Background of the Study

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

Language plays as a tool of communication. It is useful to express feelings, ideas or opinions between speakers and listeners or readers. It is also useful to develop knowledge, technology and culture. Language also is used in many different kinds of social situation for many different purposes. It mea ns that language is a vital part of human communication. As Jean Berko Gleason said: Language is a basic to our existence that life without words is difficult to envision. Because speaking, listening, reading and writing are such fundamental aspects of our daily life, they seem to be ordinary skills. Executed easily and effortlessly, language use guides us through our day. It facilitates our relationship with others and helps us understand world events and the art and sciences. 1 English is one of the important languages in the world, because it is widely used and studied all over the world. Many books of science, technology, art and other published issued are written in English. In other words, English is an international language. 2 In Educational world especially in Indonesian school, English is a compulsory subject in the national curriculum. It is taught from elementary school up to the university level. It means that English has important role so that it is taught in the schools. To master English, someone has to master its skills: speaking, listening, reading, and writing. As one of the four language skills, reading provides students with some activities to help them to comprehend the text and to train to be skillful readers who read effectively. 1 Jean Berko Gleason and Nan Bernstein Ratner, Psycholinguistics, Second Edition, Harcourt: Brace College Publisher: 1998, p. 2 2 Sandra Lee McKey, Teaching English As An International Language, England: Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 5 1 One of the text types is narrative text. It is one of texts studied by students in this era as school level curriculum. It is also offered as aesthetic rea ding because one reads it not only for enjoyment and pleasure but also for getting knowledge by introducing to new people, exploring other culture, and expanding the world. 3 To achieve the goal of learning, teacher must have or create a good teaching strategy to make the class effective and well-organized. Therefore, in teaching narrative text, teacher needs good teaching strategy. One of those strategies is by using interactive learning, where the whole class working together as individual, small groups, pairs, and also individual works. It provides work that involves a number of different arrangements. This strategy also encourages a friendly and relaxed learning environment. 4 In the era of communicative language teaching, i nteraction is, in fact, the heart of communication; it is what communication is all about. “Interactive learning is one of the principles approach or indirect approach of communicative language teaching”. 5 According to Anthony’s model, approach is the level at which assumptions and beliefs about language and language learning are specified; methods is the level at which theory is put into practice and at which choices are made about the particular skills to be taught, the content to be taught, and the order in which the content will be presented, technique is the level at which classroom procedures are described. As Chaudron Craig states that: Interaction is viewed as significant because it is argued that only interaction the learner can decompose the t eaching-learning structures and derive meaning from classroom events, interaction gives learners the opportunities in corporate structures into their own speech, and the meaningfulness for learners of classroom events of any kind, whether thought as intera ctive or not will 3 Fraida Dubin and Elite Olshtain, Reading by All Means, New York: Addison Wesley Publishing Company, 1990, p. 477 4 Jim Scrivener, Learning Teaching: A Guide Book for English Language Teachers, Second Edition South Yarra : Macmillan, 2005, p. 84 5 H. Douglas Brown, Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy, Second Edition, New York: Longman Group Ltd, 2001, p. 165 depend on the extend to which communication has been jointly constructed between the teacher and the learner. 6 Based on the explanation above, the writer has as intention to make teaching learning narrative text be alive by using interactive learning.

B. Limitation and Formulation of the Problem