Background of the Study
teaching and learning process, including in the teaching and learning of reading. The learning materials help the teachers to deliver the instruction and information
to the students and facilitate the students to understand the instruction given by the teachers. There are many kinds of learning materials that can be used to teach
reading, e.g. magazines, newspapers, charts, images and some technological aids. By considering that learning materials are significant to make the process of
teaching reading run well and achieve the goals, the teachers have to design the learning materials carefully.
In relation to learning materials, teachers tend to use textbooks or other printed materials to teach reading. They consider the textbooks as the main
materials and other materials which are from the internet, magazines, newspapers as the additional ones. Nowadays, there are many textbooks that are well-designed
and the teachers can use them to teach reading to their students, yet the teaching and learning process of reading will be just a series of monotonous activities such
as reading a text and answering the questions. The consequence is that the students will get bored easily. Eventually, it can be concluded that teaching
reading by using textbooks is not enough. That is why teachers need more than textbooks or printed materials to assure that the teaching and learning process of
reading runs well and the students are engaged. The teachers should innovate the learning materials and media.
Along with the innovative theories and improvements in information and technology, the learning media used in the teaching and learning process change.
In this modern era, learning media are not only chalk, blackboard, video player
and tape recorder. There are also personal computers PCs, laptops, LCD projectors and internet which can facilitate the teaching and learning process.
Teachers can combine some media such as texts, pictures and videos into a package. A package of some media called multimedia is now available. The
multimedia contains more interactive features than printed materials. The availability of multimedia challenges the teachers to utilize it appropriately based
on the learning needs. In the English teaching and learning process, the use of multimedia as
teaching media undoubtedly helps the students to be autonomous learners and makes the teaching and learning process a learner-centered process since the
interactive features in the multimedia give the students an opportunity to study independently. Furthermore, the elements of multimedia such as videos,
recordings and pictures can show the students the models of target language uses. However, there is a problem in the implementation of interactive multimedia in
the English teaching and learning process. As stated earlier, most of the teachers tend to use printed materials rather than interactive multimedia, especially in
reading. As a consequence, the students get bored easily. In addition, teachers who use multimedia in their teaching often find some difficulties in finding the
appropriate learning sources. Even though many interactive multimedia sources can be found easily, those which fulfil the requirements of national standard of
competencies are still limited. Considering those issues, this study is to find a solution in order to
facilitate the students in learning the reading skill, especially descriptive text
reading. The focus of this study is developing appropriate interactive multimedia for teaching descriptive text reading which can fulfil requirements of national
standard of competencies.