Finding the Meaning from the Text

20 because in this activity the readers receive information from the writer through the text. In reading activity, a person who is reading a text is communicating with the writer. Similar to Communicative Approach principle stated by Celce-Murcia 2001: 8, having linguistic competence does not mean that one will be able communicate with others. In order to be able to perform communication, one must have communicative competence beside the linguistic competence. In short, Freeman 2000: 121 states, “…-knowing when and how to say what to whom.” From this point of view, it is clear that in communication one should not only know what to say, but also when, how, why and whom he should say something. One should know when the proper time to say something is; one should know why and how to say something to avoid misunderstanding; and one should know whom he talks to so that the communication goes properly. In order to be able to communicate well in the target language, one should be fluently in using the target language skills. Considering that reading is one of language skills needed in communication, teaching-learning activities in reading class should also be in a communicative way as well. To make the teaching of reading communicative, teachers may take the reading texts material from actual source which must be authentic texts. According to Williams 1986: 25, “The term authentic text refers to any text that was not written specially for language learning purposes. In other words, it is a text written to say something, to convey a message and not simplify to exemplify language.” The authentic texts usually provide real information about a certain topic, and this authenticity builds a real world image in students’ mind through which the reading comprehension 21 activities become communicative. The authentic text must also provide students with the communicative uses of words, phrases, expression, and sentences.

b. Cooperative Language Learning

The followings are discussions about Cooperative Language Learning according to Richard and Rodgers 2001: 192-201. Cooperative Learning is an approach to teaching that makes maximum use of cooperative activities involving pairs and small groups of learners in classroom. The heart of this approach is cooperative activities; students learn from other and work together in groups. To make it clearer, Richard and Rodgers 2001: 195 cite more practical understanding upon Cooperative Learning, “Cooperative learning is the instructional use of small groups through which students work together to maximize their own and each other’s learning.” In language teaching, Richard and Rodgers state that Cooperative Learning has been embraced as a way of promoting communicative interaction in the classroom and is seen as an extension of the principles of Communicative Language teaching 2001: 193. Richard and Rodgers imply that in Cooperative Language Learning, the activities of communication exist since students are trying to encode their ideas and decode friends’ ideas when they discuss, work, and learn the topic of learning together in groups. This method, therefore, is considered as an extension method of Communicative Language teaching. The use of Cooperative Language Learning has general goal to activate the students to work and learn the target language collaboratively in groups. The followings are six goals proposed by Richard and Rodgers 2001: 193: - to provide opportunities for naturalistic second language acquisition