General Understanding of Reading Comprehension

is being read in the first place, whereupon the students will stop and re-think how reading is to be used. When the students find those problems, the students just focus on reading and avoiding that can be obstacles. c. PostAfter Reading According to Tankersley, in after reading, the students are asked to focus on showing their understanding and connecting their new knowledge to prior knowledge. 26 It means connecting the process among before, during, and after reading activity, it can help the students in understanding the text and the students are actively involving in reading. Furthermore, Brown also explains seven principles in interactive reading strategies. 27 The first is teacher must make sure students do not overlook the importance of specific instruction in reading skill. It means the teacher give the reading instruction before the students begin to read. In this part, the teacher let the students to do silent reading since they could focus on the text. The second is the teacher is acquired to use the technique that encourages students’ motivation. When the teacher asks the students to read, the teacher must prepare a technique that make students interested in reading such as Language Experience Approach LEA. LEA is made to make the students motivate in reading by themselves or encourage their intrinsic motivation, such as story mapping technique. In applying story mapping technique, students will involve in teaching and learning activity because they could draw their own story mapping elements using their creativity so that they will enjoy in reading. The third is the teacher provides the text that balance between its authenticity and readability. The authenticity in choosing reading text which is used by the teacher means language which is used based on the real world. Meanwhile, readability means lexical and structural difficulty in the text is suitable with the students’ ability level. The text can be said suitable if the text challenges them to read it not overwhelms. The forth is encouraging the development of reading strategies. The fifth is concluding both bottom-up and 26 Karen Tankersley, The Thread of Reading Strategy for Literacy Development, Alexandria: ASCD, 2003, p. 110. 27 Brown., op. cit., pp. 313 —315. top-down technique. The sixth is following SQ3R Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Recite, and Review sequence. In the SQ3R sequence, there are some steps that must be done by the students. The first is Survey means the students skim the text for an overview of main ideas. Then, Question, means the students ask the question what they are going to understand from the text. The third is Read. Read means while reading, the students try to answer the previous questions. Next is Recite. In doing Recite, the students identify key points to answer the Question and restate it into oral or written form. Review means students assess the important information on what they read and locate it into their long term memory. Based on both strategies above, it can be known that strategy in reading comprehension could help student in reading the text, whether it is before reading, while reading or after reading. In addition, according to Brown there are seven principles in interactive reading strategies that wi ll solve students’ problem in reading.

B. Narrative Text

1. General Understanding of Narrative Text

Narrative is a text which tells a story. The story can be realistic, fantastic or combination between realistic and fantastic. 28 Narrative is a text which has a generic structure including the beginning, the middle and the ending. 29 It means that narrative text is the text which tells sequence of story that can be realistic, fantastic or both. According to Dymock, generally the story tells about what happend in the story, who did it, what to whom and why. 30 From those explanations above can be known that narrative text is a text that tell story which start from the beginning to the ending. Moreover, narrative text also tells about the characters in the story, the event in the story, and the reason why the event happened. A story is a content of the text that tells about ups and downs events 28 Sarwoko, Mandiri English SMA: English on Target, Jakarta: Erlangga, 2014, p. 109. 29 Angela Carrasquillo, et al., Beyond the Beginnings Literacy Interventions for Upper Elementary English Language Learner, Great Britain: Cromwell Press Ltd., 2004, p. 74. 30 Susan Dymock, Comprehension Strategy Instruction: Teaching Narrative Awareness, International Reading Association, 2007, p. 161. which is occurring or experiencing by the character. 31 It tells that narrative text is a text which tells a story and the story is telling about events which happen to the character. Langan told that narrative gives the clear information by relating the details of the story. 32 The details of the story such as when the narrative text tells about Cinderella, automatically narrative text will tell about Cinderella character in detail is like Cinderella is a beautiful girl whose dad re-married with cruel widow with a daughter. Cinderella was acted as a house maid when her father went to work. Narrative text generic structure can be used as a tool to make the students be more understanding about the story is telling. It is because the generic structure of narrative text has systematic chronological order that make students be easier to identify the story in correct arrangement. Anderson and Anderson defined narrative as spoken or written text. If it is as spoken form can be through radio or television while if it is as a written from can be presented by books or newspaper. 33 It can be inferred that narrative is kind of text in written or spoken form that tell the story to readers or listener. The narrative text is told by a narrator. A narrator is a person who tells the story it can be a first person or a third person. 34 If a third person narrator who tells the story, it means that the author wants to bring the reader to feel what is happening in the story, meanwhile, if a first person who tells a story it is inferred that the author wants to the reader involve in the story. According to Lewin, there are six critical components of work fiction which can be seen as the concept of narrative, as follows, title, characters, setting, main events, problems and conflicts, and solution or resolution. 35 Those critical components will help the students to see the elements of narrative text directly. There are many types of 31 Mieke Bal, Narratology Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, 3 rd Ed., Canada: University of Toronto Inc., 2009, p. 4. 32 John Langan, College Writing Skills Media Edition, 5 th Ed., United States of America: Mc Graw Hill, 2003, p. 195. 33 Anderson and Anderson, loc. cit. 34 Cramer, et al., loc. cit. 35 Lewin, op. cit., p. 68.