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Title : Improving Students’ Reading Comprehension Ability Through
Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition A Classroom Action Research at Class VIIIA of SMP Negeri 1 Matesih in the Academic Year of
20092010 by Handini, S890908209
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
A. The Background of the Study
Language is basic for human, especially for communication. We express our feelings, thought and stimulate action and reaction through language. It
becomes a mean of communication in its role and function. People can not live without languages. They interact and communicate with others in the society in
order to fulfill their needs by means of a device called language. Language and human being are two un-separated components. It is a means of communication
for individuals that brings them into relationship with their environment. It is defined as a system for encoding and decoding information. Language is used to
communicate and to say things to each others, and to express communication needs. Language also has functions to communicate general attitude towards life
and others. Without language, there would be no progress, no civilization, and no
culture. So, it is inevitable that people should study language because people can get information about some subject and develop science and technology by using
a language. One of the languages that has an important function in international
communication is English. It becomes popular than other languages. Most fields of life in the world, such as education, sport, science, medicines and technology
use English. In Indonesia, English serves as a foreign language. It is taught in schools because it is the most dominant foreign language and also the first foreign
language.
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Considering the importance of English, the government of Indonesia has put English in a school curriculum. It becomes a compulsory subject that is taught
from elementary school to university. Among foreign languages, English has a special position because it is the only foreign language that is used as an
international communication around the world. By learning English, the students of Indonesia are hoped to be able to communicate in English.
English covers four language skills namely reading, listening, speaking, and writing. Learning English means learning the four language skills
Widdowson, 1978: 1. Listening and reading are called receptive skills while speaking and writing are called productive ones. In learning English, Indonesian
learners still find difficulties. Those difficulties are partly caused by different systems between Indonesia and English, such as vocabulary, grammar, culture,
and so on. The differences of the systems create many problems in learning English language.
English and Indonesian languages also have a different grammatical system or rule. Consequently, there is no guarantee that the students who have
good understanding of Indonesian text will have good understanding of English ones automatically. It is easier to read and understand Indonesian texts than to
read English ones because the students have mastered vocabulary and the structural system of Indonesian. Many Indonesian students still find difficulties in
reading although English is always stated in every curriculum. To read English texts is not easy. The students should develop their
comprehensive skills in order to get information or ideas from the text. It means that the students have to learn about words, phrases, sentences, and English texts.
It is difficult for students to catch the ideas of the text without understanding the text itself. Teaching reading comprehension should be designed in the particular
way so that a good atmosphere in the teaching-learning process can be created and students become active in learning. Through students
‟ active learning, they can share and express their opinion freely.
In the formal education, among the four language skills, reading is the most frequently taught, because reading is a means of learning in all subjects.
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Reading is one of the language skills which has important roles. Bamman 1963: 1 states that reading is truly a basic mean of learning in all subject. It means that
reading is very important because in every subject, pupils learning activities involve reading. Carrell 1996: 1 states:
For many students, reading is by far the most important of the four skills in second language, particularly in English as second or foreign language.
Certainly, if we consider the study of English in second year Junior High School around the world-the situation in which most English learners find
themselves-reading is the main reason why students learn language.
Based on Carrell‟s statement, in English as foreign language, reading is really
important than the other skills, such as speaking, writing and listening. Reading text also provides good models for English writing. When a
teacher teachs the writing skill, she or he will need to show students a model of what she or he is encouraging them to do. Reading text also provides
opportunities to study language including vocabulary, grammar, punctuation, and to study the way of constructing sentences, paragaphs, and texts.
In the
Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan KTSP
for Indonesian Junior High School, English teaching has a purpose to develop communicative
competence in the form of oral and written language, namely reading, listening, speaking, and writing. It means that a teacher must teach students to learn to use
the language. Therefore, it is expected that students should learn to use the language to communicate. The objective of teaching English in Junior High
School is stressed on reading comprehension and provides the students with comprehending knowledge. It means that the abilty of reading must be followed
by understanding or comprehending a text. The students should have reading comprehension ability to build a good
understanding of an English text. To attract students‟ attention in teaching reading
is a hard job for a teacher. For this reason, every effort is made to build wholesome attitudes in children, to give them sense of belonging and a feeling of
being accepted and respected, and to provide many success experiences. Aebersold and Field 1997: 65 also state that to become better readers, students
need to be aware of how they read and what they could do to improve
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comprehension. Therefore, the use of methods and technique in a teaching- learning process that relate to the learners is necessary to be considered.
Unfortunately, Indonesian Junior High School students still found difficulties in understanding the content of English texts that they read. There
were so many factors causing the low reading ability of the students. It was caused by the internal factor that was from the students themselves and from the
external factors such as, the teacher and teaching techniques that was used by the teacher. In SMP Negeri 1 Matesih, the researcher found that the students
‟ reading comprehension was low. It was indicated by the low scores of the reading
comprehension ability. This was caused by students ‟ problems, especially, in
understanding vocabularies, finding main ideas, finding detail information, and so on. Dealing with the problems, the writer found that the teaching technique that
was used by the teacher was the main factor causing the students ‟ difficulties in
comprehending a text. The researcher noticed that the way the teacher taught reading was not encouraging students to be active. During the lesson the teacher
just read the written text without knowing whether the students got the information or not. Besides that, the teacher in SMP N 1 Matesih never used
study groups or pairs in teaching reading. The writer found out that there were gaps among the students. Only some students have good achievements and are
active to follow the teaching-learning process and the others were passive. Most of them were sleepy, bored, not enthusiastic to follow the teaching and learning
process. So, the interaction in the class was low. Therefore, the teacher should seek appropriate ways in teaching reading.
Based on the explanation above, the writer applied Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition CIRC method in teaching reading comprehension to
Class VIIIA of SMP Negeri 1 Matesih. Arends 2004: 356 states that Cooperative Learning is a teaching method that makes maximum use of cooperative activities
involving pairs and small group of learners in the classroom. Within cooperative learning groups the students discuss the material to be learned with each other,
help and assist each other to understand it, and encourage each other to work hard. Cooperative learning groups may be used to teach specific content formal
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cooperative learning group, to ensure active cognitive processing of information during a lecture or demonstration informal cooperative learning group, and to
provide long term support and assistance for academic progress cooperative base group Johnson, Johnson, and Holubec, 1993: 6. Kessler 1992: 8 also states
that cooperative learning offers good learning strategy in which warm atmosphere at the class can be created. In cooperative learning, there are five key elements,
they are positive interdependence, face to face promotive interaction, individual accountability, social skills, and group processing. By applying CIRC, students
will learn by themselves, learn more, feel more confident, feel more dedicated, enjoy the class, teach each other, and become independent learners. By using
CIRC in teaching and learning, the students can also use their own knowledge and share their knowledge with their friends. CIRC is a teaching method that can form
groups of students. There are some steps in conducting CIRC Steven and Slavin, 1995, as follow: 1 Preparing the material that would be used in the learning
process and dividing the learning material into some parts. 2 Warming up the class and giving some questions dealing with the topic. If the students do not
know about the topic, the researcher will give short explanation. 3 Asking the students to make a study group which consists of four to five students in each
groups heterogeneous learning teams. They will learn about the reading material. 4 Giving a text to each of group. They would share information, solve
the problems, read to each other and do the task given by the teacher. 5 Explaining some points of the material if the students have some difficulties. 6
Asking each group to presents or reads the result of their discussion. 7 Concluding.
All the background above supports the researcher to conduct Classroom Action Research in implementing Cooperative Integrated Reading and
Composition in order to improve the students‟ reading comprehension. Steven and
Slavin 1995: 6 state that CIRC Reading and CIRC Writing are usually used together, but can be used as separate reading and writing programs. Based on the
problems of the research in SMP Negeri 1 Matesih, the researcher just focus on reading comprehension. From this idea, the writer determines the topics of this
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research under the title: “Improving Students‟ English Reading Comprehension
Ability Through Cooperative Integrated Reading and C omposition”A
Classroom Action Research at Class VIIIA of SMP Negeri 1 Matesih in the Academic Year of 20092010 .
B. Problem Statements
