Background of the Study
5 factors influencing the students‘ reading comprehension are identified as
follows. The first problem is from the students. From the classroom observation
and interviews with the English teacher and some students, some problems related to the students were found. First, the students had low vocabulary
mastery. When they were given a text to read, they did not know the meaning of even simple words such as between and state. It made them found difficulty
in comprehending the text. To handle the problem, they tended to translate every single word in the text. In translating the text, they depended too much
on their dictionary. Second, the students were not aware of the use of learning strategies. They did not know how to use the efficient comprehension
strategies such as using prior knowledge, making prediction, skimming and scanning, or guessing the meaning from the context. Third, the students were
not interested the process of teaching and learning reading. They found that activities in reading were boring. This boredom was seen from the behavior
that students showed in the class. They mostly did not pay attention to the teacher‘s explanation. The students, especially who sat at the back, chatted
with their friends and made a lot of noise. Fourth, the students were also very passive in the process of teaching and learning. When they were asked to find
unfamiliar words, some of them neglected the command and they just chatted with their friends. Only those, who were clever, were active during the lesson.
The second problem comes from the teacher. The teacher tended to apply monotonous reading activities in the class. She just asked students to
6 read a certain text and then do the follow-up activity. The teacher dominated
the class by explaining the material during the lesson without giving a chance to the students to express and share their ideas about the topic of the lesson.
She lacked strategies or media to attract the students‘ attention and interest.
She did not provide such activity as discussion in order to establish interaction between the teacher and the students and among the students. Activities,
which need the students‘ involvement, were also rarely done by the teacher. Those reasons make students easily get bored in the reading class. Next, the
teacher ignored the importance of recalling and relating students‘ background knowledge with the input text. She did not give the students enough
scaffolding before reading a text. As a result, students found difficulty in comprehending the text.
The third problem is derived from the method used in teaching reading. There are actually three stages in the process of reading activity.
They are pre-reading, whilst-reading, and post-reading. Pre-reading itself is a stage before the actual act of reading a text begins and which is done to make
the process of reading more comprehensible. It is usually done by giving necessary background information to the reader to facilitate comprehension.
However, the teacher neglected this stage. She tended directly to go to the second stage. The teacher just gave small piece of information about the text
that was going to be read by the students. She forgot to scaffold her students in reading the text. This may also cause boredom to the students because they
do not feel that the activity is interesting. Such challenging activities as
7 previewing, predicting and questioning asking question as if having a
―conversation‖ with the writer which can activate the students‘ background knowledge are gone.
The last problem is from the media used in reading. There was actually an LCD projector in the class. However, the teacher rarely used it in her
teaching especially in teaching reading. She usually used the LCD projector for showing texts to the students. The teacher had never used such media as
pictures although the use of pictures could stimulate the students to recall their prior knowledge related to the topic of the text.