The Background of the Study
reading skill. Thus, the students who has good reading skill, mostly they will success in the school. Thus it is very crucial for the students to learn reading skill
in English. However, in fact, reading is not as easy as what people think because it is not only read a sentence and say it out to others but also we have to understand
the content of the reading text and its purpose. Reading is one of English skills that should be mastered by the students. It
is because reading skill is very useful in daily life. Therefore, learning reading skill is obligated for the students in both junior and senior high school. The aim of
learning reading skill is to make students be able to read many types of skimming, scanning, intensive and extensive etc. In addition, the purpose of learning reading
skill is to make students be able to understand communication process in English through reading.
Such vivid explanation of how important reading skill, make the existence of this skill becomes important to be learnt by students. In SMA Kharisma
Bangsa, reading skill is taught to all grades of Senior High School students. As a school which combined both national KTSP curriculum and international
curriculum Cambridge curriculum, makes English role is really crucial. English is used in many subjects such as science, math and art, as the instructional
language. Therefore, the ability of students in English reading cannot be necgleted. However, students still have serious problems in dealing with reading.
Some students still have difficulty in comprehending and understanding the reading. It was proven when the writer did a teaching and learning observation at
the eleventh grade students of SMA Kharisma Bangsa. The teacher revealed that reasons behind this lack of interest included students limited background
knowledge, inability to understand the content of the text, and complicated organizational structure of the text.
Moreover, based on the school data of SMA Kharisma Bangsa , students’
scores in reading skill are not satisfied enough. The average score mean score is 75.3. It can be classified as low as they actually have good proficiency in English
skill. It ‘s happened because the students don’t understand about the book which they read. It means that they don’t comprehend when they read a book.
In line with the studies in EFLESL contexts confirming the positive relationship between learner factors and language proficiency, the researcher
believes that one of the factors which seem to affect the use of reading strategies is critical thinking abilit
y. İn addition, Research concerning the relationship between critical thinking and each specific skill listening, speaking, and reading
is limited. Therefore, this study is going to investigate the students’ critical thinking ability in correlations to t
he students reading skill. İn this study, the writer intends to investigate whether or not there is a correlation between
students’ critical thinking skill and students’ reading comprehension skill especially at the eleventh grade of SMA Kharisma Bangsa, with the title of the
research is
“The Relationship between Students’ Critical Thinking Skill and their Reading Comprehension of Descriptive Text
”.