Background of the Problem
SMPN 15 Yogyakarta were found. Those problems showed that the teaching and learning of reading did not motivate students yet.
Firstly, the kind of teaching learning process led the students to focus only
on reading aloud . They focused on the meaning of the words rather than the entire
text. The teacher did not concern on ‘how to read’ but ‘what to read’. Secondly, many students did not have enough background knowledge
. For example, when a teacher presented the students a text entitled “my house”, students found
difficulties to comprehend the text as they did not have enough knowledge about “my house”. To comprehend the text, they did not only have to understand each
word, sentence, or paragraph in the text. However, they had to be able to relate their previous knowledge with the new one as well.
The third problem was related to the teaching technique that the teacher used in the classroom.
The English lesson lacked variation of learning activities .
The activities mostly focused on books or Student Worksheets or Lembar Kerja Siswa LKS. After getting the explanation, the students were asked to complete
the exercises .
Most of the learning materials were taken from books. In addition, the learning activities were lacked of group-work activity. Most activities were
individual works in the form of reading passages and answering-question activities.
The fourth problem was related to the learning media. The teaching
activities were rarely supported by the use of media, whereas the variation of
media was important in gaining the students’ interests to the teaching and learning
process. The teacher was unable to create attractive teaching learning atmosphere
in the classroom. He failed in creating reading activities which were interesting and motivating for the students.
The use of media which could support teaching and learning process in the class was still low. As the consequence, the students
were bored with the teaching and learning process. This boredom was commonly showed by the behavior that students showed in the class. They did not pay
attention to the teacher’s explanation. Those problems related to the teaching process gave impacts on the
students’ motivation of reading. Based on the interviews conducted by the researcher,
some students said that they lacked reading practices. The students’
reading habits were still low. They did not like reading, even reading the books written in their native language. The use of media which could support the
teaching and learning processes in the class was still low. As the consequence, the students were bored with teaching learning process.
The next problem was related to the students’ lack of vocabulary
. They got
difficulties in understanding meanings of some words and how to pronounce them.
When they did not understand about the meanings of particular words, they were reluctant to look up in the dictionary or ask the meanings of those words to
the teacher. They preferred asking their friends to asking their teacher.