across the fields, researching other text-types in the same, role-play using similar text-types but different roles and relationship.
c. Teaching Reading Comprehension in SMP
Brown 2001: 7 states that teaching is guiding and facilitating learning, enabling the student to learn, and setting condition for learning. Moreover,
teaching defined as a process of showing or helping the students or someone to learn how to do something, giving instructions, guiding in the study of
something, providing knowledge, causing to know or understand Kimble and Garmezy in Brown, 2001: 7.
In reference to the above arguments, teaching reading is the process of guiding or facilitating the students to understand the meaning of the text and get
the information from the text and setting condition for learning. Teaching reading comprehension is also a process of showing or helping the students to derive
meaning from the word combination in the text and to do this in a series at the reasonable speed, without vocalizing what is being read.
Related to teaching high school students, Brown 2001: 92 states that teaching high school is challenging for teachers since young adult is an age of
transition, confusion, self-consciousness, growing, and changing bodies and minds. Some important thoughts that should be considered are intellectual
capacity of the students, attention span, varieties of sensory input, and factors surrounding ego, self-image, and self-es
teem. Brown 2001: 92 also states “As in teaching adults, care must be taken not to insult them with stilted language or to
bore them with over analysis.”
From the statements above, the English teachers should use an appropriate and interesting method in teaching reading comprehension to high school
students which makes them enjoy and feel interested in the teaching and learning process. It is important for the teachers to give explanations in limited portion in
order that the students do not only listen t o and depend on the teachers’
explanation but also they should try to understand the meaning of the text and get information from the text by themselves.
Klingner et al. 2007: 4 proposes four ways the English teachers have to do to improve their students
’ reading comprehension. They are presented as follows:
1. Implementing teaching strategies that have been documented as an
effective way in promoting reading comprehension 2.
Designing instructions that incorporate effective principles of direct instruction and strategy instruction.
3. Providing modelling, support, guided instruction, practice, attribution
feedback, and opportunities to practice across text types. 4.
Monitoring students’ progress and making adjustments accordingly. Below are key ideas in reading comprehension that are presented by
Klingner et al. 2007: 5. Direct instruction, strategy instruction, or a combination of both brings a great effect in reading comprehension for students. Both direct
instruction and strategy have the following components: 1
Assessing and evaluating the learning objectives, including orienting students to what they will be learning.
2 Reviewing daily material taught to assure mastery
3 Presenting new materials, including giving examples and demonstrating what
students need to do.
4 Guiding instruction, including asking questions to determine understanding.
5 Giving feedback and correction
6 Providing independent practice and review.
The instructional activities that give the highest effect in improving reading comprehension ability include: conducting teacher and students
questioning, promoting interactive dialogue between teacher and students and also between student and student, controlling task difficulty and scaffolding
instruction, elaborating steps or strategies and modelling by the teacher, giving small group instruction, and using cues to help students remember to use and
apply what they learn.
4. Interaction-Based Activities a.
Definition of Interaction
Brown 2001:165 defines interaction as the collaborative exchange of thoughts, feelings, or ideas between two or more people resulting in a reciprocal
effect on each other. In line with Brown, Malamah-Thomas 1991:7 states that interaction is more than action followed by reaction. Interaction is acting
reciprocally, acting upon each other. Robinson 1994:7 defines interaction as the
process of face to face action, can be verbal, channeled through written or spoken words, or nonverbal, channeled through touch, proximity, eye contact, facial
expression, gestures, etc. According to Rivers 1987:4, interaction can be two-way, three-way, or
four-way, but never one-way. He adds that genuine interactive language learning requires individuals teachers as well as students to appreciate the uniqueness of
other individuals with their special needs and not manipulate or direct them or decide how they can or will learn, but encourage them and draw them out
educate and build up their confidence and enjoy what they are doing. Nunan 2004:35 suggests that one of the most obvious facts is that in
teaching and learning a great deal of interactive language works occurs because there is a significant amount of talking between the teacher and students and
among students. It reveals a great dea l about the teacher’s purpose. Interaction
will always involve more than one person because there must be someone who transmits a message and someone who receive it. In the educational setting,
interaction occurs every day in the classroom activities between the teacher and the students.
The number of students in the class influences the number of possible variations concerning who transmit and who receive. Malamah-Thomas 1991:69
states that when teachers are seen as the ones who transmit the message, then he or she can be seen as trying to communicate with the whole class, a group of
students andor individual student. And when the student performs as the one who transmit the message, heshe then interacts with the teacher another single student,
or a group of students.
b. Types of Classroom Interaction
Communication implies more than one person Malamah-Thomas, 1991:12. Interaction happening in the classroom is not only between the teacher
and the whole class. There are some activities where the teacher is a participant in interaction with an individual student, or with a group of students within the class.
