50 The last was determining the activities. In this step, the researcher
planned some interesting activities which could encourage the students to use their ability in comprehending the reading texts. In planning the actions, the
researcher worked together with the English teacher. 3.
Action and Observation In this step, the researcher did the actions that had been planned in the
previous step Kemmis McTaggart in Burns 2010: 8. The actions were done in five meetings; three meetings for Cycle I and two meetings for Cycle
II. After planning the action, the researcher and the English teacher carried out the act in the classroom.
While the researcher did the actions, her collaborators took notes of the class to observe the students‘ behaviors during the activities. The
collaborators used a checklist to observe and evaluate the events in the classroom. It was done to find problems during the class and see how effective
the actions were. 4.
Reflection With regard to the implementation processes, the team members
evaluated the result of the implementation. It was done by discussing the success of the action as problems happening in the classroom during the act
based on the observation and interview.
51
CHAPTER IV FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
This chapter discusses the findings and discussion which refer to the efforts to improve the students‘ reading comprehension through schema
activation strategy. They are presented in four headings: reconnaissance, the implementation of the actions, the general findings, and discussions.
A. Reconnaissance
The research began with finding problems in the field. The researcher gained information about the problems of the teaching learning reading by
conducting class observation. The researcher observed the situation of the English teaching and learning process in grade VII C of SMP N 1 Mlati. At
that time, the researcher also conducted interviews with some students and the English teacher. The description of the English teaching and learning process
could be seen in the vignette below. Date : March 28, 2013
Place : Class VII C
Before entering the classroom, the researcher met the English teacher in the teacher room in order to make sure that the researcher was
going to conduct class observation. Then, the researcher and the English teacher went to the VII C classroom. The class was noisy when the
researcher was entering to the classroom.
Firstly, the teacher greeted the students. There were 32 students in the class. Then, the teacher introduced the researcher and said that today
the researcher was going to observe the situation of the English teaching and learning process in grade VII C. The class was noisy, but the English
teacher directly tried to make them quiet.
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.
