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content-area material from ‘teacher-talk’ to ‘kid-talk’ to facilitate learning” NICHD, p. 4–71.
Summarizing through the Use of Graphic Organizers Knowing how to write a summary has relevance to every student in that
the ability transfers to an effective study strategy for all content areas. “ . . the power of writing a summary lay in the fact that it requires readers to evaluate
information and make decisions regarding what represents important ideas and what are supporting details or descriptive details in a way that reconstructs the
main points clearly and logically” Farnan Dahl, p. 1001. Farnan and Dahl continue by stating that the ability to write summaries seems to improve both
retention and recall and reading comprehension. In the Summarizing the Selectionsection, students are instructed to look for main ideas and relevant
details.There is no physical spot for repetitive or irrelevant details. Students also complete the graphic organizers in their own words. Students who use
these recommended techniques will be able to write strong summaries Devine Kania, p. 947.
F. Rationale
Reading comprehension is a complex process: the reader constructs meaning by interacting with a text using his or her previous knowledge and
experience and the information that can be found in the text. In this process, the readers involve reading skills, some of them are: finding explicit
information, vocabulary, main idea and inference.
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In fact, some students encounter some problems in reading comprehension. They are, students have difficulty to identify explicit
information in a text; Students have difficulty to comprehend the text as they lack of vocabulary; students are unable to find main idea in a paragraph;
students have difficulty to infer the meaning of the text. Beside that, based on my observation, I find some students often come late; they come to reading
class reluctantly; they chat in the class; they have no response when they are asked questions. Furthermore, some students have low motivation in joining
reading class. It may be caused by not knowing the technique that can help them to comprehend the text easily. Meanwhile, the teacher is seldom giving
motivation the students. This kind of situation makes the students have low motivation in learning English. As a result, students have some difficulties
especially in reading comprehension. Based on all the facts above, students need to have sufficient strategy to
be successful in reading comprehension. In the previous explanation, students have some difficulties in reading comprehension: students have difficulty to
identify explicit information in a text; students have difficulty to comprehend the text as they lack of vocabulary; Students are unable to find main idea in
paragraph; and students have difficulty to infer the meaning of the text. In this case, graphic organizers are selected as the teaching method that can provide
the bridge from the abstract concepts of the text to more visible ideas that ease the reader getting the intended meaning. Furthermore, the use of graphic
organizers has
yielded promising
results in:
enhancing reading
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comprehension; retention and recall; promoting learning performance; improving learning and thinking skills; and increasing learning attitudes. From
the characteristics of graphic organizers above, it is believed that graphic organizers Conflict Dissection and Character Traits can improve students’
reading comprehension in term of finding explicit information, vocabulary, main idea and inference.
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CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHOD
This chapter describes the research setting, research subject, research method, research procedure, data and data collecting techniques, data validation
and data analysis techniques.
A. Context of the Research
1. The Setting and the Time of the Research
The place of this classroom action research is SMA Negeri 6 Surakarta. It is located on Jl. Mr. Sartono No. 30, Surakarta, Central Java. A number of students
in SMA Negeri 6 Surakarta is 1950. More over, it is equipped with two kinds of facilities: laboratory and courts. First, laboratory in SMA Negeri 6 Surkarta
consists of 6 fields. They are language, chemistry, Physics, Biology, IPS and Computer laboratory. Second, SMA Negeri 6 Surkarta has three kinds of courts:
Tennis, Basket and football. In addotion, it provides many kinds of students’ activity or Extra Curricular: Volly ball, Basket, Cheer leader dance, Takwendo,
Karate, Pencak Silat, PKS Patroli Keamanan Sekolah, Pramuka, PMR, Teater, Pencinta Alam, KIR, Rohis and English Conversation Club.
This classroom action research was carried out in eight months started in September 2009 up to July 2010, preliminary research was done in September,
designing research proposal was done in October up to February2009, conducting proposal seminar in March 2010, making research instruments in April 2010,
giving treatment and collecting the data in May 2010, analyzing the collected data
