presented in a text. The weakness of this thinking process may result in disengaging the students from the task of interpreting the texts, decreasing the
st udents‟ confidence, and dodging from books. The reading comprehension
problem can be minimized by providing students with texts which are appropriate to the students‟ level.
The issue of comprehension makes it important to investigate the narrative texts presented in the electronic textbook of senior high school grade X entitled
“Developing English Competence” issued by the government of the Republic of Indonesia. The narrative texts in that textbook are used as language inputs used in
all around Indonesia. The investigation is expected to be able to classify whether narrative texts found in that textbook are compatible as language inputs.
Moreover, the investigation can be one of the ways to facilitate character education by providing precise materials for the students. Finally, it is expected
that this research can contribute to the world of English language teaching especially reading skill by giving insight to teachers in selecting and adapting
teaching material especially narrative texts.
B. Identification of the Problem
Based on the background of the research mentioned above, the problems are identified as follows.
First, the stories are not appropriate and interested for students. The themes and content of the stories are not appropriate for the students in certain
age. In this sense, a certain maturity level is required to understand the themes.
This factor makes students not interested to read the stories and reluctant to comprehend the stories.
Second, the ideas in the narrative texts are too complex. The stories may have abstract ideas that require students to infer the implicit information. It can
cause ambiguity when the stories are not supported with illustrations, diagrams, graphs, and so on. Thus, the stories which are not well described can lead to the
confusion. Next, the text structure is difficult to follow. The author may have
different styles that affect the way he or she writes the stories. For example, the story that is written in a flashback requires the authors to have strong connections
across the ideas in order to make the students understand. However, the students somehow cannot see the connections because the connections are too implicit.
The author may use grammar instead of vocabulary to express the ideas and establish the links in the text. The implicit connections make students difficult to
follow because they require the students to fill the gaps between ideas. This may cause problems in comprehension.
Lastly, the students have difficulties in decoding the vocabulary. The author may use the words that are not familiar for the students to express a very
vivid imagination. For example, the author may use figurative language, technical terms or non-English words. Finally, the students cannot understand the meaning
of the words and the messages that the author wants to convey. In this sense, the comprehension process may fail.
C. Limitation of the Problem
