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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
This study deals with the improvement of students’ reading comprehension skill through Lecfenco. This chapter covers some points
including the background of the research, the research problem, the objectives of the research, and the significance of the study.
A. Background of the Research
Information and communication technologies, which have been developing rapidly, have become one of the indispensable elements of the
21st century. They have influenced, like all other fields, educational institutions which are the most important sub-institutions of the social
structure. They have offered a favourable environment for the development and use of various methods and tools. A noteworthy progress has been
achieved since the first introduction of information and communication technologies into education. The type of education offered through tools
such letter, video, cassettes and television was called “distance education”. Distance education covers many different types of teaching and methods.
There are many definitions of it and one of the definitions of education comes from Greenberg. Greenberg 1998:36 defines as
“a planned teachinglearning experience that uses a wide spectrum of technologies to reach learners at a distance and is designed to
encourage learner interaction and certification of learning.”
Today, with the rapid developments in technology, various tools such as computers, the internet, cellular phones and satellites have been
incorporated into the journey of distance education and distance education PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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taken up in a broader sense. Modern tools such as computers and internet access can be an alternative way in the teaching and learning activities.
Computer and internet access is a type of technology that can be used to support and enhance learning because of the sophistication and effectiveness
of the facility. Those modern tools provide colourful images that can be interactive and visual aids to practice reading and writing. Therefore, the
teacher is able to use them to improve the students’ competence because they can increase the ability of lesson acceptance. As stated by Pike 1989
in the Silberman 2007:2 that adding visuals to lesson increasing retention from 14 to 38 percent.
By implementing technology, the researcher hopes the students are more likely reach higher levels of achievement and satisfaction, and develop
more confidence in their own learning capabilities Kelly 2004:55. To ensure that, the researcher is going to design and conduct learning by
applying technology so the students can have meaningful learning experiences and interaction. This research would like to apply computer use
as learning teaching tool because of some reasons. Firstly, the student’s centred models of teaching and learning have replaced the traditional
models, with the emergence of new advanced technologies. Secondly, it is improper preparation of students for higher education 9 months for learning
teaching process is not enough, thirdly the students have inequalities of the past different socio-economic background, capabilities, expectation, etc.
Then, it is realistic to look at ways in which the face to face mode that the students expect and are used to can be effectively combined with new
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technologies. Students trying to learn English as a second language need further language support. They need to practice in hearing language, reading
language, speaking language, and writing language in order to develop their experience and skills Ybarra Green, 2003. For doing such tasks, they
are in need of using various tools which can help them learn the language easily and effectively.
The teaching of English in Junior High School is directed to develop students’ ability to understand and create short functional text, monolog and
essay in the form of procedure, descriptive, report, recount and narrative Depdiknas, 2006:2. English as other languages always involve the four
language skills; listening, speaking, reading and writing. Brown 2004: 118 stated that listening and reading are receptive skills. People extract meaning
from discourse they hear or read. Meanwhile, the speaking and writing are productive skills. Although there are four skills of language but the
researcher only confine the research on reading skill. The reading activity is aimed at understanding the meaning of a text.
Students with good reading competence will be able to understand the text easily and it will help to support the other skills. Therefore, reading
competence is very importance for the students. Moreover, it is stated in the Content Based Curriculum 2006 that the Graduate Competence Standard of
Junior High School is that the students should have good comprehension on written interpersonal and transactional text in the form of procedure,
descriptive, report, recount and narrative BNSP, 2006: 9. That is why students should have good reading competence in order to pass the National
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Examination, since the examination requires students get at least 5,5 for English, otherwise she will fail BSNP 2015: 4.
Teaching reading for the Ninth Year students of Junior High School involves a competence standard and three basic competences. The
competence standard is to understand the content of written short functional texts and essays in the form of procedure and report for daily interaction.
The three basic competences are: 1 reading aloud and meaningfully written short functional texts and essays in the form of procedure and report
using acceptable pronunciation, stress and intonation; 2 responding the content of written short functional texts accurately, fluently and acceptably;
3 responding the content and the generic structure of written procedure and report essay accurately, fluently and acceptably Depdiknas, 2006: 16
– 19. Moreover, it is in the syllabus of the teaching of reading, the students
should be able to; 1 identify words’ meaning; 2 identify detailed information; 3 determine pronoun reference; 4 find out main ideas; and
5 infer implicit information. In fact, there are 7 seven indicators have to be mastered by the
students for answering the questions of procedure text such as: 1 determine the general information 2 find out certain information; 3 find
implicit information; 4 identify explicit information; 5 determine pronoun reference; 6 determine communicative purpose; and 7 identify
word meaning. But the second indicator namely, find out the main idea of paragraph is rarely tested for the kind of procedure text. Furthermore, most
procedure texts are presented in short sentence and not consist of paragraph. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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On Ujian Nasional in academic year 20142015, it was shown that the results of achivement for the test items of procedure questions above were
not good. Based on result of Persentase Penguasaan Materi Soal Bahasa Inggris Ujian Nasional SMPMTs Tahun Pelajaran 20142015 on test item
was known that 1 only 73.91 students understood the question about menentukan informasi rinci dari teks procedure, 2 64.64 students
understood the question about menentukan informasi tertentu dari teks procedure, 332.28 students understood the questions about menentukan
rujukan kata salah satu kata ganti dari teks procedure and 4 84.09 students understood the question about menentukan makna kata dari teks
procedure. Moreover, the result of Ujian Nasional for indicator of procedure questions about menentukan gambaran umumpikiran utama paragraf,
informasi tertenturincitersirat, rujukan katamakna katafrasa atau tujuan komunikatif dalam teks berbentuk procedure showed that 63.73 students
only understood. The result of Ujian Nasional above was for province area, how was the writer’s school. Therefore, the writer conducted pre-test to find
out the difficulties of test for the students. After conducting the pre-test, the researcher discovered that the
students had difficulties on; 1 determining the general information 2 finding out certain information; 3 finding out implicit information; 4
identifying explicit information; 5 determining pronoun reference; 6 determining communicative purpose; and 7 identifying word meaning. It
meant that all indicators of the question need to be improved. Moreover, the PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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mean score of the pre-test was 63.79, but the minimum passing grade or Kriteria Ketuntasan Minimal is 70.00.
The students’ failure in learning reading above was due to many things, namely: 1 the students have low vocabulary mastery; 2 less
motivated students that led to the fact that they were very passive during the teaching and learning process; 3 the limited media and materials used by
the teachers during the teaching and learning process; 4 monotonous teaching that resulted in uninteresting teaching and learning process. All
these problems cause the students’ achievement decrease and the target of
the teaching process cannot be reached, especially procedure text mastery. To overcome those problems, a strategy in English learning activity which
is suitable with the situation is needed by the researcher. The strategy should improve
or optimize the students’ skill and provide enough exercises for answering questions of reading skills. The researcher creates the learning
media for two skills reading and writing, but the researcher only uses the reading section for this research. Hopefully, the researcher is able to focus
on the research of reading comprehension. Learning strategies can be used as a teaching tool to deliver content
and get feedback from the students, and will ultimately improve the competence of learners. Standard Process mentioned in No. 412008 that the
learning process should be active, creative, effective, fun and innovative. These activities should be interesting and challenging the most of the
students in their daily life. But in this study, the researcher limits the problems of JHS students reading comprehension grade IX. The researcher
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has to find a strategy that meets the criteria and consider the needs and circumstances of students. Through the steps of exploration, elaboration and
confirmation, hopefully learning activities will be successful for instructional purposes that students can maximize their competence. An
effective educational scheme has to prepare the students to think by themselves, to be creative and original, to solve problems and to interact
with his surroundings in a collaborative way In accordance with the condition, the teacher should find an
appropriate strategy of teaching to improve the students’ reading comprehension ability. The researcher and other teacher collaborated on
conducting an action research in the reading instruction by using Lecfenco. This strategy is selected for some reasons. First, by presenting the electronic
materials on Lecfenco to the whole class and have the students view and work on together will make them pay more attention and participate more
actively. Electronic materials on Lecfenco are some extent different form from the textbook or printed worksheet that the students usually deal with
during the teaching and learning process. Second, electronic materials on Lecfenco are easy to find and various formats. Working with various forms
of materials will not make the students bored. This will make students pay more attention and participate more actively during the learning process,
and will lead them to understand the material better. The better understanding
will gradually result in the improvement on the students’ reading comprehension. Third, the use of electronic materials on Lecfenco
can be highly motivating since students often enjoy the chance of reading PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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texts which are equipped with images and animation that ease them to comprehend the materials. Fourth, Lecfenco contained animation, video and
sound. This will encourage students’ interest so that the materials are conveyed quickly and effectively to the students. Fifth, the researcher
adapted and adopted materials taken or downloaded from many sources to meet the students need.
After finding the problems in the classroom, the writer will conduct the classroom action research CAR as McNiff 1998:18 states that the
research is the result of the researcher’s reflection and evaluation on his
teaching learning process in the classroom last year. The researcher found the problem, then identified the problems and found the way to solve them
by using Lectora inspire, that hopefully it was an innovative one. This classroom action research entitled Improving English competence of Junior
High School students through Lecfenco was implemented in 2 cycles of 4 steps, they were: 1 Planning, 2 Acting 3 Observing, and 4 Reflecting.
The use of Lecfenco for teaching reading is assumed to be able to overcome the students’ problem in reading comprehension. The reasons are:
1 Lecfenco may contain many exercises on vocabulary development. The materials are often equipped with images which will ease the students to
identify unfamiliar words given. Besides, the formats of exercises are various and the images presented are colourful. This is another challenging
and interesting feature of electronic materials since the students become more interested and enjoy the learning process.; 2 by working on Lecfenco
dealing with exercises on vocabulary, students’ vocabulary mastery are PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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gradually improved. The students’ difficulties in finding detailed information are caused by the limited vocabularies mastered by them. The
more vocabularies mastered the easier they understand sentences or even texts. This will ease them to find detailed information in texts. Beside,
electronic reading passages are more interesting and challenging to read than the traditional ones; 3 researcher may produce their exercise on
pronoun reference so that the students are accustomed to determine references; 4 Lecfenco may contain pictures and animation. The features
do not occur in a printed text. Most of the students are lazy to read the printed text because they are not interested in it.
The researcher intends to create a medium of English learning, especially materials of procedure text that can be accessed by students to
learn English well, at school or at home. The researcher made the media by using Lectora Inspire Demo which can be obtained through the Internet for
free. Media is made so flexible and can be accessed online or offline by JHS students and allow them to learn English more effectively and efficiently.
But Lecfenco has been made offline for some reasons namely: 1 there are few students have the internet access 2 internet access in school is not
good enough. Therefore, the researcher gives file of Lecfenco in the end of research. The advantages of Lectora Inspire are
1.
Lectora is used to create websites
,
interactive e-learning content
,
and presentation
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2.
The content development of learning media in Lectora can be published in a variety of output such as HTML
,
single file executable
,
CD
-ROM,
as well as e
- learning
standards such as SCORM and AICC
. 3.
Lectora is compatible with a variety of Learning Management System
LMS 4.
Lectora
is
very easy to use User Friendly
5.
Lectora has many features that can be used for the development of media in accordance with requirements
6.
Lectora has plenty of templates
and other
supporting facilities
:
Snagit
,
Camtasia
,
flypaper
. 7. Lectora
can create kinds of test easily.
That is why the writer chooses Lectora as a learning media in teaching learning activity.
Then the researcher’s expectation by giving media is the students are able to continue to learn and more often to practice writing and
reading in English at home.
B. Research Problems
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