THE STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION ON THE USE OF PRE-READING ACTIVITIES IN THEIR TEACHING AND LEARNING ENGLISH AT ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT OF UNIVERSITAS MUHAMMADIYAH YOGYAKARTA (EED OF UMY)
8
Chapter Two
Literature Review
This chapter presents some relevant theories that support the study. It
contains two sections. The first section describes the literature review. The
literature review contains some theories related to the research including
perception, reading, pre-reading activities in teaching and learning process, the
types of pre-reading activities, the implementation of pre-reading activities, the
advantages of pre-reading activities, and reading comprehension. Then, the
second section explains about the conceptual framework.
Perception
This point is divided into two parts; there are the definition of perception
and students’ perception. The literature review contains some theories related to
the research questions based on experts. Those parts are explained as the
following.
Definition of perception. There are some definitions about perception
based on the experts. According to Wang (2009) “perception is a set of internal
sensational cognitive processes of the brain at the subconscious cognitive function
layer that detects, relates, interprets, and searches internal cognitive information in
the mind” (p. 66). He added that perception is included an important cognitive
function at the subconscious layers to determine human personality. Lindsay and
Norman as cited in Pickens (2005) stated that perception is an organism process
of interpreting and organizing sensation to produce experiences. In other words,
9
perception is the experience of objects, events or relationships obtained by
concluding information and interpret the message (Rakhmat, 2007). Based on
Sainn and Ugwuegbu (1980), perception may be defined as “the process by which
we extract meaningful information from physical stimulation. It is the way we
interpret our sensations” (p. 90). In conclusion, perception is human process to
connect their sensation and experiences to create overview and understanding of
what is experienced.
Students’ perception. In this part, the researcher shows the students’
perception as the source of the research. According to Andrew, Sheung-On,
Yannie, and Sandy (2006), student perception has influence in educational
success. It means that when the teacher sees teaching and learning process from
the perception of students related to their teaching and learning process, teachers
will receive different perception. So, they will make improvement in their
teaching and learning process to achieve the educational success. Hasyim (2013)
stated that student perceptions are the views or students' responses of the
particular object based on the experience factor and knowledge. At least, students’
perception is the overview of students toward some object that influence
educational success.
Reading
Reading is an activity with a purpose. Reading is the way to adding the
knowledge by connecting student’s prior knowledge with what they have read.
People who do it certainly have the objective to be achieved. According to Brown
(2001), there are two types of reading. They are oral reading and silent reading.
10
This explanation below will focus on silent reading which is intensive reading and
extensive reading. Silent reading is the reader read without produce the voice.
This type of reading can be differentiated into extensive and intensive reading.
Berardo (2006) stated that “extensive reading was good for larger texts that
contained a lot of information, while intensive reading was used to obtain an exact
understanding of the text” (p. 66).
Intensive Reading. According to Berardo (2006) “intensive reading was
used to obtain an exact understanding of the text” (p. 66). Around the world
believed that, in the reading comprehension, intensive reading is beneficial to
develop reading comprehension (Yang, Dai, & Gao, 2012). Generally, intensive
reading is used to gain the information for the academic purposes. People who
want to get language knowledge from reading will use intensive reading. The
setting of intensive reading usually happened in the classroom. To get the topic of
the reading, students need to know the identity of the key vocabulary of the
passage.
Extensive Reading. Berardo (2006) defined that “extensive reading was
good for larger texts that contained a lot of information. In the other hand,
Alyousef (2006) also stated that extensive reading refers to describe skimming
and scanning activities. The purpose of extensive reading is to develop readers
confidence and for pleasure. Moreover, extensive reading helps students to
achieve their independency in reading at home or in the classroom. Thus, students
will gain knowledge without having a teacher who gave them the order to read. In
this way, the student is able to read what they want to read. It means that student
11
feels free to choose or select the material that they have read. They can choose
authentic material such as newspaper or magazine.
Pre-reading Activity in Teaching and Learning Process.
This part discusses about the pre-reading activity. This part includes the
definition of pre-reading activity and principles of pre-reading activity.
Definition of pre-reading activity. Pre-reading activity is an activity to
activate students’ knowledge of the topic, to prepare students’ of the language in
the text, and motivate the student to read the text Alemi (2010). Pre-reading
activity is intended to prepare students or give the first step to students to develop
their own knowledge to predict the content of text. It makes they determine the
information that they would face in the reading. In fact, pre-reading activity can
motivate student before the actual reading happened. For example Drucker (2003)
suggested the procedure that teacher can use before the actual reading are first,
the teacher can read something familiar with students, second, the teacher tries to
provide questions that can be discussed with students, after that, provides an
overview of the readings are going to read. The last, the teacher can lead students
to read the story and find specific information. This activity influences reading
comprehension because they inform and activate students before reading.
Ajideh (2006) has proposed that pre-reading activityare used to help
students to relate new information to the text with their existing knowledge. It
used to build students creativity in reading. The student is expected to predict the
reading text and understand about the writer imply. Similarly, Abraham (2002)
stated that an interactive approach asks the teacher to activate the students’
12
schema current pre-reading to establish a connection between the students’
knowledge with the topic of a text.
The above definition elaborates that pre-reading activityare applied when
the teacher tried to construct new knowledge by collaborating students'
background knowledge with the topic of a text by giving them pieces of
information that they will find in the text. In conclusion, through pre-reading
activity, students will know some information of the text for the better
understanding.
Principles of Pre-reading Activities. Understanding is an important aspect
in reading because when readers understand what they have read, they will get
knowledge from it. The use of pre-reading activity is to prepare students to get
comprehension. During pre-reading activity, students will get the background
knowledge to connect with understanding. Abraham (2002) stated that an
interactive approach asks the teacher to activate the students’ schema current prereading to establish a connection between students’ background knowledge with
the topic of a text. Hashemi, Mobeni, and Karimkhanlooie (2016)) argued that
pre-reading activity is used to construct the interpretation between the readers’
prior knowledge, the direct and indirect information, and the context of a reading
situation.
There are some reasons for reading. The student wants to be able to read for
gaining the information, pleasure, career, and study purposes (Richards and
Renandya, 2002). In conclusion, pre-reading activity makes students know about
the types of the text and the reading purpose.
13
Types of Pre-reading Activities
Pre-reading activity is an activity usually used in reading skill. Stephenson
and Harold (2009) asserted that “preparing students for what they are going to
read can make comprehension much easier” (p. 18). Pre-reading activity is an
activity to prepare students for reading, motivate them to read and to get
comprehension. The role of teachers and students is very important to help
students in understanding the text. Further, there are some types of pre-reading
activities, namely, previewing, pre-teaching vocabularies, predicting, prequestioning, activating schema, brainstorming, and group discussion. The
following part will explain those types of pre-reading activities.
Previewing. Previewing is an activity that release students to make
hypothesis of the text by seeing the titles, headings, or pictures (Yusuf, 2011). In
reading, there are so many benefits can be gained by previewing. According to
Karakas (2005), previewing is the appropriate activity that can be used in which
the texts are difficult and contain unfamiliar context. Previewing contains an
activity that discusses the text through vocabulary or from the paragraph. Chia as
cited in Yusuf (2011) stated that “the aim of previewing is to help readers predict
or make some educated guesses about what is in the text and thus activate
effective top-down processing for reading comprehension” (p. 1452). The readers
can see the title, sub title, or picture to predict the content of the text.
Pre-teaching vocabulary. For students who learn English as a foreign
language, knowing the meaning of a word is the important key to get the meaning
of the text. The aim of pre-teaching vocabularies is to facilitate students by
14
informing them the meaning of unfamiliar words before they do actual reading. In
the pre-reading, pre-teaching vocabulary can help students to reduce the
difficulties of unfamiliar words. This activity also can help students to improve
their comprehension in reading. According to Alemi (2010), “explicit vocabulary
development and pre-reading activities are very useful when the text or content
can be specified”. At the end, teach student with the pre-teaching vocabularies can
help students to determine the content of the text.
Predicting. Prediction is an activity when students use the information from
a text which is titles, headings, picture and their existing knowledge to predict the
content. In the predicting activity, the students try to predict the reading text from
the clue with their knowledge. Based on Day and Jeong-suk (2005), predicting in
the pre-reading activity is an activity that involves students in using their
comprehension on the text and their existing knowledge of the topic related to the
context problem to determine what will happen next.
Pre-questioning. Pre-questioning is an activity that giving students
questions related to the text. In the pre-questioning, the teacher provides student
pre-question or release them to build their own questions related to the text.
According to Brown (2001), pre-questioning gives students some question which
are provided before the students read the whole of the reading text. He also stated
that pre-questioning is very useful to activate the schemata, thus the students can
make speculation what will be faced in the reading text. In addition, Hodijah
(2012) added that pre-questioning intends to give the students some detailed
information that they would face in the whole of the text. Futhermore, Carrell as
15
cited in Karakas (2005) believed that pre-questioning can motivate students to
read, to gain the requisite information to answer the question. He also said that
pre-questioning can help students to predict the content of the text. Therefore, the
more students can anticipate the text by pre-questioning, the easier they will get
the comprehension.
Activating schema. In the activating schema, the teacher gives students a
question related to the topic to activate student schema. It means when the teacher
inquiries students a question, they will try to build a connection with the teacher
question with their prior knowledge. Vacca (2002) stated that in the activating
schema, student must be able to access what they know and it would be suitable
with information in the text.
Brainstorming. One of the familiar techniques in pre-reading is
brainstorming. Deuja, Kohn, Paulus and Korde (2014) argued “brainstorming is a
popular technique for enhancing the number of ideas individuals and groups can
generate” (p. 222). In addition, Feather (2004) added that “brainstorming provides
plenty of materials for making prediction” (p. 82). Yusuf (2011) mentioned that,
in brainstorming, “students are then invited to call out words and concepts they
personally associate with the keyword or words provided by the teacher” (p.
1452). Unconsciously, students will collect all information about the title that
comes to mind. The key word can help students to activate their prior knowledge
through reading. In addition, Yusuf (2011) also said that brainstorming is
beneficial for classroom procedures because it makes students free to bring their
prior knowledge and opinion.
16
Group discussion. Group discussion is the common activity in teaching and
learning process. Group discussion activity is useful in teaching and learning
process in EFL class. In reading, group discussion is used for the pre-reading
activity. Aziz (2013) stated that group discussion forced students to have
opportunities to speak and to share the ideas. This activity will help students to
find what they bring to reading, what brings fellow students, and they will share
their experiences based on the topic.
Visual aids. Visual material is an interesting way in language learning.
Visual materials in pre-reading activity can help students to get better
comprehension. Navarro (2008) stated that “visuals play a major role in building
schema for English language learners”. Porter as cited in Ekaningrum and
Prabandari (2016) mentioned that visual materials can activate a students’ prior
knowledge.
Implementation of Pre-reading Activities
Pre-reading activity is an activity that must be structured properly. In the
implementation of pre-reading activities, the teacher and students should know the
goal in the reading. According to Bilokcuoglu (2011), pre-reading activities
should prepare students to get better understanding and comprehension by making
them familiar with the topic, vocabulary, or structures that they may find in the
text. Yusuf (2011) asserted “pre-reading activities do not only prepare readers for
the concepts that follow but also makes the reading task easier and connecting the
new concept more meaningful to prior knowledge” (p. 1451). This means that prereading activities can help students to connect their prior knowledge with text to
17
get comprehension. The following part explains the implementation of each kind
of activity.
Previewing. Previewing is an activity that release students to make
hypothesis of the text by seeing the titles, headings, or pictures. There are some
steps in doing previewing. According to Ekaningrum and Prabandani (2016), in
previewing, the teacher can provide them a synopsis of the text to build a link
between a text with their knowledge. Moreover, Yusuf (2011) pointed out any
looking the clues titles, heading, and pictures on the text, students can draw the
topic before reading.
Pre-teaching vocabulary. Pre-teaching vocabulary is an activity to
facilitate students by teaching them the meaning of unfamiliar words before they
do actual reading. This activity is helpful for the students to get reading
comprehension. In pre-teaching vocabulary, Landsberger (2011) students can
make a list of words may be they will face in reading. It can contain the
unfamiliar words or phrase. After that, the teacher can share the information about
the vocabulary with students.
Pre-questioning. Pre-questioning is an activity that “providing the prequestions for the students, the teacher can ask them to create their own questions
related to the reading text” (Ekaningrum and Prabandari, 2016, p. 135). In the
implementation of pre-questioning, the teacher will provide some question related
to the topic of the reading text. Besides providing students with the question, the
teacher can ask students to create their own question related to the text.
18
Brainstorming. In the brainstorming activity, students will try to build a
concept through words. Wallace (2003) stated, “this may take the form of giving
the class a particular keyword or key concept, or it may be a newspaper headline
or book title” (p. 91). Besides that, students can use all of the information to
understand the material.
Group discussion. Group discussion is common activity that used in
teaching and learning process. In pre-reading activity, group discussion is when
people sit together and discuss the issue (Nagarathinam & Lakshmanan, 2016).
This activity asks students to work as a pair or a group consists to 3 to 5 students
then discuss the text.
The Advantages of Pre-reading Activities
Pre-reading activities has some advantages for students. Those advantages
are to motivate students, to prepare the students for the language of the text, to
prepare students for the concept, to improve students’ comprehension, to practice
analyzeand sharing ideas, and toincrease student vocabulary mastery the
explanation will be explained in following part.
To motivate students. According to Chastain as cited in Ajideh (2003),
pre-reading activity has a purpose to motivate students to read and to prepare
them to be able to read it. When students accept stimulation to read by giving
them pre-reading activities, they will feel enjoy and ready to read. Therefore, text
that they have read becomes the new information for them. Consequently, their
knowledge will increase. In addition, Hodijah (2012) stated that pre-questioning
can build the students’ interest and motivation before students read the whole text.
19
To prepare the students for the language of the text. For EFL students
cannot be expected that they will understand language might be used in the
reading text. Therefore, pre-reading activity is used to help student in preparing
the language. Pre-reading activity such as pre-teaching vocabulary is presenting
unfamiliar vocabulary in the text. According to Haque (2010), “pre-reading
activities can be used to prepare the reader for the language in the text”. This
activity helps student to avoid misunderstanding the context of the text because of
the language.
To prepare students for the concept. Through pre-reading activities,
students can prepare the concept, makes the reading easy and they can build a link
between the new concepts with their prior knowledge (Yusuf, 2011). The prereading activities can help students to prepare their knowledge about text. It also
can help students to anticipate their problem that they might be found in the text.
Build a concept in reading is the crucial part. From the concept students can
connect it with their knowledge to get better comprehension in reading.
To improve students’ comprehension. Pre-reading activities improve
students’ comprehension of texts because pre-reading can activate students’ prior
knowledge. In addition, Ekaningrum and Prabandari (2016) stated that prereading activities helped students to understand a reading text well. Therefore,
Stephenson and Harold (2009) asserted that “preparing students for what they are
going to read can make comprehension much easier” (p. 18).
To practice analyze and sharing ideas. Learning language requires student
to practice and analyze. Thongyon (2011) stated that pre-reading activities gave
20
themselves the opportunity to practice thinking and analyzing, and made them
learn more from asking questions and sharing ideas with classmates. In addition,
these activities help students to dig up their prior knowledge to get better
understanding of the text. Besides, Nuttal as cited in Alemi and Ebadi (2010) said
that one of pre-reading activity (group discussion) stimulates students to learn the
processes of critical thinking.
To increase student vocabulary mastery. Teaching students with prereading activities make them exposed lots of vocabularies. According to Asri
(2013), the advantages of using pre-reading activity are students can learn
unfamiliar word and they can easily comprehend the text. In addition, the students
have learned the unfamiliar word in reading activity. Therefore, pre-reading
activity increases students’ vocabulary mastery.
Reading Comprehension
In reading activity, the reader should be able to take advantages of reading
to develop their knowledge. In addition, “reading provides the learners with a
source of comprehensible input and serves to facilitate communicative fluency in
other language skills” (Farzaneh & Nejadansari, 2014, p. 287). By reading, the
reader will get so many information and adding their vocabulary mastery. Further,
reading will help them to communicate in the target language.
Reading involves the comprehension. It means that when the reader read,
they will construct the writer's meaning. They can construct the meaning by
connecting their background knowledge with the text. Reading comprehension is
very important. For the student, in the education world, comprehension in reading
21
is used to develop knowledge. They have to understand what they read to increase
knowledge. Pardo as cited in Sahin (2013) stated “reading comprehension is the
process of meaning construction as a result of blending content and message of
the text with the readers existing knowledge and skills during reader text
interaction” (p. 58). Reading and reading comprehension cannot be separated.
Knowledge can be gained when the reader can build the meaning to get the
comprehension. Moreover, “comprehension and understanding is the final
purpose in the reading process” (Hashemi, Mobini, & Karimkhanlooie, 2016, p.
138).
In conclusion, reading is one of skill in language learning that helps students
in teaching and learning process. Reading make students has a lot of knowledge.
Knowledge can be gained when the reader can build the meaning to get the
comprehension.
Conceptual Framework
The researcher would like to find out the students’ perception on the use of
pre-reading activities in their teaching and learning English at EED of UMY.
Unconsciously, students at EED of UMY use pre-reading activities to help them
in their comprehension. Thus, this study is conducted to reveal the types of prereading activities, the students’ perception on the implementation of pre-reading
activities, and the students’ perception on the advantages of pre-reading activities
in teaching and learning English at EED of UMY. The conceptual of this research
is presented in the following chart.
22
Figure 1.0 Conceptual Framework
The types of pre-reading activities
Pre-reading activities
The students’ perception on the
implementation of pre-reading
activities
The students’ perception on the
advantages of pre-reading
activities
Chapter Two
Literature Review
This chapter presents some relevant theories that support the study. It
contains two sections. The first section describes the literature review. The
literature review contains some theories related to the research including
perception, reading, pre-reading activities in teaching and learning process, the
types of pre-reading activities, the implementation of pre-reading activities, the
advantages of pre-reading activities, and reading comprehension. Then, the
second section explains about the conceptual framework.
Perception
This point is divided into two parts; there are the definition of perception
and students’ perception. The literature review contains some theories related to
the research questions based on experts. Those parts are explained as the
following.
Definition of perception. There are some definitions about perception
based on the experts. According to Wang (2009) “perception is a set of internal
sensational cognitive processes of the brain at the subconscious cognitive function
layer that detects, relates, interprets, and searches internal cognitive information in
the mind” (p. 66). He added that perception is included an important cognitive
function at the subconscious layers to determine human personality. Lindsay and
Norman as cited in Pickens (2005) stated that perception is an organism process
of interpreting and organizing sensation to produce experiences. In other words,
9
perception is the experience of objects, events or relationships obtained by
concluding information and interpret the message (Rakhmat, 2007). Based on
Sainn and Ugwuegbu (1980), perception may be defined as “the process by which
we extract meaningful information from physical stimulation. It is the way we
interpret our sensations” (p. 90). In conclusion, perception is human process to
connect their sensation and experiences to create overview and understanding of
what is experienced.
Students’ perception. In this part, the researcher shows the students’
perception as the source of the research. According to Andrew, Sheung-On,
Yannie, and Sandy (2006), student perception has influence in educational
success. It means that when the teacher sees teaching and learning process from
the perception of students related to their teaching and learning process, teachers
will receive different perception. So, they will make improvement in their
teaching and learning process to achieve the educational success. Hasyim (2013)
stated that student perceptions are the views or students' responses of the
particular object based on the experience factor and knowledge. At least, students’
perception is the overview of students toward some object that influence
educational success.
Reading
Reading is an activity with a purpose. Reading is the way to adding the
knowledge by connecting student’s prior knowledge with what they have read.
People who do it certainly have the objective to be achieved. According to Brown
(2001), there are two types of reading. They are oral reading and silent reading.
10
This explanation below will focus on silent reading which is intensive reading and
extensive reading. Silent reading is the reader read without produce the voice.
This type of reading can be differentiated into extensive and intensive reading.
Berardo (2006) stated that “extensive reading was good for larger texts that
contained a lot of information, while intensive reading was used to obtain an exact
understanding of the text” (p. 66).
Intensive Reading. According to Berardo (2006) “intensive reading was
used to obtain an exact understanding of the text” (p. 66). Around the world
believed that, in the reading comprehension, intensive reading is beneficial to
develop reading comprehension (Yang, Dai, & Gao, 2012). Generally, intensive
reading is used to gain the information for the academic purposes. People who
want to get language knowledge from reading will use intensive reading. The
setting of intensive reading usually happened in the classroom. To get the topic of
the reading, students need to know the identity of the key vocabulary of the
passage.
Extensive Reading. Berardo (2006) defined that “extensive reading was
good for larger texts that contained a lot of information. In the other hand,
Alyousef (2006) also stated that extensive reading refers to describe skimming
and scanning activities. The purpose of extensive reading is to develop readers
confidence and for pleasure. Moreover, extensive reading helps students to
achieve their independency in reading at home or in the classroom. Thus, students
will gain knowledge without having a teacher who gave them the order to read. In
this way, the student is able to read what they want to read. It means that student
11
feels free to choose or select the material that they have read. They can choose
authentic material such as newspaper or magazine.
Pre-reading Activity in Teaching and Learning Process.
This part discusses about the pre-reading activity. This part includes the
definition of pre-reading activity and principles of pre-reading activity.
Definition of pre-reading activity. Pre-reading activity is an activity to
activate students’ knowledge of the topic, to prepare students’ of the language in
the text, and motivate the student to read the text Alemi (2010). Pre-reading
activity is intended to prepare students or give the first step to students to develop
their own knowledge to predict the content of text. It makes they determine the
information that they would face in the reading. In fact, pre-reading activity can
motivate student before the actual reading happened. For example Drucker (2003)
suggested the procedure that teacher can use before the actual reading are first,
the teacher can read something familiar with students, second, the teacher tries to
provide questions that can be discussed with students, after that, provides an
overview of the readings are going to read. The last, the teacher can lead students
to read the story and find specific information. This activity influences reading
comprehension because they inform and activate students before reading.
Ajideh (2006) has proposed that pre-reading activityare used to help
students to relate new information to the text with their existing knowledge. It
used to build students creativity in reading. The student is expected to predict the
reading text and understand about the writer imply. Similarly, Abraham (2002)
stated that an interactive approach asks the teacher to activate the students’
12
schema current pre-reading to establish a connection between the students’
knowledge with the topic of a text.
The above definition elaborates that pre-reading activityare applied when
the teacher tried to construct new knowledge by collaborating students'
background knowledge with the topic of a text by giving them pieces of
information that they will find in the text. In conclusion, through pre-reading
activity, students will know some information of the text for the better
understanding.
Principles of Pre-reading Activities. Understanding is an important aspect
in reading because when readers understand what they have read, they will get
knowledge from it. The use of pre-reading activity is to prepare students to get
comprehension. During pre-reading activity, students will get the background
knowledge to connect with understanding. Abraham (2002) stated that an
interactive approach asks the teacher to activate the students’ schema current prereading to establish a connection between students’ background knowledge with
the topic of a text. Hashemi, Mobeni, and Karimkhanlooie (2016)) argued that
pre-reading activity is used to construct the interpretation between the readers’
prior knowledge, the direct and indirect information, and the context of a reading
situation.
There are some reasons for reading. The student wants to be able to read for
gaining the information, pleasure, career, and study purposes (Richards and
Renandya, 2002). In conclusion, pre-reading activity makes students know about
the types of the text and the reading purpose.
13
Types of Pre-reading Activities
Pre-reading activity is an activity usually used in reading skill. Stephenson
and Harold (2009) asserted that “preparing students for what they are going to
read can make comprehension much easier” (p. 18). Pre-reading activity is an
activity to prepare students for reading, motivate them to read and to get
comprehension. The role of teachers and students is very important to help
students in understanding the text. Further, there are some types of pre-reading
activities, namely, previewing, pre-teaching vocabularies, predicting, prequestioning, activating schema, brainstorming, and group discussion. The
following part will explain those types of pre-reading activities.
Previewing. Previewing is an activity that release students to make
hypothesis of the text by seeing the titles, headings, or pictures (Yusuf, 2011). In
reading, there are so many benefits can be gained by previewing. According to
Karakas (2005), previewing is the appropriate activity that can be used in which
the texts are difficult and contain unfamiliar context. Previewing contains an
activity that discusses the text through vocabulary or from the paragraph. Chia as
cited in Yusuf (2011) stated that “the aim of previewing is to help readers predict
or make some educated guesses about what is in the text and thus activate
effective top-down processing for reading comprehension” (p. 1452). The readers
can see the title, sub title, or picture to predict the content of the text.
Pre-teaching vocabulary. For students who learn English as a foreign
language, knowing the meaning of a word is the important key to get the meaning
of the text. The aim of pre-teaching vocabularies is to facilitate students by
14
informing them the meaning of unfamiliar words before they do actual reading. In
the pre-reading, pre-teaching vocabulary can help students to reduce the
difficulties of unfamiliar words. This activity also can help students to improve
their comprehension in reading. According to Alemi (2010), “explicit vocabulary
development and pre-reading activities are very useful when the text or content
can be specified”. At the end, teach student with the pre-teaching vocabularies can
help students to determine the content of the text.
Predicting. Prediction is an activity when students use the information from
a text which is titles, headings, picture and their existing knowledge to predict the
content. In the predicting activity, the students try to predict the reading text from
the clue with their knowledge. Based on Day and Jeong-suk (2005), predicting in
the pre-reading activity is an activity that involves students in using their
comprehension on the text and their existing knowledge of the topic related to the
context problem to determine what will happen next.
Pre-questioning. Pre-questioning is an activity that giving students
questions related to the text. In the pre-questioning, the teacher provides student
pre-question or release them to build their own questions related to the text.
According to Brown (2001), pre-questioning gives students some question which
are provided before the students read the whole of the reading text. He also stated
that pre-questioning is very useful to activate the schemata, thus the students can
make speculation what will be faced in the reading text. In addition, Hodijah
(2012) added that pre-questioning intends to give the students some detailed
information that they would face in the whole of the text. Futhermore, Carrell as
15
cited in Karakas (2005) believed that pre-questioning can motivate students to
read, to gain the requisite information to answer the question. He also said that
pre-questioning can help students to predict the content of the text. Therefore, the
more students can anticipate the text by pre-questioning, the easier they will get
the comprehension.
Activating schema. In the activating schema, the teacher gives students a
question related to the topic to activate student schema. It means when the teacher
inquiries students a question, they will try to build a connection with the teacher
question with their prior knowledge. Vacca (2002) stated that in the activating
schema, student must be able to access what they know and it would be suitable
with information in the text.
Brainstorming. One of the familiar techniques in pre-reading is
brainstorming. Deuja, Kohn, Paulus and Korde (2014) argued “brainstorming is a
popular technique for enhancing the number of ideas individuals and groups can
generate” (p. 222). In addition, Feather (2004) added that “brainstorming provides
plenty of materials for making prediction” (p. 82). Yusuf (2011) mentioned that,
in brainstorming, “students are then invited to call out words and concepts they
personally associate with the keyword or words provided by the teacher” (p.
1452). Unconsciously, students will collect all information about the title that
comes to mind. The key word can help students to activate their prior knowledge
through reading. In addition, Yusuf (2011) also said that brainstorming is
beneficial for classroom procedures because it makes students free to bring their
prior knowledge and opinion.
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Group discussion. Group discussion is the common activity in teaching and
learning process. Group discussion activity is useful in teaching and learning
process in EFL class. In reading, group discussion is used for the pre-reading
activity. Aziz (2013) stated that group discussion forced students to have
opportunities to speak and to share the ideas. This activity will help students to
find what they bring to reading, what brings fellow students, and they will share
their experiences based on the topic.
Visual aids. Visual material is an interesting way in language learning.
Visual materials in pre-reading activity can help students to get better
comprehension. Navarro (2008) stated that “visuals play a major role in building
schema for English language learners”. Porter as cited in Ekaningrum and
Prabandari (2016) mentioned that visual materials can activate a students’ prior
knowledge.
Implementation of Pre-reading Activities
Pre-reading activity is an activity that must be structured properly. In the
implementation of pre-reading activities, the teacher and students should know the
goal in the reading. According to Bilokcuoglu (2011), pre-reading activities
should prepare students to get better understanding and comprehension by making
them familiar with the topic, vocabulary, or structures that they may find in the
text. Yusuf (2011) asserted “pre-reading activities do not only prepare readers for
the concepts that follow but also makes the reading task easier and connecting the
new concept more meaningful to prior knowledge” (p. 1451). This means that prereading activities can help students to connect their prior knowledge with text to
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get comprehension. The following part explains the implementation of each kind
of activity.
Previewing. Previewing is an activity that release students to make
hypothesis of the text by seeing the titles, headings, or pictures. There are some
steps in doing previewing. According to Ekaningrum and Prabandani (2016), in
previewing, the teacher can provide them a synopsis of the text to build a link
between a text with their knowledge. Moreover, Yusuf (2011) pointed out any
looking the clues titles, heading, and pictures on the text, students can draw the
topic before reading.
Pre-teaching vocabulary. Pre-teaching vocabulary is an activity to
facilitate students by teaching them the meaning of unfamiliar words before they
do actual reading. This activity is helpful for the students to get reading
comprehension. In pre-teaching vocabulary, Landsberger (2011) students can
make a list of words may be they will face in reading. It can contain the
unfamiliar words or phrase. After that, the teacher can share the information about
the vocabulary with students.
Pre-questioning. Pre-questioning is an activity that “providing the prequestions for the students, the teacher can ask them to create their own questions
related to the reading text” (Ekaningrum and Prabandari, 2016, p. 135). In the
implementation of pre-questioning, the teacher will provide some question related
to the topic of the reading text. Besides providing students with the question, the
teacher can ask students to create their own question related to the text.
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Brainstorming. In the brainstorming activity, students will try to build a
concept through words. Wallace (2003) stated, “this may take the form of giving
the class a particular keyword or key concept, or it may be a newspaper headline
or book title” (p. 91). Besides that, students can use all of the information to
understand the material.
Group discussion. Group discussion is common activity that used in
teaching and learning process. In pre-reading activity, group discussion is when
people sit together and discuss the issue (Nagarathinam & Lakshmanan, 2016).
This activity asks students to work as a pair or a group consists to 3 to 5 students
then discuss the text.
The Advantages of Pre-reading Activities
Pre-reading activities has some advantages for students. Those advantages
are to motivate students, to prepare the students for the language of the text, to
prepare students for the concept, to improve students’ comprehension, to practice
analyzeand sharing ideas, and toincrease student vocabulary mastery the
explanation will be explained in following part.
To motivate students. According to Chastain as cited in Ajideh (2003),
pre-reading activity has a purpose to motivate students to read and to prepare
them to be able to read it. When students accept stimulation to read by giving
them pre-reading activities, they will feel enjoy and ready to read. Therefore, text
that they have read becomes the new information for them. Consequently, their
knowledge will increase. In addition, Hodijah (2012) stated that pre-questioning
can build the students’ interest and motivation before students read the whole text.
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To prepare the students for the language of the text. For EFL students
cannot be expected that they will understand language might be used in the
reading text. Therefore, pre-reading activity is used to help student in preparing
the language. Pre-reading activity such as pre-teaching vocabulary is presenting
unfamiliar vocabulary in the text. According to Haque (2010), “pre-reading
activities can be used to prepare the reader for the language in the text”. This
activity helps student to avoid misunderstanding the context of the text because of
the language.
To prepare students for the concept. Through pre-reading activities,
students can prepare the concept, makes the reading easy and they can build a link
between the new concepts with their prior knowledge (Yusuf, 2011). The prereading activities can help students to prepare their knowledge about text. It also
can help students to anticipate their problem that they might be found in the text.
Build a concept in reading is the crucial part. From the concept students can
connect it with their knowledge to get better comprehension in reading.
To improve students’ comprehension. Pre-reading activities improve
students’ comprehension of texts because pre-reading can activate students’ prior
knowledge. In addition, Ekaningrum and Prabandari (2016) stated that prereading activities helped students to understand a reading text well. Therefore,
Stephenson and Harold (2009) asserted that “preparing students for what they are
going to read can make comprehension much easier” (p. 18).
To practice analyze and sharing ideas. Learning language requires student
to practice and analyze. Thongyon (2011) stated that pre-reading activities gave
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themselves the opportunity to practice thinking and analyzing, and made them
learn more from asking questions and sharing ideas with classmates. In addition,
these activities help students to dig up their prior knowledge to get better
understanding of the text. Besides, Nuttal as cited in Alemi and Ebadi (2010) said
that one of pre-reading activity (group discussion) stimulates students to learn the
processes of critical thinking.
To increase student vocabulary mastery. Teaching students with prereading activities make them exposed lots of vocabularies. According to Asri
(2013), the advantages of using pre-reading activity are students can learn
unfamiliar word and they can easily comprehend the text. In addition, the students
have learned the unfamiliar word in reading activity. Therefore, pre-reading
activity increases students’ vocabulary mastery.
Reading Comprehension
In reading activity, the reader should be able to take advantages of reading
to develop their knowledge. In addition, “reading provides the learners with a
source of comprehensible input and serves to facilitate communicative fluency in
other language skills” (Farzaneh & Nejadansari, 2014, p. 287). By reading, the
reader will get so many information and adding their vocabulary mastery. Further,
reading will help them to communicate in the target language.
Reading involves the comprehension. It means that when the reader read,
they will construct the writer's meaning. They can construct the meaning by
connecting their background knowledge with the text. Reading comprehension is
very important. For the student, in the education world, comprehension in reading
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is used to develop knowledge. They have to understand what they read to increase
knowledge. Pardo as cited in Sahin (2013) stated “reading comprehension is the
process of meaning construction as a result of blending content and message of
the text with the readers existing knowledge and skills during reader text
interaction” (p. 58). Reading and reading comprehension cannot be separated.
Knowledge can be gained when the reader can build the meaning to get the
comprehension. Moreover, “comprehension and understanding is the final
purpose in the reading process” (Hashemi, Mobini, & Karimkhanlooie, 2016, p.
138).
In conclusion, reading is one of skill in language learning that helps students
in teaching and learning process. Reading make students has a lot of knowledge.
Knowledge can be gained when the reader can build the meaning to get the
comprehension.
Conceptual Framework
The researcher would like to find out the students’ perception on the use of
pre-reading activities in their teaching and learning English at EED of UMY.
Unconsciously, students at EED of UMY use pre-reading activities to help them
in their comprehension. Thus, this study is conducted to reveal the types of prereading activities, the students’ perception on the implementation of pre-reading
activities, and the students’ perception on the advantages of pre-reading activities
in teaching and learning English at EED of UMY. The conceptual of this research
is presented in the following chart.
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Figure 1.0 Conceptual Framework
The types of pre-reading activities
Pre-reading activities
The students’ perception on the
implementation of pre-reading
activities
The students’ perception on the
advantages of pre-reading
activities