Benefits of the Study

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CHAPTER II REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

This chapter consists of two parts, namely theoretical description and theoretical framework. The theoretical description provides theoretical review used in the research whereas the summary of all relevant theories that are used to solve the research problems is explained in theoretical framework section.

A. Theoretical Description

There are four main theories used in this study, namely theory of prior knowledge, theory of listening, theory of reading text, and reading text to construct knowledge.

1. Theory of Prior Knowledge

Commonly, people learn in order to gain new knowledge. Learning is intended by someone to broaden his or her knowledge. For instance, learners learn English in order to give them more knowledge about the language so that they are able to use it in communication. Learning a language will need efforts to understand. It cannot be learned easily. Brown 2000: 1 states that “language learning is not a set of easy steps that can be programmed in a quick do-it-yourself kit.” Thus, it will take time to comprehend a language well. Moreover, Stern 1983: 20 defines language learning as “conscious language development particularly in formal school-like PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 12 setting.” However, in the process of learning a language, the learners are aware of what they are doing. It is undeniable that in the learning process the learners will obtain information and build a new understanding, but learners cannot construct new knowledge without having existing knowledge on what to learn. Ausabel’s meaningful learning theory believes that in the process of learning, the human organism needs to relate the new information to the existing information in the mind Brown, 1994: 79. Therefore, the learners will understand the new material well if they can relate it to the knowledge the learners already possess. Similar to the theory of meaningful learning, Brownell 1996: 10 also states that learning means to construct new knowledge and understanding based on what the students possess. It implies that the students need to be actively involved in the process of learning and do not merely receive the information from the teacher. Here, Brownell implicitly suggests that the existing knowledge contributes the successful learning. Furthermore, he explains that the existing knowledge will provide different effects in learners’ abilities to retain information, solve problems, and acquire new knowledge. Therefore, constructing students’ knowledge is needed before the lesson. In learning English, in which the students are to master its four skills, constructing knowledge is also significant. From the four English skills, listening is often neglected and merely learned without activating background knowledge. The students often listen to the recording and answer a number of questions related to the recording, no matter they are familiar to the recording or not. However, according to Nunan 1999: 4, in learning listening, the task to construct students’ background