Background of the Study

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

English is the global language used by the international community in all aspects. They use English for their diplomacy, business, science, technology, banking, computing, communicating, ect. Those make the role of English become very important. Today English is widely taught around the world as a second language. But in Indonesian, English is as foreign language. It is learnt by the students in all levels kindergarten, elementary, junior, and senior high school and university. Recognizing the reality of the importance of English nowdays and for the future, learning English should be applied because the competition that will be faced not only in regional but also global competition. Therefore, everyone must be able to communicate in English, one of the efforts is the implementation of English as main subjects in Indonesian curriculum. Based on curiculum, the implementation of English learning includes four skills, they are: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. These are the skills which must be mastered and applied by students in all aspects, it aims to increase their competence in using English. Among those fours skills, reading is one of kills which have to be taught. This case shows that reading is very important skill to be mastered by the students because by reading students will get knowledge, new information, enrich their vocabulary, etc. commit to user 2 According to Brown 2004: 118 listening and reading are receptive skills. Receptive skills are the ways in which people extract meaning from the discourse that they hear and see. It means when the reader or listener receives information from what they hear and see, they use their prior knowledge as the process of comprehension. Actually, reading cannot be separated from comprehension, without comprehending the text, the readers especially the students will not understand and will not receive the message or information from reading materials. Essentially, reading is a process used by the reader to understand and to get a message that is conveyed by the writer through the media of written language. Reading ability is an important tool for academic success because it is an important activity in life which students can update their knowledge, enrich vocabulary, add knowledge, ect. But in fact, the students still have low ability in reading competence, yet they still lack in understanding reading material. It is caused by many factors such as: they rarely read, lack of vocabulary, low motivation, and inappropriate teaching strategy used when the teachers attempted to explain reading materials Kamal Muhtar, 2010: 3. The teacher’s strategies in teaching reading are important factors to improve the students’ ability in reading skill. The teacher should choose an appropriate strategy in order to make students achieve adequate competence in reading. There are some kinds of strategies that can be applied by the teacher in teaching reading. Semantic mapping strategy is supposed to be appropriate strategy to develop her students’ ability in reading. Semantic mapping helps the commit to user 3 students develop prior knowledge by seeing the relationship in a given topic. It is a visual representation of a particular concept Cooper, et al., 2009: 102. This strategy is most effective when it is used before, during, and after reading and when the teachers serve as the guide or facilitator to their students who construst their own semantis maps. When semantic mapping is as prereading, helps to active students’ prior knowledge schemata. By creating semantic mapping based on the students knowledge, the students are prepared with the topic to be read Heimlich and Pittelman in Antonnaci, et al., 2011: 18. Further, the teacher may use students’ prereading semantic maps to determine how much knowledge building is required before students read the text Antonnaci 2011: 18. Using semantic mapping in whilst-reading helps the students to record the information obtained from the text. By making a semantic map during reading a text, the students’ prior knowledge are completed with the new information Muhtar, 2010: 61. When using semantic mapping as postreading, teachers em ploy students’ disscussions to help them recall and organize information that they have learned from reading text as they make connection to words or concepts related to the topic Antonnaci, et al., 2011:18. In addition, this strategy can be called as students-centered, because it makes use of the students’ prior knowledge in understanding and applying word concepts that focus on their knowledge of the vocabulary related to the content and students control the input at each stage of the map’s building. It can be used individuallly, in small groups, or even the entire class. To improve students’ word knowledge and comprehension through their work with partners or the small group, they can use many media to present semantic mapping such as: commit to user 4 transparency or a computer presentation, various sizes, and color of paper to visually their knew knowledge. On the contrary, lecturing strategy is used to describe a lesson where the teacher has control. It is also called as the teacher- centered. The teacher’s duty in this strategy is only telling the material directly by face to face with the students. The teacher usually spends time lecturing; then the teacher guides the students through a complex problem. Hence, this strategy doesn’t give the students’ opportunity to be active and critical in solving the problems. The students usually have no curiosity to study about reading, yet they only listen to the explanation from the teacher and often make them feel bored. If this strategy is used by teacher in improving the s tudents’ ability in reading skill, it probably will be less effective. Besides the strategies, teaching learning process is affected by the students’ intelligence. It influences their ability in English skills especially in reading ability. Intelligence is the most important tool for success and failure of students in learning and also as personality factor that influence the result of teaching and learning process. Helmi, 2011: 34. According to Carol 2012: 1 intelligence is capacity for knowledge and the ability to acquire: capacity for reason, ability to comprehend relationship, ability to evaluate and judge, and capacity for original and productive thought. Thus, it shows the students’ capacity in getting knowledge and their ability to learn about, learn from, understand, and interact with environment. An English teacher has an important role to manage and help students to get success in their learning. One of the efforts, an English teacher should assist commit to user 5 her students in implementing reading ability by giving them a suitable strategy how the students learn to receive the message and information in understanding a reading material. Therefore, the teacher’s role in assisting students in teaching learning process and students’ intelligence will influence their capacity and ability in understanding a reading material. Based on description above, the researcher is interested in carrying out the research entitled “The Effectiveness of Semantic Mapping to Teach Reading Viewed from Students’ Intelligence.”

B. Identication of the Problems