52 After that, the teacher asked the students about the homework
given in the previous meeting. It was about doing exercises in the students‘ worksheet. Then, the teacher and the students discussed the
homework. The teacher asked each student to read the question along with the answer. The students were quiet at that time.
After 30 minutes, the homework had been finished being discussed. Then, the teacher showed a simple text to the students by using
LCD projector. The text was a descriptive text about the description of a school taken from Scaffolding grade VII page 87. The teacher then read
the text aloud as an example. After that, she asked some students to read the text aloud based on her example. When there was a mistake in
pronouncing the words, the teacher just stopped the students and corrected it directly. The teacher corrected the students‘ pronunciation frequently
since the students‘ pronunciation was low.
After that, the teacher guided the students to understand the text. In guiding the students to understand the text, the teacher asked them to
translate each sentence. The teacher helped the students to translate the text. She asked them if there were any difficult words. However, no
student responded to her. Then the teacher asked the meaning of words such as
―state, park, hall, centre, between,‖ from the text, but no one answered her question. Then, the teacher asked them to find the meaning
of those words from the dictionary. Unfortunately, many students did not bring dictionary with them. The teacher then explained the meaning of
those words. However, some students on the back rows were noisy and did not pay attention to the teacher. Since the teacher just stood in front of
the class and paid her attention to the students around her, she did not aware that those students on the back rows were noisy.
After the text had been translated, the teacher showed some questions related to the text. The students were asked to answer them.
Then, the students wrote the all the questions and discussed the answers in pairs. Because the time was limited, the teacher gave 10 minutes for the
students to write and to answer the questions. After that, the students and the teacher discussed the answers of the questions. Suddenly the bell rang.
The teacher continued discussing the answers. However, no more than half of the students answered all the questions correctly. Then, the teacher
ended the class.
53 Besides conducting the class observation and interviews with some students,
the researcher also conducted a pre test to measure the students‘ ability in comprehending English texts.
1. Identification of Field Problems
A list of problems met by the students in comprehending English text by taken into account the result of interviews, class observation, and Pre-test
was made. The list of the field problems could be seen in the following table.
Table 1: Field Problems in the English Teaching and Learning Process of Grade VII C Students at SMP N 1 Mlati
No Field Problems
Code
1 The students made a lot of noise.
S 2
The students were not interested in the way the teacher taught. TT
3 Students found difficulties in comprehending an English text.
S 4
Translating each sentence in the text was the activity mostly done in understanding an English text.
TT 5
Students had low vocabulary mastery. S
6 Students‘ involvement in reading class was low.
S 7
The teacher seldom gave various English texts or English exposures to the students.
TT 8
The students depended too much on the dictionary in understanding an English text
S 9
Most of students were not active in the reading class. Only the clever students were active.
S 10 Pre-reading activities were ignored.
TT 11
The students‘ pronunciation was poor. S
12 Teaching and learning activities were not interesting for the students.
TT 13 The students were not interested in the material given.
TT 14 The teacher dominated the class.
T 15 The teacher did not give enough chances for the students to
express and share ideas about the topic of the lesson. TT
16 The teacher seldom related the students‘ background
knowledge to the text given. TT
S: Student T: Teacher
TT: Teaching Technique
54
2. Determining the Research Problems
After finding the field problems, the researcher conducted dialogic validity. Discussions with the English teacher to select the problems based on
the feasibility to be solved collaboratively were conducted. Based on the discussion the problems were formulated as the table below.
Table 2: The Feasible Problems to be Solved in the Teaching and Learning Process of Reading in Grade VII C Students
No Field Problems
Code
1 Students found difficulties in comprehending an English
text. S
2 Students had low vocabulary mastery.
S 3
Translating each sentence in the text was the activity mostly done in understanding an English text.
TT 4
Pre-reading activities were ignored. TT
5 The teacher seldom related the students‘ background
knowledge to the text given. TT
6 Teaching and learning activities were not interesting for
the students. TT
7 Students‘ involvement in reading class was low.
S 8
The teacher did not give enough chance for the student to express and share ideas about the topic of the lesson.
TT
The problems above were related to each other. The process of teaching and learning reading in SMP N 1 Mlati in general, and grade VII C in
detail, did not run as what the process of teaching and learning reading should be. It means that the process of teaching and learning reading did not follow
the three stages of teaching reading that proposed by Brown 2001, i.e., pre reading, while reading, and post reading teacher did not ignored the role of pre
reading phase. The teacher ignored the role of pre reading phase. As stated in chapter two, pre-reading phase might contain such activities as building the
55 students‘ vocabulary, recalling the students‘ background knowledge and
relating it to the material given could be done in this phase. When the teacher did not consider pre reading phase, she might fai
l in building the students‘ vocabulary related to the topic. As a result, the students were not ready for
comprehending the text. Besides, there was no activities, which could be a bridge to connect the students‘ background knowledge and the new
knowledge in the material given. Next, the role of media could not be neglected in the process of
teaching and learning reading. The existence of media helped the students in building their interest. When the students were interested in the lesson, they
felt that it is easier to understand the material. On the other hand, when the students were not interested in the material, they easily got bored with the
lesson. As a result, they did not pay attention to the teacher‘s explanation. Finally, all of the problems above caused the most significant problem
that the researcher tries to solve. The problem is that the students found difficulties in comprehending English texts.
3. Determining the Actions to Solve the Field Problems
After identifying the feasible problems to be solved, discussions with the collaborator in order to formulate some actions to overcome the problems
were conducted. Having discussed and considered the limitation of the time, energy, and fund, the researcher implemented Schema Activation Strategy in
improving the reading comprehension of grade VIII C students. According to
