CHAPTER II
THEORETICAL REVIEW
A. Reading
1. Definition of Reading
Reading is something crucial and has main role in human. Being by reading, we can get more information about science, technology, other advancement of the world. Therefore, the most important technique in transferring the information is reading. To understand the meaning or message, it was resulted from reading that called reading comprehension. Different types of reading comprehension were often distinguished, according to the reader’s purposes in reading and types of reading used.
Comprehension skill involved understanding the vocabulary, seeing the relationship among words and concepts, organizing ideas, recognizing the author’s purpose, making judgements, and evaluating. It meant that reading was regarded as a complex activity that involved various activities, such as knowing each symbol and analyzing the words into a meaning. Related to the topic of the research, reading material of learning by students was the types of text (kinds of text). It was aimed in order to make the students well both characteristics of each text and the content of the passage.
The word ‘reading’ comes from the word “read”. In Oxford
printed or written words, symbols or diagrams when the students look at and then understand them. While, ‘reading’ means the activity of looking for and understanding printed words in the books and other publications.
Based on the definition of reading comprehension above, it was concluded that reading comprehension is a thinking process to get understanding from what has been read to get information that the reader needs as efficiently as possible. In this process, the reader emphasized the important of prior knowledge and reading skills in order to find information of the text.
In reading comprehension, many students felt difficult to comprehend this comprehension. There were some factors that influencing reading comprehension. Dallman (1982: 165) points out the factors of influencing the reading comprehension.
a. External Factors
1) Difficulty of Material
Difficulty of material that is beyond the student’s level is one of the major causes of lack comprehension.
2) Environment
3) Teacher’s Method
Methods of teaching that concentrate on the recognition of individual words without neglecting attention to assist the improving of students’ quality in comprehending the text. b. Internal Factors
1) Motivation
Motivation is one of the important factors of learners in reading comprehension.
2) Self-esteem
Self-esteem has important role in developing reading comprehension. It is a human being personality that is active and highly confident.
3) Self-actualization
Self-actualization is one of the basic physical needs and the students have a feeling to create and improve their ability in reading to be best.
4) Intelligence
2. The Importance of Reading
Romans in Tarigan (1986:87) states that reading plays very important parts in our life. Through reading, we can explore places or countries that have never been visited before, and minds or ideas of great people in the part. All of them can enrich our experience and knowledge and broaden our horizon.
So, reading was very important for the students of junior high school because it was aimed to build more vocabularies, open knowledge of reading competence and get more information.
3. The Aims of Reading
Reading had important aims in the teaching and learning process. Tarigan (1987: 45) says that there are several aims of reading. a. Reading for understanding; it means that the students read in
order to understand the ideas of the text.
b. Reading for detail of facts; it means that the students read to get detail information of the text.
c. Reading inference; it is to find out the conclusion from the actions or ideas in the text.
d. Reading of memorization; it means that the students read the text to fix association and to serve immediate recall.
4. Microskills of Reading Comprehension
In teaching and learning process, the teacher had to comprehend the aim of the material that was taught for students. Douglas H. Brown (2001: 307) says that there are microskills of reading comprehension. a. Discriminate among the distinctive graphemes and orthographic
patterns of English.
b. Retain chunks of language of different lengths in short-term memory.
c. Process writing at an efficient rate of speed to suit the purpose. d. Recognize a core of words, and interpret word other patterns and
their significance.
e. Recognize grammatical words, classes (noun, verb, etc.), system (e.g., tense, agreement, pluralistic), patterns, rules, and elliptical forms.
f. Recognize that a particular meaning may be expressed in different grammatical forms.
g. Recognize cohesive devices in written discourse and their role. In signaling the relationship between and among clauses.
h. Recognize the rhetorical form of written discourse and their significance for interpretation.
j. Infer context that is not explicit by using background knowledge.
k. Infer links and connections between events, idea, etc., deduce causes and effects, and detect such relations as main idea, supporting idea, new information, given information, and exemplification.
l. Distinguish between literal and implied meanings.
m. Detect culturally specific references and interpret them in a context of appropriate cultural schemata.
n. Develop and use a battery of reading strategies such as scanning and skimming. Detecting discourse markers, guessing the meaning of words from context, and activating scheme for the interpretation of texts.
5. The Specification of Microskills in Reading Comprehension
Based on micro skills above, the writer used some micro skills in teaching reading to improve students’ reading competence.
a. Using context to guess meaning of unfamiliar words.
b. Recognizing that a particular meaning may be expressed in different grammatical forms.
c. Understanding given information stated in the passage.
6. Evaluations of Reading
The teacher had to do evaluation in his/her teaching process. It meant that the teacher wanted to know the students’ leaning process. According to Douglas H. Brown (2001: 308), to do the evaluation in teaching process, the teacher has to determine the evaluation technique in teaching and learning process. There were some evaluations to CIRC technique.
a. Doing : the reader responds physically to a command.
b. Choosing : the reader selects from alternatives posed orally or in writing.
c. Transferring : the reader summarizes orally what is read. d. Answering : the reader answers the questions about the
passage.
e. Condensing : the reader outlines or takes notes on a passage.
f. Extending : the reader provides an ending to a story. g. Duplicating : the reader translates the message into the
native language or copies it (beginning level, for very short passage only).
i. Conversing : the reader engages in a conversation that indicates appropriate processing of information.
From some evaluations above, the researcher chose one of them to be focusing of instrument in this research. The researcher used reading evaluation of choosing as instrument of test. It meant that the students chose the best answer based on the questions about the passage. So, the researcher used a type of test to collect the data. It was objective test in the form of multiple choice
The researcher made the test by total number of the test was 30. It contained 30 items of multiple choice. The students did the test for 80 minutes. Right answer of multiple choice was scored one and the wrong answer of multiple choice was scored zero. Then, the total score of right answers were divided by the total number of items and multiplied a hundred percentage. Here was the formula to calculate each the student’s score.
Score = ∑
∑ x 100
Table 1
Scoring the items of test
No Type of test
Number of
Items
Score Total
1 Multiple Choice 30 1 30
TOTAL 30
7. Indicators of Students’ Activity
The researcher and the collaborating teacher determined the indicators of students’ activity in teaching and learning process in the table below.
Table 2
Student’s Observation Activity
Participation
Contributive Initiative
Asking question Doing the task
Giving answering Giving opinion Giving rejection
were the parts of student’s participation in teaching and learning process. From these indicators of participation, students were more responsible toward the implementation of learning because they had motivation to learn. A teacher should motivate the students. There were general ways as efforts of teachers to raise the students’ motivation in learning English, especially reading.
There were some examples of giving motivation:
a. giving appreciation and critics
b. holding competition among the students c. giving prize and punishment
d. announcing about the students’ progress in learning
Thus, both contributive and initiative participations shaped the students to be active and creative, and made them conscious that knowledge could only be achieved through hard working and they realized how important the meaning of learning was.
B. CIRC (Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition)
1. Definition of CIRC
then return to mix ability team to work on a series of cognitively engaging activities, such as reading to one another (reading partner), making predictions about the text, summarizing text/stories, and vocabularies. CIRC reading and language art or writing provide a structure for teacher to teach and students to learn which help all students become more effective readers and writers.
CIRC technique here meant the method of performance as comprehensive program for teaching reading and writing in the upper elementary and middle grades which involved students’ cooperation in team work in which team success depended on individual success.
According to Thurlow, Groden, Ysseldyke, Algozzine (Slavin, 2005: 202), they find that some students only read loudly for nine seconds per day. The most of students like reading by orally so much. The main purpose of CIRC is to help the students learning the reading competence that can be applied widely by making the cooperative teams.
There were some relevant studies on this research. CIRC for English language teaching and teaching reading. The justification relevant study of this study came from some experts and researcher in which all the arguments and also support the role of CIRC technique in English language teaching and teaching reading.
art in the upper elementary and middle grades. It uses a single text that in learning reading by using CIRC technique of the students are taught in reading groups and then return to mix ability team to work on a series of cognitively engaging activities, such as reading to one another (reading partner), making predictions about the text, summarizing text/stories, and vocabularies.
According to Fitzgerald and Spiegal (1983), the main purpose of CIRC is to help the students in learning their competence and comprehend by using cooperative teams which can be made application widely. The students work in group to identify five essential features of each text. They were the characteristic, background of event, problem, and the last solution.
According to Eni Maesaroh (2010), the use of CIRC in teaching and learning reading is appropriate teachnique to solve the students’ problem of reading recount text. The students are more active and confidence to share their ideas or opinions and make the students to be democratizes. But, this technique spends much time and the teacher is difficult to manage the material, which is issued or given.
CIRC was believed to be a fun technique for teaching and learning reading with a comfortable teaching atmosphere. By using CIRC, the students were free to share their minds, ideas, or opinions to others. The students are more active and confidence to share their ideas or opinions and make the students to be democratizes. But, this technique spends much time and the teacher is difficult to manage the material, which is issued or given.
In teaching learning process, there were many obstacles which made the students unable to read English text correctly.
First, the low motivation owned by the students in the teaching and learning English reading. It could be a huge problem faced by the students because they became uninterested in learning reading.
Third, some students seldom bring the dictionary while teaching and learning process. It was a main obstacle for teacher to ask the students found the meaning of difficult words but they did not bring it.
2. Implementation of CIRC Technique
The following steps of CIRC technique to teach reading are quoted from Sukrawa (2004: 2).
a. The teacher divides the class into some of reading groups, each group consists of 3 to 5 members. The groups can be diverse in term of gender, ethnicity, race, and ability.
b. The teacher divides the reading text appropriate with the topic of material, and the level of the students.
c. The students read the text to one another in a team, find out the main idea of the text, give opinion, give suggestion etc, towards the topic of the reading text, and then write on their paper/book. d. Each team/group presents their job in front of their friend. e. The teacher will give a conclusion.
f. The teacher closes the session.
C. Basic Assumption
