 Overall Implementation of the Research……….50

Table 4.8 Implementation of cycle 1………...51

Table 4.9 The teaching reading comprehension was show below………...56

Table 4.10 The scores of Post-test 1………62

Table 4.11 The result of mean scores and complete of Questions in post-test 1...62

Table 4.12 Implementation of cycle 2……….64

Table 4.13 The scores of Post-test 2………71

Table 4.14 The result of mean scores and complete Questions in post-test 2……….71

Table 4.15 Research Finding………...73

Table 4.16 The Score of Pre-test, Post-test 1 and Post-test 2………..76

Table 4.17 The mean Score of Pre-test, Post-test 1 and Post-test 2………76

Table 4.18 The Result of Questionnaires………78

Chapter I Introduction

E. Background of the Study

Reading is a complex process because it includes transferring the message between writers and readers who have different background knowledge. In other words, it is such kind of activity to comprehend the writer’s ideas or the way of the writer communicates with the readers by the way of the writer or painted the words. So in reading, the readers have to construct the meaning while reading. One of the ways in constructing the meaning is by using readers’ background knowledge to get the meaning or information in the text. In these cases, the level of readers’ knowledge is different one to the other. Sometime, the readers are poor or lack of relevant cultural knowledge or they have enough relevant cultural knowledge but they do not use it optimally. As the result, they cannot comprehend what they read well.

According to Curriculum 2006 of National University of Laos intends to obtain the achievement of Competence Standard in students’ reading ability: (1) to understand the meaning in transactional and interpersonal conversation formally and sustainably: (2) to understand the meaning in the short functional and monologue text in the form of the narrative, spoof, and hortatory: (3) to express the meaning in the short functional and monologue text in the form of narrative, spoof, and hortatory accurately, fluently and acceptably: (4) to understand the written monologue text in the form narrative accurately, fluently and acceptably in the daily life context and to access the science: (5) to express the meaning in the written monologue text or essay in the form of narrative in the daily life content. The target of the achievement in English competence is hoped 60 as criteria complete minimum.

One of the four macro skills taught in an English language classroom is reading. Reading is defined as a thinking process which requires a response from the reader may it be through making generalizations, drawing new inferences and planning to succeeding steps based on what was read. The act of reading is process which

involves steps to achieve and reinforce understanding namely; word perception, comprehension, reaction and integration (Zintz & Maggart, 1986:56).

Reading comprehension has become the problems among students. These conditions were identifies as the students got the difficulties to answer such questions especially for finding main ideas and inferences. Furthermore, they also got difficulty to paraphrase. These difficulties were indicated as follows: (1) students incorrectly interpreted main idea with specific details: (2) they could not relate between one clue to other and they failed determining the key point of the sentence: (3) The classroom situation made these situations even worse: (4) The students were passive during the lecturing. They even showed no interest toward the subject. Then they low cooperation completed their negative respond to reading class. The students’ passivity in the classroom was indicated as students kept silent during lecturing and they also had no respond when they were asked questions. In addition to their passivity, the students also showed no interest toward reading class; many of them make noisy, play with their hand phone, discus with other topics and went out during the class. Furthermore, their low cooperation was identified as they had no courage to share ideas with friends, tended to work individually and talked with their topics out of the discussion.

There were some causes of the mentioned problems above. The first cause was from the students. It was identified that the students’ vocabulary mastery was poor. Then students had no contributive model during work group activity and independent activity. From the teacher’s point of view, the teaching learning process showed that it was monotonous. Teacher less monitored the student activity. The technique which was applied during teaching-leaning process made the students’ in such passive situation as they often got broad oral explanation from their teacher. Even the teacher’s broad oral explanation was even considered fast to the students.

In this view, reading was seen as a tool for cultural transmission and socialization among people in a sense that texts were viewed as cultural artifacts which could be interpreted in various ways. Therefore, text processing depends on a

unique cultural context for each culture contributes to different ways of reading a text Bernhardt, (1991:35).

Moreover, reading means different things to different people, for some it is recognizing written words. While for others it is an opportunity to teach pronunciation and practice speaking. However reading always has a purpose. It is part of daily lives and generally assumed that everybody can do it. The reason for reading depends very much on the purpose for reading. Reading can have three main purposes, for survival, for learning or for pleasure. Reading for survival is considered to response to our environment, to find out information and can include traffic signs, advertising, and timetables. It depends on day-to-day needs of the reader and often involves an immediate response to a situation. In contras reading for learning is considered to be the type of reading done in the classroom and is goal oriented. While reading for pressure is something that does not have to be done. For Nuttal (1996: 168-169) the central idea behind reading are: the idea of meaning, the transfer off meaning from one to another, the transfer of message from writer to reader, how we get meaning by reading and how the reader, the writher and the text all contribute to the process. We can conclude that reading is a complex activity that involves both perception and thought. Reading consists of two related processes: word recognition and comprehension. Word recognition refers to the process of perceiving how written symbols correspond to one’s spoken language. Comprehension is the process of making sense of words, sentences and connected text. Readers usually make use of background knowledge, vocabulary, grammatical knowledge, and experience with text.

The English teachers are teaching in the classroom, it like testing and asking questions to get information. I was often frustrated by the fact that students have difficulties in reading comprehension because some students were citizen and some were from remote area and negative in second language, so they have different background of English language there are four aspects of background such as word perception, comprehension, reaction and integration, poor reading and listening.

Moreover, there is only a little enthusiasm to learn English. For some of them, studying is a must which they have to do, not a need. Teaching English in such situation needs extra patience and effort; some teachers have limited experience to teach the students in the class.

Even though, from the previous research there were the problems with students’ reading skill by some indicators as follows: (1) students could not predict the meaning of the words: (2) they lack of making inference: (3) The students could not find the detail from the context: (4) The students were passive during teaching and learning process.

And the main causes of these problems were as follows: (1) teacher still used traditional approach and only gave few portions for reading where as reading is a complex activity: (2) Teacher didn’t give enough attention to teach the students how to read in English correctly: (3) teacher did not have enough experience: (4) students had differences level of knowledge, Low and poor reading: (5) students lack of practices and still do not master on reading comprehension: (6) students came from remote area, so they had different limited knowledgeable.

In recent years, Reading in the classroom it was using directed reading to development in first language, and second foreign language (L2/FL) setting has increased. Directed reading gives student highly engaged and focused on directed reading. Actively guiding students through a reading frequently requesting student responses, offering comments when appropriate rather than asking students to read text and rather than presenting the information to them orally, we can intersperse the reading and oral discussion in a way that produces high participation lessons. This is especially useful for poor reader and poor listeners.

Gregory and (2007: 103) state that graphic organizers can be used for brainstorming at the beginning of lesson or unit to find out what students have already known. Graphic organizers can help students to be able to organize and capture information, for example in reading assignment or when watching video. They are also as chronicle of a sequence of even of process. In addition, they relate

new information to previously learn information. Finally, they also function as tool for checking understanding, note taking and summarizing and the culmination assessment. Further, Almasi (2003: 94) support to Gregory and Caloryn opinion about the use of graphic organizers on reading. He state that graphic organizer help focus students’ attention to the meaner in which text is organized while they read. This visual aid helps students anticipate the type for information they will encounter while reading and it helps them organize the incoming information as they read. Such organization facilitates easy access, which enhance recall and comprehension. Base on those mentioned experts’ arguments, the researcher defines graphic organizer as, in lines with the need of the research, graphic displays that enhance students’ opportunity to portray any information from the given passage for mean idea, inference, and paraphrase both in individual and group work activity. Therefore, the researcher is sure that graphic organizes are good selection to solve the students’ problem on finding mean idea, inference and paraphrasing.

F. Problem Formulation

The problems of the Action Research are formulated as follows:

1. Can and to what extent directed reading improve students’ reading comprehension?

2. What happens with classroom situation when directed reading is used to improve the students’ reading comprehension?

G. Object of the Research

Base on the problem statement above the objectives of the research are: 1. To identify whether and to what extent directed reading can improve students’

reading comprehensions or not.

2. To describe what happens with classroom situation when directed reading are applied in teaching learning comprehension.

H. Benefit of the Research

Hopefully, this research can be useful to the students, the other teacher and even to the researcher himself.

The finding of this class action research will give benefit to:

1. The students: the students’ reading comprehension will be better and their motivation to read will improve.

2. The teacher: the result of this research can be useful input in teaching reading skill by using directed reading.

3. The writer: the writer will have more knowledge in selecting and using good directed reading in teaching reading skill.

4. The institution: the result of this study can be used as an alternative to compose “Lesson plan” and arrange the further research.

Chapter II

Review of Related Literature

In this chapter, the writer describes the concept of theories, such as: theoretical descriptive, reading comprehension, directed reading, rationale and action hypothesis.

A. Theoretical Descriptive 1. The nature of reading

a. Definition of reading

Many people assume that reading is an activity of looking at and understanding writing form. Mean while, reading has different definitions for different people. According to Harris (1962: 9) reading is the meaningful interpretation of printed or written verbal symbols. It also involves sensing, perceiving, achieving meaning, learning and reacting in a variety of ways.

Menyan and Leeuw (1965: 49) as quoted by Sabrina (2002: 5) state that reading is digestive process and it has two principles, first they are learning by understanding, it means selecting, discriminating and organizing. The second principle is flexibility. He must take time to read slowly when the meaning of word recognition and intellects and emotion interrelated with prior knowledge to understand the message communicated (Callahan and Clark, 1988: 245). Furthermore, Harris (1962: 10) also explains that the sense of reading starts with focusing of two eyes so that they center on particular symbols. At this level, reading requires legible symbols, adequate light so eyes are able to focus clear pattern on retina. The meaning of perceiving is reading has visual sensations. The visual sensations are aroused by the printed symbols and already existing memory traces of visual appearances, of the thing, of the spoken word and of its meaning.

In addition, Hudgson in Kamidjsn (1996: 67) cites that reading is s process that is done and used by the reader to get message and information that is obtained by the writer through written form. Mean while, Depdikbud also states that reading in

wide meaning is a process of formulating the text, the value, the function and the impact of the text itself (Depdikbud, 1985: 11).

Base on the definition above, the reader begins reading from letter to larger units, they read letter by letter to sound and combine them into words, then connect the individual words into sentences. It can be concluded that reading is a silent and individual activity, an active cognitive process to establish meaning, word recognition to understand the message communicated and the language symbols to re present what sound shows the writer’s idea.

What is really happening when we are reading? When we are reading our eyes move from left to right going through long line of print and they make a series of small jerky movements, stopping momentarily on each word or group of words. In general, good comprehension means recognizing and understanding general idea and specific fact and seeing how these ideas and facts are organized and developed (Sonka, 1979: 2). However, the reading process does not deal with the eyes only, it also concern with our brain. Lado (1964: 119) defines reading comprehension as a process of gaining meaning from words and sentences as the presentation of the language through the process decoding the writer symbols. That definition is intended to emphasize two essential elements in reading, the language itself and the graphic symbolization used in representing it. It means that reading is a process of understanding the symbols. Goodman (1967: 104) describes the reading process as followings:

Reading is psycholinguistic guessing game. It involves an interacting between thought and language. Efficient reading does not result from precise perception and identification of all elements, but from skill in selecting the fewest, most productive cues necessary to productive cues necessary to product guesses.

From the statement above it can be concluded that reading is not passive activity. The reader must make an active contribution if the acquires the available information. In the case, the reader forms a preliminary expectation about the reading text, and then selects the fewest most productive cues necessary to confirm or reject

that expectation. This is a process in which the reader utilizes his knowledge for vocabulary, syntax, discourse, and experimental background. Here the reader makes plan and decision, and coordinate number of skill and strategies to facilitate comprehension. The great emphasis is placed on the importance of background knowledge.

b. Types of Reading

According to Harris (1998: 13) there are two types of reading such as: Intensive reading and Extensive reading.

1) In Dictionary of reading (1983: 160) as quoted by Harras, intensive reading means reading activity that is done accurately. Sonka (1979: 87) adds that intensive reading refers to the kind of work done in the reading class. It is also the kind of careful work student may do when studying for an exam.

Intensive reading here means an activity for reading in class where the student read passage with the help of their teacher. In this reading activity, the role of teacher as a guide to bring his students’ ability to efficient and skillful reader is very obvious. Therefore, lesson should be planed so that intensive silent reading is alternated with a variety of reading related activities. In addition, the student should be encouraged to read extensively outside class that is to spend a half hour in the evening with something he chooses to read (a magazine, newspaper, short story, and texts). The major objective of intensive reading is developing the students’ ability to decode massage by drawing on syntactic and lexical cues, and it also emphasizes on skill for recognition.

2) Extensive reading

Extensive reading means reading activity that is done in large way, (Dictionary of Reading in Han, 1998: 13). Extensive reading refer to the outside reading that student do on their own with no help or guide dance from the teacher. These kinds of reading train the students to come to the level of reading for enjoyment. The students should be train to read directly and fluently in the foregoing language without the aid of the teacher as well as dictionary.

In extensive reading, the reader reads a text without an emphasis on analysis of word and grammatical points. Although such reading is meant as independent

reading, there should be regular and systematic feedback from it. c. Important Factors to Choosing Directed Reading

1) Receptive Skills

The two receptive skills are reading and listening. There are several similarities between teaching them so the general description to be given here applies both to listening and reading. Though reading and listening are receptive skills it does not mean that the reader or the listener is only a passive participant of communication, as both skills involve active participation. Reading and listening are sources of both finely and roughly tuned input.

2) Reasons for Reading

We can divide reasons for reading and listening into two broad categories: instrumental and pleasurable listening or reading. We can speak about instrumental reading or listening when we want to achieve some clear aim. For example, we read instructions on a machine because we want to know how to operate it. A brochure is read if tourists need some pieces of information about a spot of interest etc. Pleasurable reading or listening takes place for pleasure. People read magazines or listen to a talk on the radio to while away their free time. In both types of reading/listening, readers/listeners are interested in the topics either because they find them useful or because they find them interesting.

3) Sub-Skills of Receptive Skills

According to (Harmer 2003:14) the processes we go through when reading a short story or listening to a poem are likely to be different from those we use when we are looking for some data in a manual or we want to know how to operate a machine. The use of these different skills will depend on what we are reading or listening for. While reading a text we use the following sub-skills:

a. Identifying the topic – readers and listeners are able to identify the topic of a text very fast with the help of their techniques of how to get into the idea of what is

being talked / written about. This identifying ability makes it possible for them to process the text more effectively.

b. Predictive skills – having identified the topic both readers and listeners guess what is being written or talked about. They try to predict what is coming. Their subsequent reading or listening helps them to confirm their expectations of what they have predicted.

c. Skimming – this term means to get a quick idea of the gist of a text while running your eyes over it. It is very useful for the teachers to ask their students to have a quick look at the text before plunging into it for detail to get some specific pieces of information.

d. Scanning – this term means reading or listening for specific information. In contrast to reading and listening for gist we often read or listen to a text because we need specific details. For example, we want to read about the weather or we want to extract some facts from the news.

e. Extensive reading – means reading/listening for pleasure. We use this type of reading/listening while reading an interesting model or a short story or an article taken from a popular paper etc.

f. Intensive reading – means reading/listening for detailed information. Sometimes we read/listen to a text in order to understand everything we are reading in detail. We use this technique when we want to understand instructions or directions or when we are preparing for an exam.

g. Interpreting texts – this sub-skill is used by readers/listeners if they want to understand the meaning of words beyond the literal meanings. Successful interpretation of this kind depends on shared schemata between the speaker and the listener and the writer or the reader. The question ‘Can you tell me the time?’ is not to be answered in the following way: ‘Yes, I can.’ but the reply must refer to a time expression such as ‘It’s nine o’clock.’

h. Inferring opinion and attitude – a good reader/listener will know from various clues he receives, whether the writer or speaker approves of the topic he is discussing,

or whether his opinion of the person he is describing is favorable or not. It is based on the recognition of linguistic style.

4) Methodological Principles for Teaching Receptive Skills

Listening is the skill that children acquire first. When students start to acquire a foreign language they can pick it up in many ways. They have a lot of extracurricular sources (songs, films, native speakers, etc) at hand. The same refers to reading, students can benefit from walking in the street when they read various boards or signs written in English as well as English food labels at supermarkets. The reading process can be subdivided into two stages: decoding and interpreting. When we speak about teaching receptive skills we have to emphasize the importance of choosing an age-relevant, interesting or useful content which is practicable in everyday life. Let us focus on the content, purpose of reading/listening and the expectations of readers and listeners.

5) The content of the texts

As it has already been mentioned, we can distinguish instrumental and pleasurable reading/listening. In instrumental reading the usefulness of texts is very significant so we can say that the texts must meet the requirements of communicative language teaching according to which the texts must be experiential which means they should contain very useful and practicable words and expressions for everyday life especially in classroom. Directed texts must be used so that the learners should not have any difficulty decoding brochures, manuals, instructions in the target country. To meet the demands of pleasurable reading and listening we have to choose stories, articles, novels, etc which are age relevant and which deal with the problems of the target group of learners. The category of interest includes reading and listening for enjoyment, pleasure and intellectual stimulation. People read/listen to language because they have a purpose for doing so. The purpose may be to discover how to operate a hot drinks machine or to have a pleasurable reading. The purpose may be to find out what has been happening in the world.

6) Methodological Steps of Developing Receptive Skills

In a lesson when the teacher’s aim is to develop receptive skills the first step to do is to introduce the topic of reading/listening. So the first step to do is planning a warm-up activity. When we want our students to read a text about London for example, we are supposed to show a picture of London or to present a song about the capital of Great Britain etc. Here we have to exploit the following characteristic of language users; he will have expectations about what he is going to read/hear before he does so. A reader who sees the headline ‘Storm in the Houses of Parliament’ expects to read about a political debate in the British Parliament. So when we choose a text we are to activate the predictive skills of our students. The learners are expected to extract the specific information from the text and they are expected to find out one or two facts. That is the reason why we always have to set pre-reading/pre-listening tasks before reading or listening. At this stage the teacher aims to focus the students’ attention on certain facts mentioned in the reading/listening. The next purpose of the teacher will be to sustain the students’ attention while they are reading / listening to the extract. As a while reading/listening task a teacher can ask the students to underline certain words or phrases or on hearing certain facts or data the students can clap or raise their hands. After reading/listening to a text the students are expected to do some post reading/ listening tasks. They have to get the general picture which means that they have to infer the opinion or attitude of the writer or the speaker. The ability to infer opinion and attitude is largely based on the recognition of linguistic style and its use to achieve appropriate purposes. Another post reading/listening task for the teacher can be to make students deduce meaning from context. The point is that the deducing of meaning is important for a language user who will often mean unknown words and we will try to train students in the same way to guess the meaning of unknown words. Teachers can make students recognize discourse markers, styles and registers as well. It is important for the teachers to develop students’ discourse competence in addition to their linguistic/grammatical competence as well. Teachers are also expected to focus on

the intercultural aspects of language teaching. This is the way how social-linguistic competence of students can be developed. For example, London can be compared to Budapest as a post-reading/listening task. On requiring our students to use synonyms, antonyms and circum locution the teachers can develop students’ strategic competence as well. This is the way how we can develop reading/listening skills in a communicative way. Bloom's Taxonomy has been one of the most influential books in planning reading tasks and has been widely used by American educators in planning their teaching programmed. The following categories can be used to develop students’ thinking skills while they are reading a story. This is the way how teachers can make reading a story a holistic activity.

Category Thinking process cues

Knowledge

(remembering and retaining)

Say what you know, what you remember. What happened in the story?

Comprehension

(interpreting and understanding)

Describe in your own words, say what it means, explain, compare, relate.

Why did it happen that way! Application

(making use of the story)

How can you use it? Where does it lead to? What would you have done in a situation like this?

Analysis (taking apart)

What are the parts, the order, the reason, and the solutions? Which part did you like best?

Synthesis

( putting together)

Develop; create in your own way. What did you think of the story!

Evaluation

(judging and assessing)

How would you judge it? Will it work?

7) What are the Essential Components of Reading Instruction?

Scientifically based reading research has identified five essential components of effective reading instruction. To ensure that children learn to read well, explicit and systematic instruction must be provided in these five areas:

a) Phonemic Awareness – The ability to hear, identify and manipulate the individual sounds – phonemes – in spoken words. Phonemic awareness is the understanding that the sounds of spoken language work together to make words.

b) Phonics – The understanding that there is a predictable relationship between phonemes – the sounds of spoken language – and graphemes – the letters and spellings that represent those sounds in written language. Readers use these relationships to recognize familiar words accurately and automatically and to decode unfamiliar words.

c) Vocabulary Development – Development of stored information about the meanings and pronunciation of words necessary for communication. There are four types of vocabulary:

Listening vocabulary – the words needed to understand what is heard Speaking vocabulary – the words used when speaking

Reading vocabulary – the words needed to understand what is read Writing vocabulary – the words used in writing

d) Reading Fluency, Including Oral Reading Skills – Fluency is the ability to read text accurately and quickly. It provides a bridge between word recognition and comprehension. Fluent readers recognize words and comprehend at the same time.

e) Reading Comprehension Strategies – Strategies for understanding, remembering, and communicating with others about what has been read. Comprehension strategies are sets of steps that purposeful, active readers use to make sense of text.

2. Reading Comprehension

a) Definition of Reading Comprehension.

Reading comprehension is the degree to understand the text that one reads. Retrieved from “http://wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/reading comprehension” when reader pick up the newspaper and read about the latest election results, call up a web site and read directions on installing a new light switch or grab a novel off the shelf of the local bookstore, readers are using their reading comprehension skill to gather information from text.

Reading comprehension is defined as the level of understanding of writing (Adams, Marilyn Jager, 1990: 27). Proficient reading depends on the ability to recognize words quickly and effortlessly. If word recognition is difficult, students use too much of their processing capacity to read individual words, which infers with their ability to comprehend what it read.

Reading comprehension is tied to listening comprehension in a basic and intuitive way (Pressley, 2006: 71). Most people perceive reading as a process of talking coded, written language and transforming it in to recoded, spoken language. Although the details of this remain unresolved, and many experts question that the process involves so simple a translation, it is fair to say that for young children up to second grade students, reading really is direct recoding of written text into spoken words, which are then processed as spoken language via the same mechanisms that make listening comprehension possible.

From definition above, it can be concluded that reading in English is like reading in native language. This means that it is not always necessary to read and understand each and every word in English. Owing to the fact that reading skills in native language and English are basically the same, that owns a final purpose “reading understanding”

b) Skill in reading comprehension.

Duke and Pearson in Teele (2004: 93) state that good readers must have the following comprehension skills. They have clear goals for their reading. They also

examine the structure of the text prior to reading. Again, they make predictions about the outcome of the text.

Further, Spear (2000: xxvi) states that there are eight important reading comprehension skill that help learner to read more systematically. They are comprehension the main idea, determining the authors’ purpose, distinguishing between the main idea and supporting details, making inference, distinguishing facts and opinion, analyzing structure, annotating, paraphrasing and summarizing.

The main concern of the research is about how to find the main idea, vocabulary, detail, and inference. There for the writer would like to discuss further on those aspects:

1) Main idea.

Spears (2000: 17) define the main idea as the author’s main point, a sentence, or perhaps two that state what the whole thing is about. The main idea may take play in the beginning paragraph, the end of the paragraph, combination between the beginning and the end of the paragraph, or even omitted from the entire paragraph.

2) Vocabulary.

According to Schwartz and Raphael (1985: 39) vocabulary is the knowledge of words and word meaning. Knowledge of words is critical to reading comprehension, because it supports to comprehension. Students are expected to learn the meaning of new words. They acquire these words by reading books, magazine, newspaper or hearing them read aloud from books by other.

3) Detail.

Spears (2000: 12) defines detail is a single piece of information or fact about something. Students must get information when they read the reading. The indicator, they can find the factual information stated in a passage or retell the reading well. This condition shows that they understand the reading.

4) Inference.

McNeil (1992: 77) defines inference as the derivation of some idea that is not directly stated. To infer, Caroll in McNeil suggests that there are three important

ways to infer. They are from subtleties of the verbal expression, reasoning, making involvement of the reader experience to determine how the character in the text might fell.

c) Elements of Reading Comprehension.

According to Snow (2002: 13) comprehension need three important elements. They are reader, text and activity.

The first important element of reading comprehension is the reader. In the purpose of comprehending the reader must have a wide range of capacity and abilities. They include cognitive capacity include attention and various types of knowledge. The cognitive capacity include attention, memory, critical analytic, inference, visualization ability, etc. meanwhile, motivation refer to the purpose of the reader. Finally, various type of the knowledge, linguistic and discourse knowledge and knowledge for certain comprehension strategies.

The second element of reading, the reading comprehension is the text. During reading, the reader constructs different representations of the text that are important for comprehension. These representations include, for example, the surface code (the ex-act wording of the text), the text base (idea units representation the meaning), and the representation of the mental models embedded in the text.

The last important element in reading comprehension is the activity. A reading activity involves one or more purpose, some operations to process the text at the hand and the consequences of performing the activity. The purpose is influenced by the cluster of motivational variables, including interest and prior knowledge.

Reading comprehension is the ability to understand the text and to get the meaning from text. It involves the ability to find main ideas, find details, make inferences, and predict word meaning from context.

According to (Kelner and Flynn 2006: 200) make what is implicit to experienced educational drama specialists explicit for classroom teachers. A Dramatic Approach to Reading Comprehension is designed for teachers with little to no experience in drama. It contains information, advice, directions, steps, tips, charts,

lists, photos, and ideas for use with students in grades one through eight. Readers will find in-depth explanations of the layers of effective educational drama experiences based on classroom texts. Kelner and Flynn devote individual chapters to each of four drama strategies story dramatization, character interviews, tableau, and human slide shows-with a step-by-step process for integration of the drama strategy and reading comprehension.

In addition, A Dramatic Approach to Reading Comprehension includes a comprehensive treatment of assessment in both drama and reading comprehension. Readers will find a variety of assessment guidelines, tasks, tools, and definitions of terms.

Reading is an active process to get information through written language. In other word it can be said that reading is an interactive process that goes on between the reader and the text, resulting in comprehension. The text presents latter, words, sentences and paragraphs that encode meaning. The reader use knowledge, skills, and strategies to determine what the meaning is. Urghart state that reading involves processing language messages 1998: 15). Widdoson in Urguhart all so states that reading is the getting linguistic information via print. Further he states that getting information is fairly one way process from writer or text to reader. Further Urhart states that reading is a process of receiving and interpreting information encode in language via the medium of print (1998: 22). Ruddinle suggests four states of word analysis development:

1. The logographic state, in which children use visual context or graphic features to read words (reading “Mc Donalds” by looking at the logo, for example); 2. The traditional state from logo graphic to beginning alphabetic, in which

children begin to read words by shifting from visual context and specific latter associations to use of the alphabetic principle (the initial sound /d/ in dog associated with the latter d);

3. The alphabetic stage, in which children rely on latter-sound or grapheme-phoneme relationship to read words (dog is sounded out and blended using phonological recoding process that accesses the children mental lexicon); and 4. The orthographic stage, in which children use a phonetic principle, predictable

pronunciation that, fat, mat, hate, hate, for example, and analogy ( in rain to read the new word train) to read. (1994: 92)

From the able statements, it can be concluded that reading is an activity which need a process. It is impossible to read fluently without practice to read something every day. When people want to get information from written message, they should make it as a habit for our daily activity is an individual activity. Reader can interpret what they read. And it needs process to interpret the right message from written language. Actually studying all the subject matter is a process. Reader cannot understand the meaning from language written instantly.

Pearson and stephens in Ruddle states that reading is a complex, orchestrated, constructive process through which individuals make meaning (1994: x). It is stated by Urguhart in reading a second language: process, product and practice that reading means dealing with language messages in written or painted from (1998: 13). Furthermore Urguhart considers reading as a language activity involving at same time or another all the cognitive processing related to language performance. They consider that any valid account of reading process must consider such cognitive aspect as reading, and obvious language aspects as syntax and lexical meaning. Nuttal state that are some word that relate with the definition of reading, those are understanding, interpreting and meaning sense, decoding, deciphering, identifying, articulating, speaking and pronouncing (1989: 2). The definition of reading reflects the ideas that reading is the process of identifying written words. Besides that in a great many classrooms, the reading lesson is used as an opportunity to teach pronunciations, encourage fluent and expressive speaking. Reading as interpreting means to a written text as a piece of communication. Reading is a part of daily life for those of us who live in literate communities that much of the time we hardly consider either the purpose or the process involved.

Reading is fluent process of reader combining information from a text and their own background knowledge to build meaning. The goal of reading is comprehension (Nunan, 2003: 68). Reading is the process of understanding written

language. It begins with a flutter of patterns on the retina and ends (when successful) with a definite idea about the author’s intended message. Thus reading is at once a “perceptual” and a “cognitive” process. It is a process that bridges and blurs these two traditional distinctions (Rumelhart, 1994: 864). From the statement above it can be concluded that reading is a process of getting information and message from written language. In understanding the message from written language, the reader much has background knowledge. Hence in the process of reading the reader much combine their background knowledge and the content of the text. Besides, they should combine their interference, memory and the strategy of reading. Urguhart states any valid account of reading process much consider such cognitive aspect as reading strategies, inference, memory, relating text to background knowledge, or well as decoding and obvious language aspects as syntax and lexical knowledge (1998: 18) 3. Directed Reading in the Classroom

One of the mean ideas of using dramatic reading in the classroom is to make reading more memorable. The modeling dramatic reading and then asking students to read important passages aloud with as much dramatic flair as they can manage, (Rose and Nicholl 1997: 200) remind us that we tend to remember more than twice as much as of what we say aloud then what we read silently. This suggests the advisability of frequently asking students to talk about what they are reading, as by using directed reading to give student highly engaged and focused on directed reading. Actively guiding students through a reading frequently requesting student responses, offering comments when appropriate rather than asking students to read text and rather than presenting the information to them orally, we can intersperse the reading and oral discussion in a way that produces high-participation lessons. This is especially useful for poor readers and poor listeners.

Consider this segment from the science lesson. The teacher begins by asking the students to find a particular page in their science text. “What is the heading of that section?” she asks “susan, please read it for us,” after susan reads the heading, the teacher continues. “Thank you. Today we will be to learning about warm-blooded

animals. I would like you to now scan the first paragraph and find the definition of warm-blooded.”

After a pause, she asks a different student to read the definition. Then she invited the class to read the definition in unison with her. “Again, please about this time and read it like you mean it!” The teacher asks the students to look at the next paragraph and find three examples of worm-blooded animals. “Who can tell us the first, second and the last?” she writes each example on the board as volunteers respond. “Based on these examples, who can think of some other animals that would be classified as worm-blooded?” she adds to the list on the board as students offer examples. “Now I would read you to silently read page 214 to find out…”

Note how the teacher intersperses scanning, reading, questions, and comments. From time to time she writes key points on the board. In addition, she occasionally asks students to write a response and share with a partner. And sometimes she presents a mini-lecture about the animals.

This style of directed reading can we use with fiction as well as nonfiction. For example, imagine a teacher dramatically reading aloud the first page of a story and then saying something like this:

Think about you know so far. On scrap paper, writer a prediction telling two things you think might happen in this story. The read the text paragraph of find out what time of year is it…Let’s: How many think it is winter, spring and summer? Fall? The correct answer is spring. What words gave you a clue it was spring? Now please continue reading until you find out the name of…

Finally, we learn directed reading texts can be improved in vocalizing more memorable when the words are spoken dramatically, with emotion. We can take advantage of this by, first, modeling for the students to read dramatically; we might demonstrate by reading an important definition or the key text passage. Then we ask a few students to read a sentence or two aloud dramatically; with as much felling as they can generate. Finally we might commend that all students take any portion of a reading that they want to remember and say it dramatically, aloud or silently to themselves. And when we want to emphasize a key definition or idea in class, we can

always invite a few students to read it aloud to the class, being as outrageously dramatic as they dare. Invite students to fun with the strategy. And expect them to remember more of what they read. Teacher report it almost always works out that way.

a. Indicator of reading Comprehension Competence.

To comprehend information in the reading, it can be viewed from some indicators that students are able to:

1. Finding main idea. The indicator, they can show or find the author’s main point, one or two sentences from that state what the whole thing is about. 2. Find vocabulary. The indicator, they can find the words meaning, synonym,

and antonym.

3. Find detail. The indicator, they can find the factual information state in a passage or retell the reading well.

4. Find inference. The indicator, they can infer how the character in the text. b. Stages in teaching Reading

Another possible is to give text related tasks. They are three basic types: 1) Pre-Reading: used not just to test or compensate for linguistic/socio-cultural

inadequacies but also used to activate exiting schemata;

2) While-Reading: used to encourage the learner to be a flexible, active reader also to promote a dialogue between reader and writer;

3) Post-Reading: often are read questions that follow a text, used to test understanding but sometimes a good schema will be enough. Rather than just simplifying the text by changing its language, it can be made more approachable by eliciting students’ existing knowledge in pre-reading discussion, reviewing new vocabulary before situations where it would take place outside reading and asking to get the mean idea or scanning for specific information, before they begin intensive reading. The reading approach must be directed too. Students should read the text in a way that matches the read purpose, the type of text, and the way people normally read. This means that reading aloud and silent will take place only in the classroom.

Reading is an activity with a purpose for reading guides the reader’s selection of texts. The purpose for reading also determines the approach to reading comprehension.

B. Rationale

Reading comprehension is a process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with written language. In doing so, the reader involve so many reading skills. Among them are finding mean idea, inference and paraphrasing.

In fact, some students encounter problems to activate those skills in reading comprehension. These difficulties were indicated as student’s incorrectly interpreted mean idea with specific details; they could not relate between one clue to another; and they failed in determining the key point of sentence. The classroom situation made these situations even worse. The students were passive during the lecturing. They even showed on interest toward the subject. Then, their low cooperation completed their negative response to reading class. The students’ passivity in the classroom was indicated as students kept silent during lecturing and they also had no response when they were asked questions. In addition to the passivity, the students also showed no interest toward reading classroom; many of them make the class noisy, play with their mobile phone, talk to another topic and often go out of the class. Furthermore, they low cooperation was identified as they had no courage to share ideas with friends; tended to work individually, and talk with their topic out of the discussion.

Teacher had also contribution for such students’ difficulties. The teaching learning process showed that, it was monotonous. Teacher less monitored the students’ activity. The technique which was applied during teaching learning process made the students in such passive situation as they often got broad oral explanation from their teacher. Besides, the teacher broad oral explanation is even considered fast to the students.

Knowing this condition, students have to have sufficient strategy to be successful in mean idea, inference, and paraphrasing. Directed reading is selected as they can function at portraying the valuable information from the given text. In this way, they can provide the bridge from the abstract concepts of the text to more visible idea that eases readers getting the intended meaning. As the answer of students’ passivity, directed reading also enhance the students’ participation in class interaction since that the students should be more active in the text-interaction with the given directed reading. This model are very helpful both in individual and group work tasks. From the characteristics of directed reading above, it is believed that directed reading can improve students’ reading comprehension in term of finding mean idea, inference and paraphrasing. Furthermore, directed reading also enhances the students’ participation in class interaction both in individual and group work tasks.

The chief danger of this approach is that the reader may try to read in to the text what he thinks ought to be there than what the writer intended. To counteract this, students should be trained to:

1) will help students develop reading skill

2) shows them how ideas can be discovered in the process of reading comprehension

3) gives them immediate deep and critical feedback – from a peer 4) can lead students to have new experience of reading comprehension

A reader can often produce a reasonable hypothesis about a text after only a superficial reading. To do this, he must use resources such as common sense, general knowledge and experience, which has already, has. Encouraging him to make use of them mean that you can start work on positive note (‘what do we know about this text? So what do you think this message is likely to be?). This is more encouraging than starting with the negative factors such as unfamiliar vocabulary. It is also good strategy, for students much learn to utilize all their resources in order to make sense of the text.

You can start by making hypothesis based on the title alone, if that is one, or the title of the book from which the text come. Or you can ask your students to skim through the text and tell you very approximately what it is about. If there are several different views, subsequent closer reading can be focused on establishing which is the most accurate. If none of the views are appropriate, ask the class to try again when the detailed work has progressed far enough.

Active experience of forming prediction about a text (i.e. hypothesis), and confirming, rejecting or reformulating them, is as important for a reader as it is for a scientist. You need to be particularly on your guard when the text involves matters of opinion or emotion, because inexperienced readers often assume that the text will echo their own views; or where that is clearly not the case, that the writer is hostile-which may be equally false.

Base on the theoretical principles and the related research, the researcher proposes the following hypothesis which is teaching English using directed reading can improve student reading comprehension.

Directed reading in the classroom I do hopefully that students’ comprehension is will improve and their attitudes toward reading because they are taught using directed reading that is theoretically effective for improving students’ reading comprehension. Students have positive idea in reading skill. In addition, through directed reading, the student can make and learn which help them to interesting and have a best understanding in learning process. For other lectures, they will get large knowledge about teaching leaning directed reading and the result of the research can be the useful input in English teaching learning process especially for improving reading comprehension. For the researcher, this research will improve the researcher himself in mastering English and knowing the plan which is appropriate to use. As we know that reading is one of important skill for students and their future. I expect a lot in every cycle there are interesting activities which are including students’ improvement in reading comprehension. Finally, for the institution, this research will be useful as valuable resource in conducting the similar research.

C. Action hypothesis

As stated in the previous explanation that directed reading can improve the bridge from the abstract concepts of the text to more visible idea that make readers easy to obtain the intended meaning, the researcher formulates the action hypothesis that directed reading are able to improve students reading comprehension.

Chapter III Research methodology  

In this chapter gives the research methodology involving setting of the research, research method, procedure of the research, and data collecting and data analyzing technique.

E. Research setting 4. Time of Research

This classroom action research is carried in Eight months started in June 2010 up to February 2011, designing research proposal is done in July-August, conducting proposal seminar in September, making research instrument and collecting the data in October and November, analyzing the collected data and discussing the data analysis in December, and the writing the research report in January 2011. The research’s schedule is follows:

Table 3.1 Research Schedule

No _activity Aug/Sep Oct/Nov Dec/Jan Feb/Mar Apr/May June

1 _{Participant Enlisting}

2 _{Writing proposal}

3 _{Revising proposal}

4 _{Seminar on proposal}

5 _{Conducting the research}

6 _{Collecting data}

7 _{Analyzing data}

8 _{Report writing}

5. Place of Research

The National University of Laos-Champasak Branch was established by decree of the Prime Minister, 214⁄PM, dated 28⁄11⁄2002. After establishment, the leaders and staff of the branch university worked diligently according to the political principles, and guided by the policies of the government, they successful developed

the branch. In recognition of this progress, the government then approved the change from branch status to that of Champasak University. This was according to the decree of the Prime Minister, 95⁄PM, dated 05⁄07⁄2004. And since then the university has gradually grown.

Champasak University consists of the Rector, two Vice-Rectors, five offices: Organization and Personnel, Administration, Academic Affairs, Student Affairs, Research and Technology Transfer, then divided into five faculties: Faculty of Agriculture, Economic and Management, Law and Political Sciences, Engineering Faculty, The School of Foundation Studies and Faculty of Education.

Faculty of Education commences teaching and learning activities for normal and special course at bachelor degree that consists of three departments as follows: (1) Mathematics Department: (2) Literature Department: (3) English Department. Most of the students who study at 3rd year of English Department are the students who studied from learning bachelor curriculum at the School of Foundation Studies Faculty (SFS) for 64-68 credits because the bachelor degree program is five years of study: two years of general studies in the SFS and three years of specialized study in one of the faculties. The students come from different provinces in all parts of Laos. The subjects of the study are the third year students of English Department in 2010⁄2011 academic year and randomly chosen by researcher himself. There are 40 students in class (EN 3B). They consist of 18 boys and 22 girls. Some of them were selected and given Quota by Provincial Education Services. This first category of student is selected based on their High School achievement and a quota fixed by the Ministry of Education. Some of students are selected by examination. The entrance examination is organized simultaneously in all provinces and also some students were selected by special privilege. These applicants will be selected according to decree of government 108⁄PM, dated 31⁄07⁄2000 and 52⁄PM, dated 05⁄09⁄2003.

Some students are citizen and some are from remote area, so they have different background of English language. Moreover, there is only a little enthusiasm

to learn English. For some of them, studying is a must which they have to do, not a need. Teaching English in such situation needs extra patience and effort.

6. Research Subjects

The subject of this classroom action research is 3En 3/2 third grade students of English department, faculty of teacher training and education academic year 2010-2011 that consists of 30 students includes recourse students. The subject of this research is the regular students which is 30 students. In general 3B class has a good reading. The other reason of selecting this class, it has lowest average reading score among its parallel class. In the previous semester exam too much of them got F and the average score was lower than 60 is just a point above the class because in reading teaching learning process the students are very passive. The never ask questions about related topic, they rarely ask about new vocabulary. Furthermore, they rarely bring their text books and they are reluctant to join in reading class. Even worse they cannot answer WH-questions, reference questions and they cannot indentify paragraph topic, important massage, and the mean idea. The researcher did interview and questionnaire the course it the text book. They said that the text book it too difficult; there are many difficult words in the text and the text is too long and the text has no connection with their lives so they had no motivation to read. The researcher is the reading teacher in this class has tries to overcome the problem by changing the text book by different author by the class atmosphere remains the same. So in this class action research uses directed reading material in solving students’ problem in comprehending text and their motivation to read. By using directed reading materials, it is hoped can increase their motivation as the result their reading comprehension improves as well.       

This research is also carried out with the collaborator. He is an English lecturer from the same faculty with researcher. The collaborator and the researcher discussed together before, during and after the treatment to contribute ideas, opinions, and share experiences in steps in this classroom action research.

F. Research Design

The action research spiral (based on kemmis and Mc Taggart in wiriaatmadja, (2007:66-67) is:

   

 

     

The researcher uses some steps as kemmis and Mc Taggart which involve planning, acting, observing, and reflecting.

This action research is carried out in two cycles. Each cycle consists of four steps. They are planning, acting, observing, and reflecting. The summary of research procedure is provided in Table 3.1.

Table 3.2 Research procedures I. Pre-research: Gaining base line data

1. Observing teaching learning process 2. Interview students

7. Giving questionnaire to students 8. Conducting Pre-test

II. Research Implementation

Cycle 1: Using (Directed reading text) Asking Ss Questions 1. Planning

2. Acting 3. Observing 4. Reflecting Post-test 1

Revised Plan

Act Reflect

Reflect _Act

Observe Observe

Cycle 2: Using Directed reading text for pre-reading activities 1. Revised Planning

2. Acting 3. Observing 4. Reflecting Post-test 2

 

This more detail about research procedures are explained as follows: a. Planning

There are some activities that are carried out in the first cycle, they are as follows:

1. Pre-test

Pretest is carried out to know the students real ability in reading before they are taught using directed reading. Before pre-test is done the pre-test instrument is tried out in other class to ensure that the instrument is valid and reliable.

2. Interview

The purpose of this interview is to get more information about the students’ needs, interest, and problems in reading. So the teacher can select appropriate approach, techniques and directed reading for students.

3. Questionnaire

The aim of the questionnaire is to know the students’ opinion about the reading teaching learning process. Furthermore to know the students are need, interest, and problems in reading. The teacher can select appropriate approach, techniques and material for students.

4. Designing Treatment

Based on the result of the pre-test and the interview, the appropriate treatment is designed to be applied in the teaching learning process which is teaching reading using directed reading. The treatment in this cycle has four meetings.

5. Collaborative English Teacher

In order to make the research can run optimally, the English teachers are needed as collaborators. The roles of the collaborator to this research are as follows:

a) Participating in designing the plans, both in the first cycle.

b) Observing what happens in the classroom while the treatment is applied in the classroom.

c) Giving suggestions for the improvement of the next classroom practice. 6. Post-test

Post-test is carried out to know the students’ ability in reading comprehension after being given treatment in first cycle. The results of this test are used as a core consideration in designing the activities in the second cycle.

b. Acting

Based on the previous plans, some of the activities are done as follows: 1. Pre-test

a) The students are asked to do the test.

b) The teacher checks and gives score to the students work. c) The teacher analyses the students’ score.

2. Interviews

a) The teacher interviews some student to get information about the students’ interest and learning problems.

b) The teacher writes the result of the interview as an additional data.

3. Observation

a) The teacher observes the teaching learning process to get information about the reading learning process, the interaction between the teacher and the students, and the students and their peers.

4. Questionnaires

a) The questionnaire is given to the students to get the information about the students’ comment toward reading teaching learning process and what they need and interest to make them have better learning for the reading comprehension.

b) The teacher makes conclusion based on the result of the questionnaire. 5. Treatment

The treatments are carried out in the four meetings. The activities are follows:

a) First meeting (1) Introduction

a. Teacher greets students.

b. Teacher checks the students’ attendance (2) Main activities

1. Pre-reading

a. Teacher asks questions about related topic in building up schemata and show related to topic pictures.

b. Teacher tells the topics they are going to learn in reading class and tell them that material is taken from newspaper.

2. Whilst Reading

a) Teacher asks students to underline the difficult words and asks them to guess the meaning.

b) Teacher gives the words taken from the text that have not been mentioned yet by the students.

c) Teacher asks the students to read silently.

d) Teacher asks students to answer questions in pairs. 3. Post-Reading

Teacher asks students to work in groups related with the topic and share it with the class.

4. Closing

Teacher encourages the students to ask further questions about the topic and say leave taking.

b) Second meeting (1) Introduction

a. Teacher greets the students.

b. Teacher checks students’ attendance (2) Main Activities

1. Pre-reading

a. Teacher asks questions about related topic in building up schemata and show some related topic pictures.

b. Teacher tells the topic that, they are going to learn in reading and tells them that the text of reading it taken from text

2. Whilst reading

a. Teacher asks students to underline the difficult words and asks them to guess the meaning.

b. Teacher gives the words taken from the text that have not been mentioned yet by the students.

c. Teacher asks the students to read silently.

d. Teacher asks students to answer questions in pairs. 3. Post-reading

Teacher asks students to work in groups related with the topic and share it with the class.

4. Closing

Teacher encourages the students to ask further questions about the topic and say leave taking.

c) Third meeting (1) Introduction

a. Teacher greets the students.

b. Teacher checks students’ attendance (2) Main Activities

1. Pre-reading

a) Teacher asks questions about related topic in building up schemata and show some related topic pictures.

b) Teacher tells the topic that, they are going to learn in reading and tells them that the Directed reading it taken from newspaper, Internet and other books.

2. Whilst reading

a. Teacher asks students to underline the difficult words and asks them to guess the meaning.

b. Teacher gives the words taken from the text that have not been mentioned yet by the students.

c. Teacher asks the students to read silently.

d. Teacher asks students to answer questions in pairs. 3. Post-reading

Teacher asks students to work in groups related with the topic and share it with the class.

4. Closing

Teacher encourages the students to ask further questions about the topic and say leave taking

5. Post-test

Post-test is given to the students to find out the students’ reading comprehension after giving implementation in the first cycle the result of the post-test in the first cycle is used as main consideration in designing the activities in the second cycle.

c. Observing

In this stage the researcher and the collaborator observe what happens in all activities undertaken and monitor the effect of the actions. There are some considerations that some actions which have effects can be seen much later. Therefore, the observation is carried out while and after the actions.

d. Reflecting

In this step the researcher and the collaborators analyze what happens in the classroom and also discuss any success, failure, and effect of the action. The information is used to design planning for the next cycle.

In general, the steps that are carried out in the second cycle are similar to those of the first cycle. They are planning, acting, observing, reflecting but this time the researcher asks student to choose their own reading text from the books as accommodate the students’ interest and to encourage students in reading.

G. Data Collecting Technique

The data in the classroom action research includes: a. The students’ scores

The scores are taken from:

1. The students’ score before the treatment.

2. The students’ score after the treatment in cycle 1 3. The students’ score after the treatment in cycle 2 b. Result of the interview

1. The result of the students interview before the treatment 2. The result of the students interview after the treatment

Context Inventory. Students' subjective reports on their motivation and their teachers’ teaching performance, and their reading comprehension scores were collected. The cultural text showed that students tended to have better reading comprehension scores when their teachers provided more cognitive support and used more motivating instructional practices to motivate them to read.

2. The improvement of the Classroom Situation

a. The directed reading can increase students’ motivation

The research findings showed that the use of directed reading can improve students’ participation and motivation in teaching learning reading skill. The students’ participate more actively in reading because they are interested in the text and of course their motivation to comprehend the text is higher. That is why the class becomes inspiring and interesting. The finding is in line Reading is fluent process of reader combining information from a text and their own background knowledge to build meaning. The goal of reading is comprehension (Nunan, 2003: 68). Reading is the process of understanding written language. It begins with a flutter of patterns on the retina and ends (when successful) with a definite idea about the author’s intended message. Thus reading is at once a “perceptual” and a “cognitive” process. It is a process that bridges and blurs these two traditional distinctions (Rumelhart, 1994: 864). 

From the statement above it can be concluded that reading is a process of getting information and message from written language. In understanding the message from written language, the reader much has background knowledge. Hence in the process of reading the reader much combine their background knowledge and the content of the text. Besides, they should combine their interference, memory and the strategy of reading. Urguhart states any valid account of reading process much consider such cognitive aspect as reading strategies, inference, memory, relating text to background knowledge, or well as decoding and obvious language aspects as syntax and lexical knowledge (1998: 18)

The directed reading was taken from newspaper, literature book, magazine and internet and so on where the language they use for native speaker, so the text also has cultural value because language and culture is inseparable. When students read the directed reading text, they were having cultural understanding. This statement is supported by Brown (2001: 64) he stated that anytime you successfully learn a language, you will also learn something of culture of the speakers of that language. So the students not only learn the language but also the culture.

c. The directed reading can increase students’ interest in reading

The students have a very positive behavior towards the use of directed reading text in teaching reading. The students enjoyed and interested in reading. They wanted to read more and more text. The source of directed reading is unlimited that is why students have always vary text and the students can exposure the real language used in real life. We can divide reasons for reading into two broad categories: instrumental and pleasurable reading. We can speak about instrumental reading when we want to achieve some clear aim. For example, we read instructions on a machine because we want to know how to operate it. A brochure is read if tourists need some pieces of information about a spot of interest etc. Pleasurable reading takes place for pleasure. People read magazines while away their free time. In both types of reading, readers are interested in the topics either because they find them useful or because they find them interesting.

If students good understand, they learn well, learn more and learn best.

3. Other finding: teacher’s Improvement on selecting a good text for reading

Other finding in this research is dealing with the teacher. When I implemented the directed reading for reading class, I improved in many ways. First, I am better in selecting directed reading since not every directed reading text is suitable for the students. Second, I become more familiar with them since I discussed a lot during the implementations. I noticed my students’ interest, fun, and problems in reading so that

4. Other finding: Students’ positive response toward using directed reading in

reading class.

At the end of my conducted, I gave the questionnaire to the students to find out the students’ responses toward using directed reading in reading class. This finding is described in table 4.19 in previous section. All of the students agree about using directed reading in reading class and almost every student agree on that using directed reading make them interested in reading. Furthermore, when the students choose their own topic it make them more motivated and fell more comfortable in joining reading.

Chapter V

Conclusion, implication and suggestion

A. Conclusion

After the researcher did his action research by using directed reading to improve students’ reading comprehension, the writer found that the directed reading has many advantages to help students improve their reading comprehension. Based on the data of the research, it could be seen as following points:

1. The directed reading can improve students’ reading comprehension. The

improvement can be identified from students’ reading comprehension achievement in term of paraphrasing, main idea and inference.

a. Students are able to answer WH-questions, inference questions better and quicker. Their ability in answering questions is improved through teaching learning process used directed reading which provide many exercises on answering those questions. b. Students are able to identify the main idea and the paragraph topic well. The students’ skill in identifying them is improved through teaching learning activities using directed reading which provides many exercises on identifying the paragraph topic and main idea.

Moreover, after the students have been given a treatment using directed reading it shows the significant improvement on the students’ achievement. It can be seen from the result of their test. The mean scores of pre-test and post-test of the first cycle to the next cycle show the improvement.

2. The directed reading can improve the class situation.

a. The class situation is alive and inspiring; directed reading is relevant with students’ life that is why the students are interested in reading the text. When students are interested in the text they participates activity in reading activities.

b. The students improved their motivation to participate in all reading activities undertaken; directed reading has familiar topic so the students fell confidence and

c. The students improved their interest toward reading; directed readings have many genres so that students never get bored because there are variety texts to read. Furthermore, the researcher used many kinds of texts in pre-reading activity it can raise students’ participation in reading competition and enhance students’ comprehension achievement. However, the implementation of directed reading needs careful preparation and clear guidance.

B. Implication

The research finding of this action research implies that directed reading can improve students’ reading comprehension. Furthermore, the class situation also improved fabulously. It is also found that the students’ attitude toward reading is improved fantastically.

1. Doing action research I can overcome that problems arise in my reading class. Furthermore, my students get a great value in their live which is reading is very important in live. I become a teacher who never gives up in improving my-self and my profession.

2. Using directed reading in reading class is strongly suggested. Many kinds of

advantages for teachers and students when directed reading implemented. Students not only learn the contents of the text but also aware what is going around us.

C. Suggestions

Base on the findings found, it is strongly suggested to use directed reading in teaching reading or other language skills. It is suggested to:

1. The teacher

To use directed reading in teaching reading. The directed reading definitely can improve students’ reading comprehension. There are unlimited directed reading text take from Internet, magazine, news paper, etc so teacher who know how access the Internet, take an It course.

To provide internet Access or hot spot where teacher can download the teaching text from Internet, even better if the institution subscribes English magazine or news papers.

3. Other researcher

To encourage doing other research on the use of directed reading in teaching other language skill.

4. Students

To read more to improve their ability in comprehend the text in English and to make reading is an important habit to be successful people.