CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
A. Background of the Study
Based on School Based Curriculum Year 2006, English becomes the important subject which is taught to all junior high school students in Indonesia. It
develops students‟ intellectual, social, and emotional competences. Students are able
to recognize themselves and culture. In the other hand, English also can determine the student‟s graduation. The students must pass the standard score if they want to
graduate from school. Nevertheless many students who are able to pass the examinations find it hard
to use English as a communicative language correctly. It is believed because the teaching learning process has more theories and less practice. In the guest lecturing
program of Yogyakarta State University, Renandya 2012 stated that the nature of language learning in Indonesia is more likely too explicit that gramar is taught to
students. The explicit grammar and the knowledge of genres can easily be found in every chapter of the text book. Learning the English skills require more thinking than
doing. There are four important English skills to learn such as speaking, listening,
writing and reading which are clearly explained in the school curriculum. Every skill that should be taught to the students must allow the syllabus which consist of
standard of content SI and standard of competency SK. The standard of
competency also has basic competences as the base of making lesson plan in every English skill.
Reading is one kind of the receptive language skills. Basically, reading can be divided into oral and silent reading of which purpose is comprehension. Oral and
silent reading are stated in the syllabus of Indonesian curriculum as follow:
Figure 1: English Syllabus of Grade Eight
Source: Wayan and Pudjohartono 2008
The table of syllabus describes that one of the basic competences taught in eight grade students of junior high school in Indonesia is reading aloud of narrative
and recount text. The narrative text has been taught in the beginning of the semester. So that, the researcher who takes research in the middle of semester requires applying
recount text as the material of reading aloud. Reading aloud means reading loudly by considering fluency of reading.
Reading fluency has three main aspects such as accuracy, rate and prosody. Each aspect can determine the proficiency of reading and also affect the comprehension of
reading. Hopefully, teaching reading aloud can give an emphasis on phonological development related to accuracy, rate and prosody of reading.
Based on the preliminary observation, there are two main issues of the students‟ reading aloud. The first is that the students felt a strong fear of reading
aloud. For example, when teacher asks them to read aloud individually, most of students feel insecure. It is inferred when the students read unconfidently like
whispering and when the teacher asks a volunteer to read, most students do not raise their hand. The reason is the students have a strong fear to have mistakes, especially
on pronunciation. It is because they have less of exposure, they do not have a sufficient model. It is too conventional if they open the dictionary and read the
transcription letters. Further, they consider reading as a boring activity because of the conventional teaching method. Therefore, they have no strong desire to learn English.
The second issue, the class is categorized as a large class consisting of 38 students so it is hard to assist the student one by one. Each student has unique needs
and abilities. The problems of individual differences in the class in proficiency level of reading abilities seem too difficult to solve. The teacher finds it is challenging to
apply the appropriate teaching technique for reading which is suitable for students. Consequently, the conventional teaching techniques used nowadays can not help
students with various abilities to accomplish the teaching goals. Considering the facts, the teacher needs to find appropriate media because
providing good learning media makes the learning process run well. The students need a right treatment that accurately solves the problem. In that problem, they need a
scaffolding in order to end the problems. The scaffolding of reading fluency activity can be in the form of auditory model. The model should give a right example of
reading fluency as an exposure. The model can assist the students even when they are not in the classroom. Additionally, the media should be developed in the same line as
the recent technological development. Teachers need to use current media creatively and properly. Media present as
a bridge between the teacher as source and the students. Media can be in the form of texts, visuals, audio, video or real model. The combination of media is called
multimedia. The obvious challenge faced by teachers today is technology integration in both using and producing multimedia
The appropriate media used in the teaching and learning process of reading fluency are multimedia running text as an audi-visual model. It is the combination of
rolling up text, sound and a bit animation. Students need running text multimedia which is appropriate for them to improve their skill. In giving an example of reading,
providing the suitable and effective running text multimedia with the running text will greatly assist teachers in conducting the learning process in the classroom.
Running text multimedia which is easy to be used will greatly assist teachers in presenting the materials to students. The way of making running text media is by
combining text to speech application and video editor such as adobe premiere. The running text media are developed by considering the syllabus and
materials taught at the school. The materials can be more appropriate to the topic and the culture.. The appropriate materials ought to affect
the students‟ competence. Based on the explanation, the writer is interested to conduct a reseach on “improving
reading fluency of recount text through multimedia running text in eight grade students of SMPN 1 Jogonalan
in 20152016 academic year”.
B. Identification of the Problem
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