Since English which is taught in mechanical engineering is English for specific academic purpose, Mechanical Engineering students are expected to actively
use English in their academic setting, that is to understand English texts which are useful for their study, to prepare themselves in international academic forums; in
professional setting, that is in job market competitions; and even in international communication setting, that is to be able to communicate with colleagues or people
from different countries. Therefore, these students need to be prepared to use English in terms of academic, professional and personal uses.
The objectives of learning English in mechanical engineering are tailored to the need of second semester students. The course includes integrated skills in the
areas which are needed by second semester students to prepare them in their daily life as mechanical engineering students such as capable to understand and speak in
English in specific topic, capable to read and understand the manual books which mostly written in English and also capable to written short report in English.
The focus of this study is reading skill because the information around the world grows fast and there are so many articles about mechanical terms released
everyday and written in English. Reading is very important for students when they are in the workplace: they have to expand their knowledge through reading so they
can adjust themselves with the growth of workplace needs. In answering those requirements, mechanical engineering students need to have the ability to read
comprehensively. Hot Potatoes as one of computer-assisted language learning is used to
improve reading competence. Hot Potatoes will serve some exercises which can help
the students practice their reading skill. Hot Potatoes is a software suite containing six applications that are well-suited for use in an educational setting. It is a simple way of
creating attractive, web-based interactive exercises with feedback for the students. Hot Potatoes Suite enables teachers to create interactive web-based teaching exercises
which can be delivered to any internet-connected computer equipped with a browser. In Hot Potatoes, the teachers do not need to know anything about these languages in
order to use the programs. All they need to do is enter the data for exercises questions, answers, responses etc.. CALL can provide an available learning
experience to students and give them the opportunity to practically experience the ideas presented and strengthen their learning. It is a motivating way to engage the
students in language tasks presented through a computer screen. The course is not simply a computer version of textbook, instead, the material and exercises to provide
interactive and engaging tasks for students. Action research is conducted in this study. The goal of this research is to solve
the specific problems in classroom. It will help the teacher provide alternative teaching techniques and also help mechanical engineering students to improve their
reading competence. Action research is used because it provides a process to improve, incorporate change involve educators to work together to improve their own
practice Ary: 2010. Action research is conducted through some steps by observing, planning, acting and reflecting. It is done in the cyclic. There are four steps in the
cycles, first is planning, in this phase, the researcher and participants identify a problem or issue and develop a plan of the action in order to bring about
improvement in a specific area of the research context. Second is action. In this
phase, the plan puts into an action over an agreed period of time. Third is observation, this phase involves the researcher in observing systematically the effect of the action
and documenting the action. Fourth is reflection, the researcher reflects on, evaluates and describes the effects of the action in order to make sense of what has happened
and to understand the issue more clearly. This research is to bring about positive changes toward the education. The students actualize themselves to explore their
potential to get better understanding result through various data and what they have got. They are willing to make better changes to overcome the problems
.
B. Problem Identification
The vocational college provides graduates who are able to use English as mechanical engineering students and later will be used English as engineers. Reading
competence, especially, it is taught with other skills in English integrately. It is needed by students to be able to comprehend mechanical texts. Based on the
interview and need assessments which have been conducted to the participants, the researcher found out that students had some reading problems.
The problems were found in the learning process and students’ reading achievement. The teaching learning process from the teacher and students were not
well. It makes them get difficulty to learn reading skills well because they do not have adequate exposures and time to practice in English. The monotonous process of
learning made students discourage to learn. The teacher still used ordinary way
almost every day. Reading exercises employed using paper which had been given to
the students one week before reading lesson. They were just asked to do the exercises which had been written in the photocopied paper exercises.
The problem on students’ reading competence could also be found from the students’ achievement. The students’ reading competence was still low. It could be
seen from the students’ reading score
.
The students’ reading competence was low because they had difficulties in understanding the text. They got it difficult in
understanding sentences, finding the meaning of the sentences and drawing conclusions. The students needed a lot of time in understanding the text. Those all
made their achievement low and caused failure in the learning process. This action research offers CALL which uses Hot Potatoes which can be used
by students to improve their reading competence in English. CALL which offered can use the internet connection to support the exercises. It will foster students in
achieving reading competence and it will make students more independent in learning English. They can practice what they have learnt in classroom by doing exercises
outside the classroom. By using technology, the students will be able to enjoy the exercise seriously because while learning English, they can also play with their
laptop.
C. Problem Limitation
To limit the study in order to be specific to conduct and find particular problems easier, this study covers classroom action research. Action research covers
the teaching learning process which is conducted using CALL. The learning process which is conducted using CALL could involve the activities which were done by the
students in practicing reading. The activities were included in one topic of reading. In
a topic, the students should do the activities like crossword puzzle, matching for the pre-reading activities. Reading comprehension was served as while reading activities
which include multiple choices, true false questions, and short answers. The post- reading included gap fillings and crosswords. The roles of the teacher are to monitor
the learning process and check the students’ understanding by asking related questions or giving feedbacks. There are some skills were explored in this research,
namely, recognizing vocabularies related to the text, finding the main idea of the text, skimming, scanning the information in the text, drawing conclusion, interpreting the
text based on the background knowledge. In a more specific area, this study is intended to improve reading competence
using CALL for mechanical engineering students. Reading skills are explored more, since they need reading skill to make them easier to understand manual books which
mostly written in English. It also will be useful for them when they enter a working field. The reading aspects which were explored in this study were vocabulary and
reading comprehension. Vocabulary is needed by the students to enlarge their mechanical engineering term. Reading comprehension helped them to comprehend
the meaning of the text. Exercises are created based on second semester’s syllabus. In my action
research study, the target population is all students in the class room n=30 of second semester students of mechanical engineering in Gadjah Mada University, students
will be invited to identify their problems and together with the researcher find out the solution to make learning process improves and they can improve their English
competence.
D. Research Problems
The research questions are formulated as following to guide my action research in solving the students’ reading competence:
1. How can teaching learning process of reading skills in Mechanical
Engineering study program be conducted using computer-assisted language learning?
2. How does computer-assisted language learning improve the Mechanical
engineering students’ reading competence?
E. Research Objectives
The objectives of the research are first; to describe the learning process using computer assisted language learning for mechanical engineering students. The
researcher observed and reflected the activities from the first cycle to third cycle of the Action research. Through the observation and reflection, the activities in reading
competence using CALL would be evaluated, reflected and re-designed for the next activity to improve students’ reading competence. The researcher would improve the
learning process using CALL. All the activities which were indicated on the improvement would be reported.
The second objective is to report the students reading improvement which is shown in the improvement in every cycle. The improvements of every cycle are
reported in the test improvement of every cycle. The reading competence of mechanical engineering students was low. It could
be proved from the result of the achievement at the pre-test. Some problems which appeared in learning reading make the students difficult to get better achievement in
English competence. It is necessary for teachers to foster students to be active inside class. These challenged the researcher to find better techniques to teach them.
The result of the observation and interview with the students showed that the students needed media to develop their reading competence. The objective of the
research based on the research question was to improve the teaching learning process using CALL. The improvement of the research meant that students can comprehend
reading passage using CALL. By comprehending the reading passage well, it is expected that the students can improve reading competence. Reading competence
improves by achieving better result in reading competence. Exercises in CALL can also be used by the teacher to help students in
achieving better competence. By using CALL, the students can engage their reading competence by practicing the activities. In learning process, this research wants to
discover that computer-assisted language learning is effective to provide more exercises and more practices in classroom. It is hoped that CALL can help the
learning process and are able to make learning effective. This research employs action research. It means that this research encourages learning empowerment of the
students. The researcher explored the students’ opinion in problems of reading and how to solve the problems, reading improvement using CALL. The students can
develop their competence by themselves inside and outside classroom. The students can also be autonomous learners so that, they could master and practice what they
have learnt in class well.
