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Chapter I Introduction
E. Background of the Study
Reading is a complex process because it includes transferring the message between writers and readers who have different background knowledge. In other
words, it is such kind of activity to comprehend the writer’s ideas or the way of the writer communicates with the readers by the way of the writer or painted the words.
So in reading, the readers have to construct the meaning while reading. One of the ways in constructing the meaning is by using readers’ background knowledge to get
the meaning or information in the text. In these cases, the level of readers’ knowledge is different one to the other. Sometime, the readers are poor or lack of relevant
cultural knowledge or they have enough relevant cultural knowledge but they do not use it optimally. As the result, they cannot comprehend what they read well.
According to Curriculum 2006 of National University of Laos intends to obtain the achievement of Competence Standard in students’ reading ability: 1 to
understand the meaning in transactional and interpersonal conversation formally and sustainably: 2 to understand the meaning in the short functional and monologue text
in the form of the narrative, spoof, and hortatory: 3 to express the meaning in the short functional and monologue text in the form of narrative, spoof, and hortatory
accurately, fluently and acceptably: 4 to understand the written monologue text in the form narrative accurately, fluently and acceptably in the daily life context and to
access the science: 5 to express the meaning in the written monologue text or essay in the form of narrative in the daily life content. The target of the achievement in
English competence is hoped 60 as criteria complete minimum. One of the four macro skills taught in an English language classroom is reading.
Reading is defined as a thinking process which requires a response from the reader may it be through making generalizations, drawing new inferences and planning to
succeeding steps based on what was read. The act of reading is process which
commit to user involves steps to achieve and reinforce understanding namely; word perception,
comprehension, reaction and integration Zintz Maggart, 1986:56. Reading comprehension has become the problems among students. These
conditions were identifies as the students got the difficulties to answer such questions especially for finding main ideas and inferences. Furthermore, they also got difficulty
to paraphrase. These difficulties were indicated as follows: 1 students incorrectly interpreted main idea with specific details: 2 they could not relate between one clue
to other and they failed determining the key point of the sentence: 3 The classroom situation made these situations even worse: 4 The students were passive during the
lecturing. They even showed no interest toward the subject. Then they low cooperation completed their negative respond to reading class. The students’ passivity
in the classroom was indicated as students kept silent during lecturing and they also had no respond when they were asked questions. In addition to their passivity, the
students also showed no interest toward reading class; many of them make noisy, play with their hand phone, discus with other topics and went out during the class.
Furthermore, their low cooperation was identified as they had no courage to share ideas with friends, tended to work individually and talked with their topics out of the
discussion. There were some causes of the mentioned problems above. The first cause
was from the students. It was identified that the students’ vocabulary mastery was poor. Then students had no contributive model during work group activity and
independent activity. From the teacher’s point of view, the teaching learning process showed that it was monotonous. Teacher less monitored the student activity. The
technique which was applied during teaching-leaning process made the students’ in such passive situation as they often got broad oral explanation from their teacher.
Even the teacher’s broad oral explanation was even considered fast to the students. In this view, reading was seen as a tool for cultural transmission and
socialization among people in a sense that texts were viewed as cultural artifacts which could be interpreted in various ways. Therefore, text processing depends on a
commit to user unique cultural context for each culture contributes to different ways of reading a text
Bernhardt, 1991:35. Moreover, reading means different things to different people, for some it is
recognizing written words. While for others it is an opportunity to teach pronunciation and practice speaking. However reading always has a purpose. It is part
of daily lives and generally assumed that everybody can do it. The reason for reading depends very much on the purpose for reading. Reading can have three main
purposes, for survival, for learning or for pleasure. Reading for survival is considered to response to our environment, to find out information and can include traffic signs,
advertising, and timetables. It depends on day-to-day needs of the reader and often involves an immediate response to a situation. In contras reading for learning is
considered to be the type of reading done in the classroom and is goal oriented. While reading for pressure is something that does not have to be done. For Nuttal 1996:
168-169 the central idea behind reading are: the idea of meaning, the transfer off meaning from one to another, the transfer of message from writer to reader, how we
get meaning by reading and how the reader, the writher and the text all contribute to the process. We can conclude that reading is a complex activity that involves both
perception and thought. Reading consists of two related processes: word recognition and comprehension. Word recognition refers to the process of perceiving how written
symbols correspond to one’s spoken language. Comprehension is the process of making sense of words, sentences and connected text. Readers usually make use of
background knowledge, vocabulary, grammatical knowledge, and experience with text.
The English teachers are teaching in the classroom, it like testing and asking questions to get information. I was often frustrated by the fact that students have
difficulties in reading comprehension because some students were citizen and some were from remote area and negative in second language, so they have different
background of English language there are four aspects of background such as word perception, comprehension, reaction and integration, poor reading
and listening.
commit to user Moreover, there is only a little enthusiasm to learn English. For some of them,
studying is a must which they have to do, not a need. Teaching English in such situation needs extra patience and effort; some teachers have limited experience to
teach the students in the class. Even though, from the previous research there were the problems with
students’ reading skill by some indicators as follows: 1 students could not predict the meaning of the words: 2 they lack of making inference: 3 The students could
not find the detail from the context: 4 The students were passive during teaching and learning process.
And the main causes of these problems were as follows: 1 teacher still used traditional approach and only gave few portions for reading where as reading is a
complex activity: 2 Teacher didn’t give enough attention to teach the students how to read in English correctly: 3 teacher did not have enough experience: 4 students
had differences level of knowledge, Low and poor reading: 5 students lack of practices and still do not master on reading comprehension: 6 students came from
remote area, so they had different limited knowledgeable. In recent years, Reading in the classroom it was using directed reading to
development in first language, and second foreign language L2FL setting has increased. Directed reading gives student highly engaged and focused on directed
reading. Actively guiding students through a reading frequently requesting student responses, offering comments when appropriate rather than asking students to read
text and rather than presenting the information to them orally, we can intersperse the reading and oral discussion in a way that produces high participation lessons. This is
especially useful for poor reader and poor listeners. Gregory and 2007: 103 state that graphic organizers can be used for
brainstorming at the beginning of lesson or unit to find out what students have already known. Graphic organizers can help students to be able to organize and
capture information, for example in reading assignment or when watching video. They are also as chronicle of a sequence of even of process. In addition, they relate
commit to user new information to previously learn information. Finally, they also function as tool
for checking understanding, note taking and summarizing and the culmination assessment. Further, Almasi 2003: 94 support to Gregory and Caloryn opinion
about the use of graphic organizers on reading. He state that graphic organizer help focus students’ attention to the meaner in which text is organized while they read.
This visual aid helps students anticipate the type for information they will encounter while reading and it helps them organize the incoming information as they read. Such
organization facilitates easy access, which enhance recall and comprehension. Base on those mentioned experts’ arguments, the researcher defines graphic organizer as,
in lines with the need of the research, graphic displays that enhance students’ opportunity to portray any information from the given passage for mean idea,
inference, and paraphrase both in individual and group work activity. Therefore, the researcher is sure that graphic organizes are good selection to solve the students’
problem on finding mean idea, inference and paraphrasing.
F. Problem Formulation
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