Background of Study INTRODUCTION

C. Scope of the Study

In order to avoid misunderstanding in interpreting the problem, the writer makes the scope of the study. In this paper, the writer limits the problem on the influence of Collaborative Strategic Reading CSR on students’ achievement in reading comprehension of narrative text at the second year students at SMA PGRI 109 Kota Tangerang.

D. Problems Formulation

Since there are many problems to identify, the writer formulates the problems as follows: “Was there any influence of Collaborative Strategic Reading CSR technique on students’ achievement in reading comprehension of narrative text?”.

E. Purpose of Study

The purpose of this study was to know the empirical evidence of the influence of using Collaborative Strategic Reading CSR technique on students’ achievement in reading comprehension of narrative text, especially in second grade of Senior High School.

F. Significance of the study

1. The result of the study hopefully can give information for the English teachers about the using of Collaborative Strategic Reading CSR technique in teaching reading. 2. The research is expected to be useful input for the students to encourage them to master their reading comprehension by using a different technique. 3. This study may also be a reference for the next researches who want to conduct a further research related to teaching reading, especially CSR. 4. The writer expects that the research will be useful for the writer herself, so it will broaden her knowledge in teaching reading. 5

CHAPTER II THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

A. Reading

Reading is viewed as one of the important skills in learning English as a foreign language. It is in line with McDonough who said that as a skill, reading is the most important foreign language skill. 1 It can be seen that reading becomes the most important skill because in some cases students have to read the English material to understand the written text. Furthermore, reading will be useful if someone can read many different materials and being able to understand them. 2 It means that reading is an important tool that can give so much helps in life.

1. General Concept of Reading

Reading has many definitions given by linguists. According to Grabe and Stoller, reading is the ability to draw meaning from the printed page and interpret this information appropriately. 3 Therefore, reading seems difficult skill for students who use English as a second language and foreign language because they have to transfer their mother language to the foreign language in comprehending the text. Based on the point of view above, generally reading is a complex process of human’s activity. As they are reading, they use their eyes and brain to get the meaning of the author’s message. In this sense, Harmer said that reading is an activity that uses the eyes and the brain in which the eyes have function to get the message or information and to send the message to the brain, 1 Jo McDonough and Christopher Shaw, Materials and Methods in ELT: Second Edition A Teacher’s Guide, Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2003, p. 89. 2 Beatrice S. Mikulecky and Linda Jeffries, More Reading Power, New York: Addison- Wesley Publishing Company, 1996, p. 2. 3 William Grabe and Fredricka L. Stoller, Teaching and Researching Reading, England: Pearson Education Limited, 2002, p. 11. and then the brain gets the message from the eyes and manages the message. 4 In addition, Aeberson stated that “reading is what happens when people look at a text and assign meaning to the written symbols in that text.” 5 It means that in activity of reading there is an interaction between what the reader looks of the text and what the author writes into printed symbols. In addition, Farris explained that: “Reading means getting meaning from print. Reading is not phonics, vocabulary, syllabication, or other „skills’, as useful as these activity may be. The essence of reading is a transaction between the words of an author and the main of a reader, during which meaning is constructed. This means that the main goal of reading instruction must be comprehension: above all, we want students to understand what is on a page. ” 6 The explanation above shows the general of reading as a transaction between the author and the reader in getting the meaning of the written text. It is strengthen by Nuttal who said that: “The view of reading offered in this book is essentially concerned with meaning, specifically with the transfer of meaning from mind to mind: the transfer of a message from writer to reader. As we shall see, it is not quite as simple as that, but we exclude any interpretation of word reading in which meaning is not central. We shall explore how we get meaning by reading and how the reader, the writer and the text each contribute to the process.” 7 From the explanations above, it can be known that reading is transformation from mind to mind, especially how the reader gets the meaning from the writer’s mind. 4 Jeremy Harmer, The Practice of English Language Teaching: New Addition, New York: Longman Publishing, 1991, p. 190. 5 Jo Ann Aebersold and Mary Lee Field, From Reader to Reading Teacher: Issues and Strategies for Second Language Classrooms, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 15. 6 Pamela J. Farris, Teaching Reading: A Balanced Approach for Today’s Classrooms, New York: McGraw Hill, 2004, p. 324. 7 Christine Nuttal, Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language, London: Macmillan, 2005, p. 3.