Formulation of the Problem
background information and life experiences and identify and sift which is the relevant information and which is not.
Similarly with Norstratiana, Israel and Duffy said that reading comprehension is an active and complex process in which the readers try to
understand the text, get the meaning, and use it to the appropriate type of text, purpose and situation.
3
It needs some specific skills like comprehending, interpreting, organizing idea, recalling background knowledge and experience to
get the meaning from the text. Therefore, the essence of reading is to understand what the writer wants to say through the text and get the clear information from
that. Based on Tankersley, reading comprehension is influenced by three
factors. The first factor is that the readers are able to understand the linguistic structures of the text. They know what the words or sentences mean. The second
factor is that the readers are able to exercise metacognitive control over the content being read. This means that the reader is able to monitor and reflect on his
or her own level of understanding while reading the material. The third and most important factor influencing comprehension is that the reader has sufficient
background in the content and vocabulary being presented therefore they can understand the text easier.
4
Sutarsyah explained that if readers do not know or never experience about the topic discussed in the text, they will have a serious
problem to understand the text and will not be able follow the story nor predict the end of the story. Also, having enough background knowledge will make them feel
more about the story and bring their personal view.
5
Good readers need to have a purpose for reading and use their experiences and background knowledge to make sense of the text. Making connections is the
key to comprehension. We have not comprehended the text yet unless we make connections and are able to process the words that we read at the thinking level.
3
Susan Israel and Gerald G. Duffy, Handbook of Research on Reading Comprehension, New York: Routledge, 2009, p. 32.
4
Karen Tankersley, The Threads of Reading, USA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2003, p. 90.
5
Cucu Sutarsyah, Reading Theories and Practice, Lampung: Lembaga Penelitian Universitas Lampung, 2013, p. 36.
Readers should determine what their purpose for reading.
6
According to Nunan, some purposes in reading are:
- To get information for certain purpose or because curious about a topic. - To know the newest news what is happening or has happened.
- For refreshing, pleasure and excitement.
7
By knowing the purpose of reading, it helps the readers comprehend the text because every genre text in English has their own purposes. Thus, the readers
need to know their reading purposes before they read. One genre text that Junior High School students learn is narrative text.
Narrating or narrative is one of the most commonly text to read, compared with other English text. Because narrative text has been and continues to be a popular
genre, there is a belief that students usually „pick up’ narrative text as their text to
read and write „naturally’.
8
Chatman and Attebery defined the narrative text is a kind of story either fictive or real which contains a series of events which are presented
chronologically.
9
Thus, special features of narrative text could be found in its sequence of events to attract the readers in order to build their curiosity
throughout the story. Similar with Chatman and Attebery, Kane defined narrative text as a meaningful sequence of events told in words. The important thing in
narrative text is how the events are ordered, not merely random. The sequence of events or usually known as chronology of the story always involves an
arrangement of time. A straightforward movement from the first event to the last event is the simplest chronology. However, chronology is sometimes might be
complicated by presenting the events in another order: for example, a story may
6
Cris Tovani, I Read It, but I Don’t Get It, Maine: Stenhouse Publishers Portland, 2000,
p. 24.
7
David Nunan, Designing Tasks for the Communicative Classroom,UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 34.
8
Peter Knapp and Megan Watkins, Genre, Text, Grammar: Technologies for Teaching and Assessing Writing, Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2005, p. 220.
9
Chatman, S., and B. Attebery, Reading Narrative Fiction, New York: McMillan, 1993, p. 8.