Determining the Actions to Solve the Problems

class made the students to lose interest in the reading activity. Semantic mapping will help the students to comprehend English texts properly. The second action was using pictures. This action aimed to stimulate the students to activate their background knowledge related to the topic of the text. Pictures were also used as a media of teaching by putting them in the handout. There was no LCD projector in the classroom, so the use of handouts was very helpful. The third action was teaching the key vocabulary before the reading activity. This action aimed at creating a context for the students. It would facilitate comprehension by identifying key words and taught them before the reading activity. The action was also expected to solve the lack of vocabulary of the students. It will also shorten the time for the students to comprehend the text, since they do not need to look in the dictionary for each word in the process of reading. The fourth action was using skimming and scanning strategies. Skimming would enable the students to predict the function of the passage, the main topic and the messages of the text. The use of this strategy could also help the students to focus attention on the text. The fifth action was asking the students to guess meaning. This action could help the students when they found difficult words in the text. By using the guessing strategies, the students would not depend on the use of dictionary.

2. Actions and Observation

In this step, actions planned in the previous step were done. The actions were done in three meetings on 5, 12, and 19 March 2014. In this cycle, the researcher presented the topic related to how to cook or make something. The text used in this cycle was procedure text. The details of the meetings are presented as follows.

a. Using Semantic Mapping

As planned before, the researcher introduced semantic mapping technique in the first meeting. Using black marker, the researcher drew a large oval on the whiteboard and wrote inside it “How to Make Banana Milkshake”. Then, she asked the students to tell her what they knew about the topic. The researcher prepared questions to lead students to fill the points of the map. The questions were: “What ingredients are needed?”, “What kind of tools are used?” “How to make it?”. The researcher recorded their responses on the whiteboard; listing them in the order they were given. When no further suggestions were raised, the researcher asked the students how to put them in order as a text. Then the researcher give a text “How to Make Banana Milkshake” to the students. They discussed the information listed in the map and the content of the text. When the discussion was done. The researcher gave the students handouts. The handouts consist of three procedure texts and some tasks related to the text. The tasks included filling semantic mapping, answering questions, etc.