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IMPROVING STUDENTS READING SKILL THROUGH PERSONALIZATION : GRAPHICS ORGANIZER A PERSON YOU'LL NEVER FORGET STRATEGY GRADE VIII.A SMPN 17 PEKANBARU

IMPROVING STUDENTS’ READING SKILL THROUGH PERSONALIZATION; GRAPHICS ORGANIZER “A PERSON YOU’LL NEVER FORGET”  STRATEGY AT GRADE VIII.A

SMPN 17 PEKANBARU

Abstract

 

Reading is one of the language skills that students should master. Unfortunately, comprehending contents of a reading text is not easy for students. Based on the researcher’s experience in teaching English at SMA Negeri 17 Pekanbaru, some problems appear in teaching reading, namely student’s passiveness, lack of vocabulary, and uninteresting method of teaching by teacher. These problems come out since teachers did not apply effective reading strategies to motivate students in reading. That way the researcher proposes a Graphic Organizer Strategy ‘A Person You’ll Never Forget’ to overcome these problems. There were two important problems to be solved. They were the students’ passiveness in reading and the teacher’s strategies in teaching and learning reading process. This research consisted of two cycles and four phases were applied in each cycle. They were planning, acting, observing, and reflecting. Improvement of students’ understanding in reading occurred cycle by cycle. At the end of cycle, there was significant change of students’ behavior reading skill. Most of the students were interested in taking a part to answer questions by completing the graphic organizer strategy.

 

 


Keywords: Personalization, Students’ passiveness, Graphic organizer, agnd behavior reading skill

 

 

I.      INTRODUCTION

 

A.    Background of the Problem

 

Reading is one of the skills that every student should master in learning English. Reading is assumed the central means for learning new information and gaining access to alternative explanations and interpretations. Reading is the primary means for independent learning, whether the goal is performing better on tasks or improving language abilities. Reading helps everybody think in the new language, build a better vocabulary, and make more comfortable with the written English. So, reading skill is very important to learn a language.

In addition, reading text provides opportunity to study language vocabulary, grammar, punctuation, and the way to construct sentences, paragraph, and texts. Then, good reading texts can introduce interesting topics, stimulate discussion, excite imaginative responses and be the springboard for well-rounded, fascinating lessons. In fact, to comprehend the reading text should be handled smoothly.

It is not easy for students to comprehend the content of the text they read. In term of teaching reading, the students are expected to be able to develop their comprehension which attempts them to grasp the message provided by the writer in the reading text.  A good reader will easily identify which parts are important in the reading text and which are not. Therefore, reading comprehension may become the major problems for the students in understanding English reading text.

Moreover, based on the researcher’s observation and experience at grade VIII SMP Negeri 17 Pekanbaru, there were some problems found in teaching reading. The first problem was related to the student’s themselves. It was about students’ passiveness toward reading. It could be identified from their attitude toward the text they read, they were not curious to read and explore more detailed information from the text, they were not eager to comprehend the text. As a result, most of them did not catch what the writer really wanted to convey. This kind of attitude would not help them to be able to comprehend the content of the text. The second problem was about the students’ English reading skill, especially in term of vocabulary mastery. Many students were complaining about the difficulty of exploring and understanding the text because they had poor vocabulary. They kept looking up dictionary without predicting or guessing from the contextual clues or physical features of the text, such as front page, cover illustration, heading, subheading, characters, and setting. In other words, we can say that students did not activate their background knowledge or schemata and try to relate them with the new information provided. The third problem was related to teacher method of teaching reading. Teachers were used to ask the students to read the entire page by reading it loudly. Then, the teacher explained the difficult words if there was any, if not they asked the students to answer certain questions which were related to the text. This way of teaching was not interesting to the students. They bored to read because the strategy used in teaching reading could not attract the students’ interest in reading. As a result, students felt reluctant to read, even did not understand the text optimally.

In conclusion, these problems above appeared because the teacher did not apply the effective reading strategy to motivate students in reading. To solve these problems, the researcher applied the Personalization; Graphic Organizer “A Person You’ll Never Forget” strategy. It is expected to be able to improve the students’ reading skill at grade VIII.a  SMP Negeri 17 Pekanbaru.   

 

B.    Identification of the Problem

There were two important problems to be solved. The first problem was about the students’ passiveness in reading since they had no spirit to comprehend and understand the reading text given to them. The second problem was about the teacher’s strategies in teaching and learning reading process.

 

C.    Limitation of the Problem

This research focused on Improving Students’ Reading Skill through Personalization, Graphic Organizer “A Person You’ll Never Forget” strategy that was used at grade VIII.a SMP Negeri 17 Pekanbaru 2008-2009 academic year.

 

D.    Formulation of the Problem

The research problem is formulated as follows: (1)“To what extent personalization, Graphic Organizer “A Person You’ll Never Forget” strategy can improve students’ reading skill at grade VIII.a  SMP Negeri 17 Pekanbaru”, and (2)“What factors influence the students’ reading skill through personalization, graphic organizer  “A Person You’ll Never Forget” strategy at grade VIII.a  SMP Negeri 17 Pekanbaru”

 

E.     Significance of the Classroom Action Research

1)     The result of the action research would help the students to improve their reading skill.

2)     This research is expected to be helpful for English teachers to improve their teaching reading method.

3)     The result of this research could be useful for educators who have responsibility to plan and to improve teaching reading skill.

4)     This research gave input to the headmaster to make policy to fulfill the student’s needs in learning English

5)     The result of this research is also used by the other researchers as information in doing a further study 

 

 

 

 

 

II. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

 

A.     Review of the Related Theories

1.     Reading Comprehension

The definition of reading comprehension is the ability of the student to interpret and comprehend what the writer expresses in reading text. According to Irwin (1991) comprehension is a process where a reader understands what the writer writes in the text. The reader can relate the ideas between paragraphs to another paragraph. In addition, Sheng (2004) stated that comprehension is a process of negotiating and understanding between the reader and the writer, it means that comprehension is an interpretation on what the reader thinks when she/he is reading. By comprehending the texts, the reader can get the information in the texts. While Smith (2006) defines comprehension as the capacity for understanding between thoughts and ideas, applying what the readers have read and understood. So, the readers should interpret what they have read about the text. This opinion is in the line with Junaidi (2006:26) said that reading comprehension is a process that he involves meaningful construction of an author’s message by the use of prior knowledge, especially the knowledge of language. It means that reading comprehension as a process of negotiating, understanding between the reader and the writer’s messages. In most cases, especially in academic setting, a reader expects a text to make sense.

When a person reads, two aspects of the human information processing system continuously interact. When the reader focuses primarily on what is already known in trying to comprehend a text, this strategy is called a concept-driven or top-down mode. On the other hand, when the reader relies primarily on textual information to comprehend, this strategy is called a data-driven or bottom-up mode (Rumelhart, in Mikulecky, 1990:2).

In practicing, these two processing strategies are employed interactively and simultaneously as the reader tries to relate the new information in the text to what is already known. A reader will rely on knowledge about a known topic to sort out word meaning; conversely, a reader who has mastery of the text’s vocabulary but is unfamiliar with the topic will rely on word knowledge in order to comprehend a text.

A reader should pass through some steps to build up comprehension in reading activity. They not only decode the linguistics field in written text but also dig their background knowledge to drive them to create the product of reading; comprehension. Carnine (1990) supports that in reading two phenomena happen: a process (comprehending) and a product (comprehension). He included that it needs a large number of skills that engage in getting idea from the written text.

Furthermore, the readers who have good reading comprehension can grasp the meaning and the organization of the writer idea. The readers bring their previous knowledge and experience into relation with their present reading; compare the facts and arguments presented by the authors. To support this idea, Harris (1969) says that reading comprehension can be gained from several skills, they are:

a)     If the students have a large amount of vocabulary

b)     If the students have skill in identifying unfamiliar words

c)      If the students have a good eye-movement habits

d)     If the students have proper habits of posture, holding books, etc

e)     If the students have speed and fluency in silent reading

f)       If the students can develop oral reading skill; phrasing, expression, pitch, etc

Hornby (1985) stated that reading is where the readers try to look at and to understand something, which is written or printed, or way in which something is interpreted or understood. In addition, Smith (1978) said that reading comprehension process involves not only the printed words but also prior knowledge of the readers. The knowledge of the readers have used to support the ability to comprehend the text. Parallel to Burnes, Badrawy (1992) said that comprehension is a mental process, obtaining meaning. She also said that it is not from the printed page because it does not stand there; comprehension will be found in the reader’s mind.

In conclusion, to read comprehensively and successfully the students should employ the effective reading strategies. To be a good strategy reader, the students should know certain reading strategies which lead them to better reading comprehension. To do that, they must practice and have guidance from their teacher.

 

2.     The Purpose of Reading

When we read, we read for a variety of purposes. We sometimes read to get main idea but not much more (e.g., skimming a newspaper/story), and sometimes we read to locate specific information (e.g., scanning for a name, date, or term). Commonly we read texts to learn information (i.e., reading to learn), and sometimes we are expected to synthesize information from multiple texts, or from a longer chapter or book in order to take a critical position with respect to that information (i.e., reading to integrate and evaluate information). Perhaps, most often we read for general comprehension (i.e., reading to understand main ideas and relevant supporting information). We also read for pleasure, with the intention of being entertained or informed, but not tested.

Although, these purpose might give the impression that there are very different ways to read a text, these differing purposes actually depend on a stable set of processes and skills that underlies all reading, though in differing combinations of relative importance. Thus, we can talk about reading in the singular and define it as long as we recognize that the processes and skills combine in differing ways depend on the readers purpose (Grabe:1999a).

 

3.     Personalization; Graphic Organizer “A Person You’ll Never Forget” Strategy

·         Language Objective; Understand and remember a story or a text, and organize information

·         Strategy Objective; Use the strategy of Personalization to understand and remember a story or a text, and to remember and use new descriptive vocabulary

·         Strategy Rationale; Connecting information to student experiences make it more meaningful to students and thus more memorable

·         Materials; Graphic organizers, “The Person You’ll Never Forget”

 

PROCEDURES

Preparation

Ask students what strategies they use to remember when they read, write those strategies on the board. “When you listen to or read a text, what things do you do to help you understand the text?”

 

Presentation

Introduce and discuss the strategy of personalization for remembering new information.

“I want to share with you a new strategy for remembering information from a text. I like to use a strategy called Personalization. Personalization means connecting the new information to your own experience. Doing this makes the information more meaningful to you and therefore more memorable. Use this strategy anytime you want to remember new information that seems difficult to remember.”

Model the strategy of Personalization using the characters from a story that the students have read.

“I will demonstrate the strategy personalization using an example from the text we just read, ‘Grandma and me.’ We will use a graphic organizer to organize our ideas. First, I will fill out the graphic organizer about Grandma, and then I will do the same for my grandmother. I will begin by writing ‘Grandma’ in the center circle. Then, I will brainstorm Grandma’s qualities in the upper left corner box. Let’s see, I am going to look back through the book for some ideas. She was kind, old, forgiving, small, quite, liked dogs, liked strawberries …. Next, I will list some reasons why the boy won’t forget her in the bottom left corner box.  Well, she forgave the boy even when he made a mistake. She was never angry with him, and she always love him. She gave him a special gift.”

“Now, to remember the story, I will use the strategy personalization. I will make a personal connection between the story and my life by completing another organizer about my grandmother, someone whom I will never forget. Well, first I will write “My Grandmother’ in the center circle. Then, I will write her qualities in the upper left box. She is old, strong, healthy, hard-working, funny, and fun to be with. Next, I will list the reasons why I will never forget her. Well, she taught me about cooking and baking; she told me stories about her family; and she gave me her wedding dress.”

 

Practice

Have students used the graphic organizer to practice personalization.

“I want you to use the same organizer to brainstorm about someone you will never forget. It could be your grandmother or someone else special to you. Doing this will help you make a connection between the story and your life and will help you remember the story

 

Evaluation

A few days later, ask students to recall and retell the story. Afterwards, ask students if they though if they thought that making a personal connection to the story helped them remember it

 

Expansion 

Students can also use personalization to remember new vocabularies. They can brainstorm a list of adjectives to describe people. Students then use some of the words to describe the person they will never forget. By making a personal connection with the word to a person they know, they will be more likely to remember the word.

Furthermore, those five phases; preparation, presentation, practice, evaluation, and expansion are the phases that can be applied in understanding and mastering reading comprehension

 

B.     Review of the Related Studies

Related researchers have been done several times in different aspects of language reading strategies. First, Nadrah (2004) had her research under the title “The Contribution of Reading Strategies and Vocabulary Mastery to Reading Comprehension.” Her research was aimed to describe the contribution of reading strategies and vocabulary mastery toward reading comprehension. This research found that the reading strategies and vocabulary mastery had significant contribution to reading comprehension. The related findings above tried to identify the influence of learning strategies in communication and the contribution of reading strategies and vocabulary mastery to reading comprehension.  

III. METHOD OF THE RESEARCH

A. Kind of the Research

This research is a classroom Action Research (CAR). The action research in the language classroom is a tool for teachers and curriculum development to improve the way of teaching. It aimed to increase the teacher’s understanding of classroom teaching and learning process (Gregory in Richards 1994; Kemmis and Taggard, 1982). In the line with that, the purpose of action research is to improve the quality of teaching and learning process. In this case, the researcher intends to improve the students’ reading comprehension through Personalization; Graphic Orgainizer “A Person You’ll Never Forget” strategy at grade VIII.a SMP Negeri 17 Pekanbaru. In addition, this classroom action research is a process in which individual or several teachers collect and make decision about their own knowledge, performance, beliefs and effect in order to understand and improve them (Gayand Airisian, 2000).

This research is conducted by teaches and for teachers, that where increases the teacher’s understanding of classroom teaching and learning and bring classroom practice. Action research typically involves small-scale investigated project in the teachers’ own classroom (Kemmis&Mc Taggard T, 1988) and consist of the following circle of activities:

1)     The teachers select on aspect of classroom behavior to exams in more detail

2)     The teachers select the suitable research technique

3)     The teachers collect data and analyze it

4)     The teachers develop an action plan to help bring about change in classroom behavior

5)     The teachers act to implement the plan

6)     The teachers observe the effect of the action plan in behavior

In addition, Mills (2003) explained that action research was a systematic inquiry, conducted by teacher as researcher to gather information about how they teach, and how well the students learn. The information is gathered with the gaining insight, developing reflective practice, effective positive changes in the school environment and on educational practice in general and improving students’ outcomes.

According to the research questions and the objectives of this research, which would like to improve the students’ reading comprehension at grade VIII.a SMP Negeri 17 Pekanbaru through Personalization; Note-Taking strategy, the researcher chooses the classroom action research design as the suitable method. As Gay (2000:593) states:

…action research is a type of practitioner research that is used to improve the practitioners’ practice; action implies doing or changing something. Practitioner research means that the research is done by practitioners about their own practice. Action research is a process in which individual or several teachers collect evidence and make decisions about their own knowledge, performance, beliefs and effect in order to understand and improve them …

Based on the quotation above, it could be concluded that action research is a process of solving the teacher’s problems. This action research would develop and improve students’ reading skill at grade VIII.a SMP Negeri 17 through Personalization strategy.

For this research, the researcher applied a collaborative action research, which was undertaken by individuals or group in concert with other individual or group (Johnson, 2005:325). In this case, the researcher and the English teacher become a team work together for solving the problems, which both of the teacher and the students of SMP Negeri 17 face during the teaching and learning reading skill process.

 

B. Procedure of the Research

The action research followed the model which was developed by Kemmis and Taggard (1988). This model consists of several cycles, and each cycle contain four steps; planning, acting, observing, and reflecting.

Practically, the classroom action research based on the following assumptions: for the first cycle, the process of teaching and learning reading skill did not optimally improve in the class activities because the students were not familiar with the strategy and the time given was not enough for them.

The second cycle, there are some changes of students’ reading behavior and significance in reading understanding in doing the activities. Most of the students become motivated, active and interested in reading the text. These indications can be seen from their behavior completing the graphic organizer activities

 

Cycle 1;

The researcher applied four phases in cycle 1. They are planning, acting, observing, and reflecting. The cycle 1 was done for two meetings; each meeting took 2x40 minutes. The first meeting was on Monday, January 19th, 2009 and the second meeting was on Wednesday, January 21st, 2008. 

Based on the diagnosis, the teacher observed the students while process of learning and teaching process in written cycle, interviewed some students and traced the students’ problems of:

1)     Students’ passiveness

2)     Teacher’s technique strategies

 

1.     Planning

Based on the above problems, the plan activities are:

a)     Designing classroom reading skill activity which might be done to implement the reading strategy

b)     Designing the Syllabus and ‘Rencana Pelaksanaan Pembelajaran’

c)      Preparing some descriptive texts

 

2.     Acting

In this step, the researcher acted out what has stated in Lesson Plan or RPP

 

3.     Observing

In observing, the teacher did some activities:

a)     The researcher and her collaborator observed the teaching process and students activities in implementing the Personalization; Graphic Organizer “A Person You’ll Never Forget” strategy

b)     Collaborator made  notes to know how many students were active, what the students’ activities were, and how the students worked individually or in groups, and takes a note

c)      The team observed the students during the process of teaching and learning reading skill

 

4.     Reflecting

At the end of cycle 1, the researcher discussed with her collaborator about the result of observation and evaluated the result of the action and observation.  Later, the team analyzed and interpreted the data collected from the observation, checklist, and field notes to make conclusion about the development from the students’ reading skill.

Finally, the team planned patterns of solving problems found in cycle 1, and made a plan for the second cycle to continue the progress achieved within cycle 1. In cycle 2, the activities were similar to those in cycle 1, but there was some different emphasis due to the revised plans.

 

C. Participants

The participants of the research were the students of grade VIII.a SMP Negeri 17 Pekanbaru. Informatics technique class; are the class consisting of 40 students in 2008-2009 academic year. Another participant of this research was the researcher herself; she taught reading skill in written cycle through Personalization; Graphic Organizer strategy. The other participants in this research were English teachers of the school. They are the collaborators in doing this action research. They were also teaching at grade VIII SMP Negeri 17 Pekanbaru. Actually, she would like to improve and to apply the new strategy in teaching and learning reading skill process.

D. Instrumentation

In this classroom action research, the major instrument was the researcher herself. She was involved in the field activity in collecting data as the observer. She kept involving in every step in two cycles. These two cycles were chosen by an assumption that at the first cycle the improvement of reading skill was not yet proven significantly. So, in cycle 2, it was hoped that there would be a fully change to a better condition of the students’ reading skill.

The researcher used three kinds of instruments. They were reading comprehension test, observation, checklist and field notes. Before coming into the action, the researcher conducted the reading comprehension test following national English examination standard test (SKL) to know the students’ reading skill. The materials of reading test came from different reading of descriptive texts which would be learnt by the students in the classroom.

She used observation guideline to make diagnosis about the problems found in teaching reading skill. She also used the field-note as one type of observation guideline to analyze the process of teaching and learning in the classroom. She got the information about any progress done.

Finally, the data obtained from the observation were evaluated and reflected by the team. Then, the team made any revised plan for the next cycle.

 

F.     Technique of Collecting the Data

The techniques of collecting data were as follows:

1)     Observation; to see direct class activities done in teaching and learning reading skill.

2)     Field notes; to get the data in the field during teaching process

3)     Checklist; to identify the students’ behavior, movement, procedure, interaction and resources as well as teacher’s teaching strategy. 

The three assessments above were used to asses the teacher’s teaching activities as well as students’ learning activities.

 

G.    Technique of Data Analysis

To analyze the data, inductive analysis was used. The inductive analysis according to Jhonson (2005:83-84) was used to look at the group of data and try to induce or create order  by organizing into group or defining and describing categories such as items, themes, or pattern. Therefore, the data obtained from observation, field notes, and checklist were analyzed inductively by listing themes that have been seen to appear. Items referred to any symptom which appeared in the data, such as students’ interest in reading comprehension could be seen from the students’ frequency in completing and answering the questions. While themes referred to the students’ ability to understand the strategy of reading, for instance identifying the reading text it was included in descriptive text.

The improvement of students’ reading skill could be seen from some indicators. One of the indicators is taken from the improving of reading tasks result. If the students succeeded to achieve a better result from the reading tasks, it means that they have got the improvement of their reading skill.

In other words, data analysis was consisting with describing what was in the data. In addition, the data analysis depended on the research questions. According to Tailor (2003) there are five steps in analyzing data:

1)     Get to know, the data actually during the data collection, all of the data in qualitative. Sometimes, the information provided did not add meaning at all. The purpose is to focus on the data only

2)     Focus the analysis of the research questions, there were two common approaches to get the focuses in analyzing. Focusing on topics or motions by case, individual and group

3)     Categorize information. The information in the data are categorized in five components, such as ideas, concepts, behaviors, interaction and incidents that later will be organized into coherent categorized. The focus of the categorized depends on the purpose of the research.

4)     Identify patterns and connection within and between categories. In identifying patterns and connection between those categorizes to find subject matters. Categories of the data were identified from smaller part; within two categories, among categorize and relationship of all categorizes.

5)     Interpretation. The last step is making interpretation of the matters or motions. It solid be let to researcher finding in this research as the result of the data categorized. The results were describing the purpose of the research questions.

To score the students reading skill, it involved the collaborator of other English teachers. This is due to get the objectivity of the scores of the test result. Before doing the scoring, both of the teachers had rater training to have the same perception toward scoring.

Finally, after getting all of the data from observation, reading comprehension tasks, field notes, and checklist the researcher made the interpretation. The result of the interpretation, the researcher found the weaknesses that still occur in the first cycle and try to find the cause of it and then continue to have a plan for the next cycle.

Based on the result of the last cycle, the researcher could conclude that it was as the result of the classroom action research.

 

 

IV. FINDING AND DISCUSSION

A.    Finding

This action research was conducted in two cycles. Each cycle consisted of two meetings. Every meeting was similar with two hours (2x40 minutes). Each cycle consisted of four phases: plan, action, observation, and reflection.

In cycle 1, most students looked uninterested and unserious to follow the activity in learning reading. They were still passive. They were not willing to answer the questions through Personalization strategy. They seemed uninterested in understanding graphic organization, hard for them to get the ideas from the text. In other words, at the first cycle the problem was not solved yet. It needed to be continued to the next cycle

In cycle 2, there was significant change of students’ behavior reading skill. Most of them looked interested and participated to answer the questions by completing the graphic organizer strategy.

 

 

Table 1. The Result of Students’ Reading Skill of Cycle 1 and Cycle 2

 

34

 

22

 

20

 

13

 

10

 

38

 

25

 

30

 

22

 

18

 

11

 

6

 

23

 

21

 

15

 

12

 

20

 

18

 

9

 

14

 
 

           

The diagram above means; there was improvement the result of the students’ score of the first, second, third, and fourth meetings within two cycles. It shows that the number of students who could find the answer for question 1 (it was about the title of the text) gradually increased; 25 (62.50%) students at meeting 1 of cycle 1 up to 30 (75.00%) students at meeting 2 of cycle 1, and there were 34 (85.00%) students at meeting 1 of cycle 2 became 38 (95.00%) students at meeting 2 of cycle 2. For question 2 (the quality of the thing) gradually increased; 10 (25.00%) students at meeting 1 of cycle 1 up to 13 (32.50%) students at meeting 2 of cycle 1, and there were 20 (50.00%) students at meeting 1 of cycle 2 became 22 (55.00%) students at meeting 2 of cycle 2. for question 3 (remembering the things) had increased; 9 (22.50%) students at meeting 1 of cycle 1 up to 14 (35.00%) students at meeting 2 of cycle 1, and there were 18 (45.00%) students at meeting 1 of cycle 2 became 20 (50.00%) students at meeting 2 of cycle 2. For question 4 (unforgettable thing) had improved; 12 (30.00%) students at meeting 1 of cycle 1 up to 15 (37.50%) students at meeting 2 of cycle 1, and there were 21 (52.50%) students at meeting 1 of cycle 2 became 23 (57.50%) students at meeting 2 of cycle 2. For question 5 (appreciation of it) was also gradually increased;  6 (15.00%) students at meeting 1 of cycle 1 up to 11 (27.50%) students at meeting 2 of cycle 1, and there were 18 (45.00%) students at meeting 1 of cycle 2 became 22 (55.00%) students at meeting 2 of cycle 2. The students could reach this progress because the teacher had used the different strategy in teaching and learning reading skill, and the teacher had helped them when they got difficulties to understand the text and how to do the task. They were interested in using Personalization strategy, because it was the first time for them to use it in reading skill.  

B.    Discussion 

Based on the theories and findings about applying Personalization; graphic organizer A Person You’ll never forget in reading skill, it could be concluded that reading through Personalization had helped students succeed in speaking skill. The students’ reading skill had improved from cycle to cycle. The success of the classroom action research in each cycle was not only indicated from the students’ score in reading comprehension but also from questionnaires and interview. The progress of the action research in overcoming the problems of reading skill could be identified from the improvement the score of the students continuously from cycle to cycle. 

There were problems that appeared during cycle 1 when the researcher had applied Personalization; graphic organizer strategy. First, the students still got difficult in understanding the reading text. They took much time to get the ideas. Second one, they were not familiar with the strategy. The researcher solved the problems in the second cycle by giving them more time to read and to understand the text. The researcher also had given a modeling how to use Personalization; graphic organizer strategy in speaking skill, and she observed and monitored the students’ activity.

It could be said that Personalization; graphic organizer had given much contribution to the students’ reading comprehension and had helped to improve the students’ reading skill. As a result, the researcher and her collaborators would like to keep this condition for the other classes. Converse, they would like to attempt to leave the negative ones in teaching and learning English processes that disturbed this condition.

 

V. CONCLUSION, IMPLICATION, AND SUGGESTION

 

A.    Conclusion.

Based on the research findings discussed in the previous chapter, it could be concluded:

1)     The implementation of Personalization; graphic organizer strategy can improve the students’ reading skill at grade VIII.a SMP Negeri 17 Pekanbaru in 2008-2009 academic year.

2)     The improvement is shown by the improvement of students’ score from cycle 1 to cycle 2’

3)     The factors that influence the changes of students’ reading skill through Personalization; graphic organizer; a) the teacher’s strategy of teaching reading skill, b) good modeling from the teacher, c) more time given in doing the activity

 

B.    Implication.

The research may have implications as follow:

1)     Personalization; graphic organizer strategy is  effective to make students’ reading understanding  in a short time

2)     Personalization; graphic organizer strategy is one of the effective strategies to improve the students’ reading skill  

 

C.     Suggestion.

1)     English teachers may use Personalization; graphic organizer “A Person You’ll Never Forget” strategy  in reading activities as an alternative strategy in teaching and learning reading skill

2)     English teacher should be an creative to create fun and friendly atmosphere to improve the students’ reading skill by using different strategies in teaching reading.

3)     The other researcher is expected to do further studies to make this classroom action research perfect.

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Zainil. 2003. Good Language Learners Strategies and Communicative Language Teaching. Padang. Universitas Negeri Padang Press.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Person You’ll Never Forget

Flowchart: Alternate Process: THINGS I SAID OR WANT TO SAY TO THAT PERSON/THING§ … .§ … .§ … .§ … .Flowchart: Alternate Process: WHY I WON’T FORGET THAT PERSON/THING§ … .§ … .§ … .§ … .§ … .Oval: NAME OF PERSON/THING…………………………………………. Flowchart: Alternate Process: QUALITIES OF THE PERSON/THING§ … .§ … .§ … .§ … .Flowchart: Alternate Process: HOW I KNOW THE PERSON/THING§ … .§ … .§ … .§ … .(p.223)

 

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