93 Interest and motivation are expressed through questions. New knowledge is built
by means of questioning. Yet most students in most traditional content classrooms ask very few lesson-related questions. In teachers’ perception, this fact is caused by the
students lack interest and motivation. For the most part, however, lack of interest and motivation is only a secondary symptom. The primary cause of apathy, in most cases, is
that students simply do not know how to ask questions in the classroom environment, which can be layered with subtle inhibitions, to questioning. Seeing the low ability of
students in questioning, a good teacher should create strategies which can courage students to arise questions by learning from various texts in reading activities. Derived
from the text given, it is hoped students can be stimulated to ask questions individually, in pairs, groups, even to do questions and answers with teachers. The teaching of
learning process will become learners-centered. It is in line with the concept of comprehension that students will be courage to search out importations from text by
formulating questions by themselves and then become discussion. Regarding to the problems above, the writer wants to conduct a research entitled “Encouraging
Questioning in Reading Activities for the second year students of MAN Model Manado” to better the students’ ability in reading. It is assumed that this strategy can
develop students’ reading ability, especially their comprehension.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
1. Is questioning strategy effective in teaching reading comprehension? 2. What are students’ attitudes towards the application of questioning strategy?
II. DISCUSSION
In doing her research, she can apply the three approaches, what so called” Empiricist approach, Interpretive approach and Critical approach”.
EMPIRICIST APPROACH
First, to see the effectiveness of applying Questioning in teaching reading, the researcher will do a research with quasi experimental design. She will choose two
classes to be samples randomly. One class for experimental group and the other one is as a control group. Before giving the treatment to the experimental group, the researcher
will give pre-test first for those two groups to get the data of their ability in reading. Then the experimental group will be given a treatment by applying Questioning strategy
in teaching reading, while the control group does not. At the end of the research, those two groups will be given post-test to see whether there is significant difference
achievement in their reading between the experiment and control group. The data gathered will be evaluated using the T-test formula. If it is found that the experiment
group’s result is higher than the control group’s, it can be concluded that the questioning strategy is effective in teaching reading skill. This theory is in line with the
concept in the Empiric approach. Knowledge is objective, generalisable and can be used to predict and control future event.
INTERPRETIVE APPROACH
To get more detail data whether the improvement is caused by the questioning strategy, the researcher can do also a case study. It is done to validate the data gathered
because there might be some factors influence the conditions. In line with the theory in Interpretive approach that the emphasis is on understanding by the researcher and the
researched rather than prediction and control, she wants to do observation on how the
94 students respond questions in reading activities or which questions they ask and what
are students’ attitudes towards questioning? Tape recordings of the question-answer interactions also will be done to complete the observation. In doing the observation, the
researcher will ask college to do observation also to have crosscheck finding. Thing that will be observed covers all activities done by the students and teacher, also what is said
by students and teacher in teaching learning process. To support the data gathered from observation, the interviews of the teacher and pupil will be done to get the data on how
is students’ attitudes toward the application of questioning strategy in English reading activities and it will be recorded. Individual interview as well as focus group interview
will be conducted to gain validation data collection. Moreover all the data gained will be described and transcribed to answer the research questions and to derive conclusion
whether the condition of students’ ability in having questioning activities in reading is better or worse. Since “the data concerned appear in words rather than in numbers”
Miles and Huberman, 1984, it is in term of qualitative research.
CRITICAL APPROACH
The critical approach also can be done by the researcher to find the power relationship between teacher and students to do questioning in reading activities. First,
she tries to find some factors that influence why students stop asking questions since it can be caused by teachers sometimes respond to questions with sarcastic replies. In
additional, as teachers, we occasionally use questions as a kind of “weapon” against student misbehavior, etc. The fact can be considered as obstacles for students to get
involvement in learning and they tend to stop asking questions. Even, this condition can be caused by habituation done by the teachers that in reading activities, mostly students
only assign to do text-based questions. Teachers never encourage them to arouse their own questions based on what information the students want to search out etc. she will
conduct classroom action research which involves the expert to get feedback and input in applying questioning strategy in teaching reading. The cycle actions in improving the
application of questioning strategy will always be done to get improvement on students’ achievement in reading comprehension by finding the agreement between the researcher
and the expert. So in this case, the concept of collaborative research will be employed to better the condition.
III. CONCLUSION
