CHAPTER II
THEORETICAL REVIEW
A. Definition of Reading
Reading is something crucial and has main role in human being. By reading we can get information about science, technology, other advancement of the world. Therefore, the most important technique in transferring the information is reading.
The definition of reading is proposed by several experts. Some of them are Hornby (2002: 1053), Nunan (1991: 70), and Leu (1997: 8). They define reading as getting meaning from the printed or written material which is done through a dynamic case most particularly with the readers’ knowledge of the experimental content of the text.
Moreover, Leu and Kinzer (1987: 9) supported as follows:
“Reading is developmental, interactive, and global process involving learned skill. The processes involve special incorporates and negatively influenced by non- linguistic internal and external variables of factors”. It means that reading is regarded as complex activity that involves various activities, such as knowing each symbol and analyzing the words into a meaning. Reading comprehension needs an active thinking process in main to comprehend and understand what has been read.
1. The Importance of Reading
There are many references and instructions written in English therefore, the students who have lack of reading skill will have difficulty in comprehending all those references. The students who only confine from his or her teacher at class without having an effort to read many references will not pass in time and succeed. More reading means more knowledge.
Related to Ramelan (1990: i), reading is a good activity for the learners, reading is also something crucial and dispensable since success of their study depends for the greater parts on their ability to read. Romans in Tarigan (1986: 87) stated that:
”Reading plays very important parts in our life. Through reading we can explore places or countries that have never visited before, and minds or ideas of great people in the part, all of which will enrich our experience and knowledge and broaden our horizon. For the students, reading is something crucial and indispensable since the success of their study depends on greater part on their ability to read, if their reading is poor. They are very likely to fail in their study or at least, they will have difficult y in making progress. On the other hand, if their reading is good they will have a better chance to succeed in their study“
As the students who get English lesson, reading is very important to English as a target language to build vocabulary it is realized that reading skill or reading activity will open knowledge and widely give more vocabularies and more information.
2. The Aims of Reading
reading for understanding: it means the students read in order to understand something they read, it means the students read in order to understand the ideas of the text. Second, reading for detail of facts: it means the students read to get detail information of the text. Third, reading inference: it is to find out the conclusion from the action or ideas in the text. Fourth, reading of memorization: it means the students read the text to fix association and to serve immediate recall. Fifth, rapid reading: in this reading demand the students to expand their
general knowledge sixth, reading for enjoyment: This reading is just for fun. The materials such as fiction short stories and poems.
The researcher concludes that reading is very importance to the students. By reading, students are able to understand the information given in the text and able to explore their knowledge well. Besides that, the most important thing is they can memorize and recall the valuable information from the text a long period.
3. Major Components of Reading
The more important things that need to be considered are the component or reading. The components of reading will support the success in the comprehending reading material and contributing in important way to read.
Table 2
Major Components of Reading Major components of
Reading
Explanation
1. Decoding Knowledge It refers to the knowledge readers use the
determining the oral equivalent of written word. 2. Vocabulary
Knowledge
It is the knowledge about word meaning used to determine the appropriate meaning for a word in a particular context.
3. Discourse Knowledge It means knowledge of language organization at units beyond the single sentence level includes the knowledge of structural organization of different types of writing 4. Readiness Aspect It traditions allay refers to the students’
Ability to read and understand a particular selection
5. Effectiveness aspect In reading, the effectiveness aspect includes both interest and attitude. This is will increase motivation and facilitate reading
6. Syntactic knowledge It means knowledge of word order rules that determine grammatical function and sometimes that meaning and pronunciation of words
4. Reading Comprehension
There are a lot of reading comprehension definitions;one of them is proposed by Finochiaro (1986: 77) that reading comprehension means understand information fromit as efficiently as possible. There are some steps of reading comprehension such as prior knowledge,reading text,comprehension tasks and language exercise. Prior knowledge consits of activities which aimed to activate the prior
knowledge of the students through two methods. Those method are Vocabulary preview means the students will try to elicit the meaning of difficult words before they read the text, the second method is anticipation of contex meaning that the students will be given time to anticipate the contet of the text based on a given direction. The second steps is reading text consisting of a reading passage which is need to be read. The third steps is comprehension task which consists of three main activities namely literal level (there are a number of statements which can be found in the text), interpretive level (there are a number of statements, each of them must be an implicit conclusion of the text) and the last level is applied level (there are also some statements,each of them must be an appropriate generalization of the text). Language exercise is focus of a reviewing the linguistic device from the text in
order to reinforce the students comprehension ability.
If reader rely too heavily on thier knowledge and ignore the limitataions imposed by the text, vice versa then they will not be able to comprehend the intended meanig of the writer. Whether one has understood the text or not depends very much on text variables such as sentences structure and length , vocabulary intensity, number of new concepts introduced , the difficulty and the novelty of the subject matter , etc....to understand the reader and the nature of the act of reading more clearly and comprehensively, one needs also tp find out and describe the reader’s strategies and reactions with regard to the reading tasks, and to see how the reader copes with the reading tasks and solves the problems. (Aslanian, 1985: 20)
From those descriptions the writer concludes that reading comprehension is defined as an ability to comprehend the message from the printed or written materials.
5. Technique of Reading
Reading technique has important role in understanding the material. It helps students read efficiently and quickly. According to Walter in Nunan (1999: 71-72) the good readers utilize the following strategy when ecountering a difficult text. First of all, they read slowy, pausing to consider what they have read. Then they reread the text, looking from one part of the text to other parts in order to make connections between these different parts and to make a summary of what they have read.
At least, there are three technique of reading proposed by Grellet (1988: 7), those are:
a. Skimming
Skimming is reading to get general idea of the text.
the reading materials quickly in order to get the gist of it, to know how it is organized or to get an idea of the tone or the intention of the writer. Skimming involves processing texts are: selectively to get the main idea and discourse topic as possible, carefully to main ideas and the discourse topic as eefficiently as possible, rapidly and selectively to locate information so as to complete written assignments. The aim of skimming exercise is certainly not to encourage the students to read all texts such as a superficial way. b. Scanning
Scanning is very fast reading, when scanning we only try to locate specific information and often we do not follow the linearity of the passage to do so, we simply let our eyes wander over the text until we find what we are looking for, whether it be a name,a date or a less specific information. Scanning is a searching that the requires to float over the materials until the reader finds what the reader need, then he /she stops and reads as necessary in order to answer the question. The exercises suggested to practise scanning also put the students in an authentic situation where they would naturraly scan the text rather than read it. The students solve a specific problem as quickly as possible, which is only possible by means of scanning. Scanning is looking quickly over a text in order to locate specific points of information. c. Sensitizing
complex of apparently obscure that they do not stumble on every difficulty or get discouraged from outset.
B. Reciprocal Teaching
1. Definition of Reciprocal Teaching
Reciprocal Teaching or RT is a strategy that attempt to establish an active and relative expanded (Palincsar, Brown and Campione, 1983: 16-17). Allen in Felipe Vela Izquierdo (2004: 20) states that teacher foster reciprocal teaching through their belief that collaborative construction of meaning between themselves and students leads to a higher quality of learning.
Further more Palincsar, Brown and Campione in Felipe Vela Izquierdo (2004: 20) define Reciprocal teaching as dialogue between teacher and students. This dialogue is described as reciprocal because each learner acts in response to another.
2. Procedure of Reciprocal Teaching
Procedures of Reciprocal strategy are modeled by the teacher and then the students will practice and coach by the teacher then will give feedback by the teacher. There are four strategies used in reciprocal strategy in teaching reading, the strategies are: predicting, questioning, clarifying, and summarizing
b. Questioning generating reinforced the summarizing strategy and carries the learner one more step along in the comprehension activity. When the students generate questions, first they identify the kind of information that significant enough to provide the substance for a question. They pose this information in question form and self-test to ascertain that they can answer their own question. Question generating is a flexible strategy to the extent that students can be taught and encouraged to generate question at many level.
c. Clarifying is an activity that is particularly important when working with students who have a history of comprehension difficulty. When the students are asked to clarify, their attention is called to the fact that there may be many reasons why the text is difficult to understand. For example: new vocabulary, unclear reference words and unfamiliar and perhaps difficult concept. They taught to be alert to the effect of such impediments to comprehension and take the necessary measures to restore the meaning.
3. The Advantages of Reciprocal Teaching
The purpose of reciprocal teaching is to facilitate a group’s effort between teacher and students as well as among the students in the task of increasing their talking time.
Hashey, et al in Felipe Vela Izquierdo (2004: 20) mentioned that the teacher see increases in students' confidence and success, in their understanding and use of strategies, and in their enjoyment of their reading.
According to Allen in Felipe Vela Izquierdo (2004: 21) in a study on the impact of the use of reciprocal teaching instruction for 15 to 17 days, the study showed positive changes in the students' abilities to generate questions, answer questions and how to summarize information.
Motivation can be done by shows how important the skill they learnt for their study in order to increase their achievement.
The Teacher monitors’ and evaluates in students activities to determine where scaffolding is needed to help students to be succeeding in using strategies. Students become aware of their learning processes and think critically what they are learning about.
The teacher's role in this instructional procedure changes as the strategies are taught to the students. The teacher has to be professional in modeling these strategies to the students and then gradually fade away and let the students take over the control of their learning. The ability of the teacher to fill this role greatly affects the learning process.
4. The impact of Reciprocal teaching towards students' learning achievement. There are some impacts from implementation of reciprocal teaching in students' achievement
a. Impact in students' communication skill
In application of reciprocal teaching which have a lot of activities and practice, shown that there is positive impact in their communication ability. This happens because during learning process, students give question, and their comment on their friends’ answer. b. Impact in student’s motivation
their subject if what they are learning is interesting for them, relevant with their need, make them satisfied and will build up their confidence. In the teaching learning using reciprocal strategy, the students will be active in finding information which they need to answer their question to make it relevant with their own need.
c. Impact in cognitive learning achievement
During teaching learning process, students will encourage to conclude their materials themselves. This activity will give an opportunity to improve their cognitive skill. This will also improve their learning achievement
5. Teaching Reading through Reciprocal Teaching
According to Mc. Keachie and his colleagues in Elizabeth F.Barkely (2005: 141) the basic stages of Reciprocal Teaching are:
a. Teacher’s demonstration
Teacher’s demonstrated or modeled and explain the use of four strategies in reciprocal teaching
b. Students learning and practicing
c. Teacher students group
Teacher lead discussion about the text in small group, repeatedly take turn leading discussion from all the groups and give feedback for the groups
d. Students group
Students take turn leading the discussions using four strategies in small groups with other students. Each Students except the leader take responsibility for giving feedback on the strategy use then the leader of the group will lead the discussion and present their result to the other group. The teacher moves from one group to another to observing the progress and giving assistance as needed.
e. Students self-regulation
Students use four strategies on their own activity and provide their own feedback.
f. Teacher’s Activities in Teaching using Reciprocal Teaching 1) Teacher tells the students that they are going to learn materials
using Reciprocal technique. Teacher at first explain to the students about Reciprocal technique and the procedure of it 2) Teacher distributes reading text and ask the students to predict
what the author may discuss in the first paragraph, then teacher ask students to tell their opinion orally
them to clarify the difficult vocabularies, phrases or sentences that they do not know yet.
4) After the students finish discussing the whole paragraph then teacher asks the students to summarize the containt of the text. g. Students’ Activities in Learning through Reciprocal Teaching
1) Students divided into group of four by the teacher, and given different reading text to be discussed
2) Students will predict the text using Reciprocal technique, as the teacher teaches them before.
3) Each group will discuss the text using all the stages of Reciprocal teaching and one of them as leader of each group will tell the whole class their result. Each group taking turn to present their result. 4) When one group is performing their result, other students will ask
