TEACHING READING THROUGH GALLERY WALK (An Experimental Research at the Tenth Grade Students of SMK Muhammadiyah 1 Purwokerto in Academic Year 2014/2015) - repository perpustakaan

CHAPTER II THEORITICAL REVIEW A. Reading 1. Definition of Reading Reading is one of the language skills which is important in

  language acquisition. Due to the importance, many researchers develop their study on reading and make the definition of reading more varied.

  The terms of reading are defined differently based on the experts’ own thoughts of reading. There are some definitions and explanations of the term which have been proposed. Alyousef (2005: 144) explained that reading is an “interactive” process between a reader and a text which leads to automaticity or (reading fluency). In this process, the reader interacts dynamically with the text as he or she tries to elicit the meaning and where various kinds of knowledge are being used.

  Another definition of reading comes from Mikulecky. Mikulecky (2008: 1) stated that reading is a conscious and unconscious thinking process. The reader applies many strategies to reconstruct the meaning that the author is assumed to have intended. The reader does this by comparing information in the text to his or her background knowledge and prior experience. Moreover, Alfassi (in Zare et al., 2013: 188) stated that reading is a complex cognitive activity that is

  8 crucial for adequate functioning and for obtaining information in current society and requires an integration of memory and meaning construction.

  From the explanations above, it can be concluded that reading is a process in which readers interact with written or printed texts using their background knowledge and prior experience to gain the information of the text. In the other words, it can be said that reading is not just dealing with decoding words, but also constructing the meaning of the texts.

2. Reading Comprehension

  It is necessary for the students of Vocational High School to master reading comprehension. Cooper (1986:11) states that Comprehension is a process in which the reader may construct meaning by interacting with the text. In reading comprehension, a reader should have knowledge about understanding the reading passage. The common questions on the passages are primarily about the main ideas, details, and an inference that can be drawn from the passages.

  According to Singer (1985) reading comprehension has been defined as an interpretation of written symbols, the apprehending of meaning, the assimilation of ideas presented by the written, and the process of thinking while deciphering symbols. Further, the process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with written language is called reading comprehension (Snow, 2002:11). Reading comprehension is related closely to the cognitive competence of the readers, because this will produce comprehension.

  Dealing with gallery walk, in comprehending a topic, there are some techniques that can be use by reader. Skimming and scanning are two very useful techniques that will help the reader become a better reader.

  a.

  Skimming Harmer states that skimming as reading for general understanding or gist (2006: 283). This reading technique is used if one wants to get a general impression of a book, essay, article, and determine whether or not to read it more carefully. Moreover, Yorkey (1982: 134) defines that there are two purposes of skimming: to locate a specific word, fact, or idea quickly, and to get a rapid general impression of the material. Azies & Alwasilah (1996:114) said “Skimming activity involve reading process, although the speed of reading is faster than usually”.

  Thus, in skimming the text, a reader needs to practice in order he or she can learn the key words and phrases which can cover all the material he or she is reading. To do the skimming, the reader should go through a passage quickly, jumping over parts of it, in order to get a general idea of what it is about.

  b.

  Scanning Scanning is quickly reading to find the specific information.

  Brown (2001:308) stated that, scanning is quickly searching for some particular piece or pieces of information in a text.

  “Students need to be able to scan the text for particular bits of information they are searching for (as, for example, when we look for telephone number, what’s on television at a certain time or search quickly through an article looking for a name or other detail). This skill means that they do not have to read every word and line.” Harmer (2007: 100). When scanning the reader lets his or her eyes wander over the text until he or she is looking for, whether it is a place, a kind of food, a kind of verb, or a specific information. To enable the student to scan effectively, he or she should know what kinds of information he or she needs, also, he or she should have the strong belief where he or she will find such information needed from the text.

B. Teaching Reading 1. The Principle of Teaching Reading Teaching reading is not only asking the students to read a lot.

  There are some principles that should be considered in planning reading lesson according to Harmer (2007: 101-102) a.

  Reading is not a passive skill b. Student need to be engaged with what they are reading.

  Leu and Kinzer (1987) propose two aspects and four components of reading comprehension process which should be involved in reading instruction. The two aspects and four components will be defined as follows.

  Discourse knowledge; it refers to knowledge of structural organization of different types of text.

  Reading components 1)

  b.

  2) Reading aspects; it refers to students’ ability to read and understand a particular selection.

  Reading aspects

  a.

  In addition, in teaching reading a teacher also has to know the aspects and components of reading that should be involved in reading instructions.

  c.

  Good teachers exploit reading texts to the full.

  f.

  Match the task to the topic.

  e.

  Prediction is a major factor in reading.

  d.

  Student should be encouraged to respond to the content of a reading text, not just language.

1) Affective aspects; it refers to students’ attitude and interest.

  2) Syntactic knowledge; it refers to knowledge of the word-order rules that determine grammatical function and sometimes the meaning and pronunciation of words.

  3) Vocabulary knowledge; it refers to knowledge of word meanings used to the appropriate meaning for a word in particular context.

  4) Decoding knowledge; it refers to knowledge used to determine the oral equivalent of a written word.

  By knowing the principles, aspects and components of reading, it will help teacher in planning reading lesson to make the students develop their reading ability properly.

2. Step in Teaching Reading

  Teaching reading is not like teaching other skills where there must be at least three steps of teaching: pre, whilst, and post reading.

  Rohim (2009: 4-10) in the Ministry of Educational Book of Teaching

  Reading, proposes some steps in teaching reading started from teaching before-reading to after-reading.

  a.

  Before-Reading 1)

  Preview the text by looking at the title, the pictures, and the print in order to evoke relevant thoughts and memories 2)

  Build background by activating appropriate prior knowledge through self questioning about what they already know about the topic (or story), the vocabulary, and the from in which the topic (or story) is presented 3)

  Set purposes for reading by asking questions about what they want to learn during the reading process.

  b.

  During-Reading 1)

  Check understanding of the text by paraphrasing the author’s words.

  2) Monitor comprehension and use fix-up strategies; use the cueing systems to figure out unknown words an imaging, imagining, inferencing, and predicting.

  3) Integrate new concepts with existing knowledge; continually revise purposes for reading.

  c.

  After-Reading 1)

  Summarize what they have read by retelling the plot of the story or the main idea of the text.

2) Interpret and evaluate the ideas contained in the text.

  3) Make applications of the ideas in the text to unique situations, extending the ideas to broader perspectives.

  4) Use study strategies for note taking, locating, and remembering to improve content- area learning.

  It is important for teacher to consider the steps in teaching reading. With the right kind of those steps, students’ comprehension become much easier.

3. Macro And Micro Skills of Reading

  There are four basic skills (macro skills) of language. Harmer (1992: 16) states that the four basic skills are listening, reading, writing and speaking. In order to use language skills, language users need number of sub-skills (micro skills) for processing the language they used. As this research is dealing with reading skill, language user needs to know that reading builds on several micro skills as mentioned by Brown (2001: 307).

  a.

  Discriminates among the distinctive graphemes and orthographic patterns of English.

  b.

  Retain chunks of language of different lengths in short-term memory.

  c.

  Process writing at an efficient rate of speed to suit the purpose.

  d.

  Recognize a core words, an interpret word order patterns and their significance.

  e.

  Recognize grammatical word classes (noun, verbs, exc.) systems (e.g. tense, agreement, pluralization ), patterns ,rules, and elliptical forms.

  f.

  Recognize that a particular meaning may be expressed in different grammatical forms.

  g.

  Recognize cohesive device in written discourse and their significance for interpretation. h.

  Recognize the communicative functions of written and their significance from and purpose. i.

  Infer context that is not explicitly by using background knowledge. j.

  Infer links and connections between as main idea, supporting idea, new information, given information, generalization, and exemplification. k.

  Distinguish between literal and implied meanings. l.

  Detect culturally specific references and interpret them in a context of the cultural schemata. m.

  Develop and use battery of reading strategies such as scanning and skimming, detecting discourse markers, guessing the meaning of words from context, and activating schemata for the interpretation of texts.

  These micro-skills are as vehicle to get the intended information in the process of reading. The language users are able to select at least one of these micro skills appropriate to their purposes on their reading. In this case, the research chooses three micro skills in reading as a vehicle to arrange lesson plan and assessment to be applied for the learners as they are the language users. Therefore, the micro skills that will be used in this research are discriminating among the distinctive graphemes and orthographic patterns of English, recognizing that a particular meaning may be expressed in different grammatical from, inferring links and connection between events, ideas, cause and effects, main idea, supporting idea, new information, given information, generalization, and exemplification.

4. Genre-Based in Teaching Reading

  Nowadays, the English curriculum uses genre-based in teaching reading in Indonesia. Rohim (2009:17) states that genre study aims to group texts according to type, and to identify and describe features which texts of a particular genre have in common. There are at least 16 types of text in genre.

  Based on the syllabus in first semester in tenth grade of vocational school, the genre types that will be taught are descriptive text. Thus, this research focused on descriptive text. Then, the understanding of descriptive text will be explained.

  There are some definitions and explanations of the descriptive text which have been proposed. Wardiman et al. (2008: 115) explained that a descriptive text is a text that describes the features of someone, something, or a certain place. It is divided in two parts, Introduction which is the part of the paragraph that introduces the character, and Description which is the part of the paragraph that describes the character. According to Priyana et al. (2008: 130-140), Descriptive text is a text which is telling about the characteristics of a particular thing, such as person’s characteristics or description. A descriptive text is basically aimed at giving information to the readers about characteristic features of a thing, person, or animal. Descriptive texts often use neutral and objective language. The present tense is mostly used in descriptive texts. The past tense is also used to describe an object that does not exist anymore.

  Another definition of descriptive text comes from Kane. Kane in Yuli Hermita and Triana (2014: 31) stated that descriptive text is description about sensory experience -how something looks, sounds, tastes. Mostly it is about visual experience, but description also deals with other kinds of perception. The purpose of descriptive text is to describe and reveal a particular person, place, or thing in details or specific to make the reader be able to visualize the description.

  Further, The language features usually found in descriptive text are stated by Hammond in Mursyid PW (2014: 4-5), language features of descriptive often uses 'be' and 'have'. Tense which is often used is Simple Present Tense. However, sometimes it uses Past tense if the thing to be described doesn't exist anymore. And the Significant Grammatical Features they are : a.

  Focus on specific participants ; b. Use of Simple Present Tense c. Use of Simple Past Tense if Extinct; d. Verbs of being and having; e. Use of descriptive adjectives ; f.

  Use of detailed Noun Phrase to give information about the subject; g.

  Use of action verbs; h. Use of adverbials to give additional information about behavior i. And Use of Figurative language

  Moreover, The generic structures of descriptive text are stated by Wardiman (2008: 122) The generic structures of a description are as follows: a.

  Identification : identifies the phenomenon to be described b. Description of features : describes features in order of importance:

  1) Parts/things (physical appearance)

  2) Qualities (degree of beauty, excellence, or worth/value)

3) Other characteristics (prominent aspects that are unique).

  The descriptive text also has some purposes as mentined by Barbara in Fauzi (2011: 21) the purposes of description text are: a.

  To entertain the reader b. To express feelings c. To relate experience d. To inform (for a reader unfamiliar with the subject) e. To inform (to create a fresh appreciation for the familiar) f. To persuade (to convince the reader)

  From the description above It can be concluded that descriptive text is used to describe everything like describing people, describing place and describing things, which is seen by writer in detail. It also uses the present tense and the past tense if the object does not exist anymore. And the purposes of descriptive text are to entertain, express feelings, relate experience, inform, and persuade the reader.

5. Problem in Teaching Reading

  There are some problems commonly faced by the teacher which are usually caused by the students’ difficulties in comprehending reading. Westwood (2008) finds the common difficulties as follows.

  a.

  Inappropriate method in teaching b. Difficulties in word recognition and decoding c. Difficulties with fluency d. Poor short-term and/ work memory e. Lack of reading engagement

  Thus, gallery walk are expected to be an effective tool in teaching reading. It is because the Gallery walk promotes high order thinking, monitoring, analyzing, long-term memory, and reading engagement.

6. Reading Assessment

  In finding out the effectiveness of Gallery Walk in teaching reading the research should know the progress and the development of teaching-learning process. Therefore, the development of students’ achievement in reading should be evaluated before and after they have done the teaching-learning process which uses Gallery Walk. As mention by Purwanto (2010: 12-15), evaluation can be functioned to identify the students’ achievement, intelligence, attitude, and etc. He also adds that it can also be used to identify the problem in teaching- learning process that the teacher and students are able to improve their teaching-learning strategies, measure the effectiveness of teaching methods, find out the correlation between students’ various ability, attitude, achievement, and etc.

  In conducting an evaluation, there are some instruments used by the evaluator appropriate to the purpose of the evaluation. The examples of the instruments are observation, anecdotal records, achievement test, and personality test (Purwanto, 2010: 20). As this research is intended to find out the effectiveness of Gallery Walk in reading focusing on descriptive text, this research evaluated the development of students’ achievement in reading descriptive text after being treated by Gallery Walk. The evaluation result was compared with the one of the students taught by conventional method. Thus, the instrument of evaluation was used in the research is achievement test.

  Achievement test, usually conducted by the teacher, is divided into two; oral test and written test, and in written test there are essay and objective test (Sudjana, 2001: 25-55). This research chose objective test as a tool to measure the development of students’ achievement in reading procedure. It is because reading mostly deals with comprehension and an objective test is an appropriate tool to measure students’ achievement result in comprehension. Purwanto (2010:36) states that an objective test is considered to be a good tool in measuring the instructional result in the level of knowledge, comprehension, application and analysis, but it is not appropriate in the level of synthetic and evaluation.

  There are various types of objective test proposed by Purwanto (2010: 35-36) as follows: 1.

  Completion type test a.

  Completion test b. Fill-in the blank 2. Selection type test a.

  True-false b. Multiple choice c. Matching

  From the various types of objective test above, this research chose multiple choices combined with true-false as the instrument in order to measure the students’ achievement progress in comprehending reading procedure.

  As this research evaluated students’ comprehension in reading, the assessment should contain the micro skills of reading chosen as the objectives to test. The micro skills of reading chosen in this research are discriminating among the distinctive graphemes and orthographic patterns of English, recognizing that a particular meaning may be expressed in different grammatical form, inferring links and connections between events, ideas, cause and effects, main idea, supporting idea, new information, given information, generalization, and exemplification. Therefore, the test items should be able to assess those micro skills.

C. Gallery Walk 1. Definition of Gallery Walk

  Many techniques can be implemented for teaching reading. One of them is Gallery Walk. According to Silberman (2006:274), Gallery Walk is a way to judge and remember what students have learned. Gallery Walk is also a method that can be used in learning process in order to increase skills to discover new knowledge and make students easier to recall, especially the materials to be memorized. Francek (2007: 27) strengthen this notion by saying as follows:

  “Gallery walk is a discussion technique that gets students out of their chair and actively involved in synthesizing important science concepts, writing, and public speaking. The technique also cultivates listening and team building skill”.

  Moreover, Donnette Fernandez & Karen Streich-Rodgers (2010: 10) state that Gallery Walk “is a cooperative learning strategy in which the instructor devises several questions/problems and posts each question/problem at a different table or at a different place on the walls (hence the name "gallery"). Students form as many groups as there are questions, and each group moves from question to question (hence the name "walk"). After writing the group’s response to the first question, the group rotates to the next position, adding to what is already there.

  At the last question, it is the group's responsibility to summarize and report to the class”.

  In the implementation of teaching learning process, gallery walk also has purposes, they are: a.

  Interest the student on the topic which will be learned.

  b.

  Give opportunity to students to show their knowledge and conviction about the topic they will be learned (the true or wrong concept/view).

  c.

  Stimulus the students to discover knowledge they have got deeply. d.

  Encourage students to expand their knowledge and skill (thinking, monitoring, communicating, and cooperating) in collecting new information.

  e.

  Give opportunity to the students to classify, process, and present new information and comprehension they get.

  f.

  Give opportunity to the students to determine their own way to demonstrate what they have learned, including comprehension, skill, attitude, and value. (Marini, 2012: 4)

  From the definition of gallery walk which is explained by some experts above, the researcher concludes that Gallery Walk is a model which is designed to be used in various needs in learning process to make students active and interest which can help student to discover new knowledge and recall the material they have learned.

2. The Step of Gallery Walk

  Silberman (2006: 274-275) also explains the procedure of self- judgment approach using gallery walk, there are: a.

  Arrange students into teams of two to four.

  b.

  Post several discussion questions on different places on classroom walls.

  c.

  Ask each team to discuss what they have got in their gallery with their members.

  d.

  Ask them to write the answers on a large paper. e.

  Hang the answers or the list on the wall below their questions.

  f.

  Ask the student teams to walk through each list to review what previous groups have written and give check mark near the result which they get on the list or add new content. The groups rotate to the next list continuously until all posted questions are addressed.

  g.

  Survey the result, inspect the result that commonly get. Explain the part of result that not appropriate.

  h.

  The team which gets response has an opportunity to defend their work.

3. The Advantages And The Disadvantages of Gallery Walk a.

  The Advantages of Gallery Walk In the implementation of teaching learning process using

  Gallery Walk there are many advantages will be got. The strengths of gallery walk are: 1)

  Dedicate time for students to practice discussing, debating, and organizing.

  2) Promote the use of higher order thinking skills like, analysis, evaluation, and synthesis

  3) emphasize the collaborative, constructed nature of knowledge because students work in teams to synthesize information written from a variety of perspectives (Taylor, P. 2001)

  4) encourage alternative approaches to problems, because students are exposed to a variety of perspectives posted at different discussion "stations" (Taylor, P. 2001)

  5) reassure students that their voices, ideas, and experiences are valued because students are more likely to share ideas among a non threatening group of peers (Taylor, P. 2001)

  6) promote team building, fosters debate, and encourages consensus as students work together to accurately represent group member's ideas at different Gallery Walk "stations.

  With this strength, the researcher expects it can make students active and acquire reading properly.

  b.

  The Disadvantages of Gallery Walk Using gallery walk in teaching learning process also has some weaknesses. Marini (2012: 4) mentions the weaknesses of gallery walk, there are: 1)

  If the team has a lot of members, it is possible to some members do not work and just follow the other member work.

  2) Teacher needs extra power to monitor and check student activity both in an individual or collective.

3) Class setting arrangement will be more complicated.

  These weaknesses can be minimized by doing student attitude judgment carefully during teaching learning process, using some instrument tools which have arranged appropriate with the needed which can support the effectiveness and the successful of Gallery Walk.

  D. Basic Assumption

  Based on the explanation above that gallery walk is believed to be an appropriate technique to improve students’ reading comprehension. It dedicates time for students to practice discussing, debating, organizing, and writing the language of what they see in the gallery display. It will make students active to share their ideas rather than just hearing ideas presented by the teacher. It also promotes the use of higher order thinking skills like analysis, evaluation, and synthesis when the teachers choose the proper level of abstraction when designing questions. Through this skill the students will get more information, knowledge, comprehension and experiences which can help student to remember easily about what they have learned.

  E. Hypothesis

  Based on the explanation above, the researcher claims hypothesis that “there is an impact of gallery walk on students’ reading comprehension”.