57 Continued
No. Actions
Problems
3. Building connection between
students‘ prior knowledge and the new material
The teacher seldom related the students‘
background knowledge to the text given.
4. Comprehending
the new
material Students found difficulties in
comprehending an English text. Translating each sentence in the
text was the activity mostly done
in understanding
an English text.
B. The Implementation of the Actions
1. The Implementation of Cycle I
a. Planning of Cycle I
The implementation of Schema Activation Strategy in Cycle I was decided by the teacher and the researcher. In the teaching and learning
process, the researcher acted as the teacher and the English teacher as the observer. Besides, the researcher also invited her colleague to act as the
second observer in order to avoid bias in observing the teaching and learning process of reading in Cycle I and to help the implementation of the actions.
In Cycle I, there were many activities which support Schema Activation Strategy. Those activities were adapted from Au in Ajideh 2003:
7 and Willis 2008: 130-133. Those activities were as follows. 1
Pre-reading Phase a
The teacher chooses interesting topics and presents a picturepictures related to the topic in order to attract students,
attention and interest.
58 b
The teacher asks some questions to the students about the picture to build their vocabulary related to the topic and the picture.
c The teacher presents another picture which is related to the text
given with the title of the text. d
The teacher asks the students to predict the content of the text based on the picture and the title of the text.
e The teacher asks the students to write everything they have already
known about the picture and the title of the text in groups. f
The teacher and the students discuss what the students had written. 2
Reading Phase a
The teacher asks the students to skim the text to match their prediction with the content of the text.
b The teacher asks the students to read the text in depth.
c The teacher asks the students to make notes about the new
information they find. example: difficult words d
The teacher asks the students to read the text aloud in order to check their pronunciation.
e The teacher and the students discuss the students‘ notes. difficult
words f
The teacher helps the students comprehending the text by discussing the content of each paragraph.
