CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter presents the literature review of the study. It covers reading, the important of reading, the purpose of reading, the definition of reading comprehension, teaching reading, cooperative learning, Numbered head Together technique, and improving reading using Numbered Head Together.
A. Reading
1. The Definitions of Reading
Reading is constant process of guessing, and what one things to the text is often more information than one finds in it (Grellet, 1987: 7).
On the other hand, reading is a developmental, interactive, and global process involving learned skills. The process especially in corporates an individuals knowledge, and can be both positively influenced by nonlinguistic internet and external varriable and factor (Leu and Kinzer, 1987: 9).
Reading is a dynamic process in which the text elements interact with other factors outside the text; in this case most particularly with the reader‟s knowledge of experiencetial content of the text (Nunan, 1991:
70).
Based on the definition mentioned previously, it can be concluded that reading is a process in using ability to understand the message from printed or written material through words or written language.
2. The Importance of Reading
An article written by Richard and Bamford in Reaching Reluctant Readers (1997: 93), that reading a large amount of easy material has a vital role to play in learning to read fluently. Firstly, it helps when students away from the word-by-word processing of the text, encouraging them instead to go for the general meaning of what they read, and to ignore any details they do not fully understand. Secondly, by meeting the same patterns of letters, words, and combination of words again and again, students process them more quickly and accurately, thus developing a sight vocabulary (words that are technology, and other advancements which make succeed for them life. By reading, it will develop and improve the students‟ reading skill.
Reading comprehension is very important to the development of students‟ reading skills and therefore to their ability to obtain an
education.
According to the National Reading Panel (NRP), “Reading comprehension is very important to the development of children‟s reading
skills and therefore to their ability to obtain an education” (1977).
Comprehension is crucial to provide insight of a student‟s abilities. If you
know how well a student comprehends a certain text, then you can assess how well they utilize all the sub processes of reading (McKenna & Stahl, 2009). The ability to comprehend is necessary for reading, because the main goal of reading is to understand and interpret what was read. Therefore developing comprehension will lead to increased literacy development.
3. The Purpose of Reading
The purpose of reading and the type of text determine the specific knowledge, skill, and strategy that readers need to apply and achieve comprehension. Reading comprehension is thus much more than decoding. The result of reading comprehension is the reader knows which skills and strategies are appropiate for the type of text, and understands how to apply them to accomplish the reading purpose.
Mtjhnson said reading is an activity with a purpose. A person read in order to gain information or verify existing knowledge, in order to critique a writer's ideas or writing style. A person also read for enjoyment, or to enhance knowledge of the language being read. The purpose of reading guides the reader's selection of texts. The purpose of reading also determines the appropriate approach to reading comprehension.
However, a person using a scientific article to support an opinion needs to know the vocabulary that is used, understand the facts and cause-effect sequences that are presented, and recognized ideas that are presented as hypotheses and givens. Traditionally, the purpose of learning to read in a language has been to have access to the literature written in that language. In language instruction, reading materials have traditionally been chosen from literary texts that represent "higher" forms of culture. The purpose of reading is looking for and getting information from books or texts. In reading, the students have to understand the idea, the context, and the meaning of the texts on the passages.
(Binning, 1952: 23) described that there are some points of the aims of reading they are:
a. Reading for understanding
The students read to understand the idea of the text.
b. Reading for detail of fact
Its to find out the conclusion from the action on ideas on the text. d. Reading for memorization
The students read the text to fix conclusion and serve immediate recall. e. Rapid reading
The reading demands the students to expand his general knowledge. f. Reading for enjoyment
This reading is just for fun like read poem, short story or so on
4. The Components of Reading Comprehension
Reading comprehension is the process of understanding and constructing meaning from a piece of text. In comprehending a reading material, the most important thing that needs to be considered is the components of reading comprehension. (Leu and Kinzer, 1987: 30-38) said that there are some components of reading as follows:
a. Decoding knowledge
The readers are used to determine the oral equivalent of written word. b. Vocabulary Knowledge
The knowledge about word meanings is used to determine the necessery word meanings from context. Vocabulary knowledge is important at all grade levels, but is a particulary important aspect of reading instruction as children develop and explore less familiar subject areas with somewhat specialized vocabularies.
Syntatic knowledge includes understanding word order rules that exist within sentences and permit you to determine the grammatical function and often the meaning and pronounciation of words.
d. Discourse Knowledge
Discourse knowledge is the knowledge of language organization at units beyond the single sentence level. It includes knowledge of the structure organization of different types of writting.
e. Readiness Aspect
Traditionally, reading readiness is the ability of a student to benefit from initial reading instruction. Recently, reading readiness has also included being ready to read and understand a particular selection. f. Affective Aspects
In reading, affective aspects of comprehension include a reader‟s
attitude and interest. These increase motivation and facilitate reading comprehension.
From the description mentioned previously, it can be concluded that reading comprehension is a process of the mind to understand and comprehend the meaning of written or printed words or symbols.
5. Teaching of Reading
Early method of teaching reading may be divided into two groups: 1. Those which approach the teaching of reading through initial emphasis
2. Those which approach it through the use of words or larger language units, and lay initial emphasis on the meaning of what is read.
Method starting from words elements have been classified into three main groups:‟alphabetic methods‟, in which the names of letters are
used in the attempt to recognize and pronounce words; ‟phonic methods‟,
in which the sound of letters or groups forming phonograms, are used; and syllabic methods, in which the sounds of oft-recurring syllables are used.
The second group of highly specialized methods of teaching reading are, on the contrary, based on the assumption that meaningful language units (words, phrases, sentences) should be the point of departure. Than, the story method is an expansion of the sentence method, using a sequence of sentences in from of a story as the unit of instruction in early reading activities (Gray, 1956: 76-86).
Teaching reading is also a challenge because reading is a complex developmental process. Learning how to teach reading requires some understanding of this complexity and, in addition, an understanding of effective instruction strategies. As you learn how to teach of reading, you will be developing answers to a number of important questions, such as: a. What must the students know to comprehend complete stories,
articles, and books? How can I help the students gain meaning from these and other kinds of writing?
c. What organizational patterns can be used to provide for the range of individuals in my classroom? How can I best organize my classroom? d. What are the characteristic of effective teachers? What must I do to
become an effective reading teacher?
Science of the teachers can not predict exactly what the students need to read in the future, students should be given a wide variety of text in their English lesson (Leu and Kinzer, 1987: 13).
B. Narrative Text
1. The Nature of Narrative Text
The main focus in this research is narrative text. According to Hartono (2005:6) narrative text is a text which has purpose is to entertain, amuse and to deal with actual or various experience in different ways. 2. Generic Structure of Narrative Text
The steps for constructing an narrative text according to Neo (2005: 2), there are three generic structure of narrative text. Those are as follows:
a Orientation
The readers are introduced to the main characters and possibly some minor characters. Some indication is generally given of where the action is located and when it is taking place.
b Complication/ rising action
The complication is pushed along by a serious of events, during which we usually expect some sort of complication or problem to arise. It just would not be so interesting if something unexpected did not happen. This complication will involve the main characters and oven serves to (temporally) toward them from reaching their goal.
c Sequence of event/Climax
be told in chronological order (the order in which they happen) or with flashback. The audience is given the narrator‟s point of view.
d Resolution/ falling action
In this part, the implication may be resolved for better or worse, but it is rarely left completely unresolved (although this is of course possible in certain types of narrative which leaves us wondering “How did it end”?)
e Reorientation
It is an optional closure of event. 3. Language Features of Narrative Text
The language features that are usually found in an narrative text according to Astuti (2006: 96), are as follows:
a. Active verbs are used.
b. The first person (I, we) or the third person (he, she, they). c. The past tense is used.
d. Conjunctions (linking words to do with time) are used. e. Adjectives and adverbs are used.
f. Using time conjunction; once upon a time, one day g. Using connectives; then, meanwhile
4. Type of Narrative Text
1. Legend
Legend is a narrative of human actions that are preceived both by teller and listener to take place within human history. Typically, a legend is a short, traditional and historicized narrative performed in a conversational mode. Some difine legend as folktale. The example of legend in narrative text are:
a. Sangkuriang b. Malin Kundang
c. the Legend of Tangkuban Perahu, etc. 2. Fable
Fable is a short allegorical narrative making a moral point, traditionally by means of animal characters that speak and act like human being. The examples of nfable in narrative text are:
a. Mousedeer and crocodile b. The smartest parrot, etc. 3. Fairy tale
Fairy tale is a story about imaginary beings possesing magical powers. The examples of fairy tale in narrative text are:
a. Cinderella b. Snow white c. Pinocchio
5. Assesing Reading Comprehension of Narrative Text
According to Brown (2004: 187-188), the micro and macro skills below represent the spectrum of possibilities for objectives in the assessment of reading comprehension.
a. Micro skills
1) Discriminating among the distinctive graphemes and orthographic patterns of English.
2) Retaining chunks of language of different lengths in short-term memory.
3) Processing writing at an efficient rate of speed to suit the purpose. 4) Recognizing a core of words, and interpret word order patterns and
their significance.
5) Recognizing grammatical word classes (nouns, verbs, etc), systems (e.g., tense, agreement, pluralization), patterns, rules, and elliptical forms.
6) Recognizing that a particular meaning may be expressed in different grammatical forms.
7) Recognizing cohesive devices in written discourse and their role in signaling the relationship between and among clauses.
b. Macro skills
2) Recognizing the communicative functions of written texts, according to form and purpose.
3) Inferring context that is not explicit by using background knowledge.
4) From describing events, ideas, etc., infer links and connections between events, deduce causes and effects, and detect such relations as main idea, supporting idea, new information, given information, generalization, and exemplification.
5) Distinguishing between literal and implied meanings.
6) Detecting culturally specific references and interpret them in a context of the appropriate cultural schemata.
7) Developing and use a battery of reading strategies, such as scanning and skimming, detecting discourse markers, guessing the meaning of words from context, and activating schemata for the interpretation of texts.
Based on the explanation above, macro skills and micro skills that will be used to evaluate students‟ reading comprehension in pre-reading activity are follows:
1. Macro Skills
a. Skimming text for the gist and for the main idea, scanning text for specific information (names, dates, key words).
c. Understanding context inference that is not explicit by using background knowledge.
2. Micro Skills
a. Identifying referents of pronoun.
b. Using context to guess meaning of unfamiliar words.
c. Understanding cohesive in written discourse and their role in signaling the relationship between and among clauses.
The researcher will use traditional multiple choice-questions to evaluate students‟ reading comprehension. The traditional multiple
choice-questions “Read a passage and answer some questions” technique is undoubtedly the oldest and the most common (Brown, 2004: 204). It is used because it recovers macro skills and micro skills that are used to evaluate students‟ reading comprehension.
6. Evaluation of Reading
According to Douglas (2001:308), there are some evaluations to your technique:
a. Doing: the reader responds physically to a command.
b. Choosing: the reader selects from alternatives posed orally or in writing.
c. Transfering: the reader summarizes orally what is read.
g. Duplicating: the reades translates the massage into the native language or copies it(begining level, for very short passage only). h. Modeling: the reader engages in a conversation that indicates
appropriate processing of information.
From some evaluation above, the writer chooses one of them of the instrument in this research. One of the evaluation was „choosing‟
which means that the students select from alternatives posed orally or in reading. The writer used one type of test to collect the data, and it was multiple choice. The writer made the test in which the total number of test is 20. It contained 20 items of multiple choice. The multiple choice was used by the writer because it recovered the micro skill such as: understanding given information stated in passsage, to recognize the communicative function of written text, according to form and purpose, understanding context inference that is not explicit by using backgroung knowledge, identifying referents of pronoun, and using context to guess the meaning of unfamiliar words.
C. Cooperative Learning
1. The Definitions of Cooperative Learning
Cooperative learning is the inquiry approaches which have been presented here may be enhanced by incorporating them into an educational framework (Kourilsky and Quaranta, 1987: 80).
Cooperative learning is learning together, helping each other in learning, and certaining each of the students in a group to reach the aim or the task that is determined before (Isjoni, 2009: 6).
Cooperative learning is a wider concept that it involves kinds of group work. It is included from of group work that is led and directed by the teacher (Suprijono, 2010: 54).
From all the definition mentioned previously, it can be concluded that cooperative learning is collaborative learning essentially involves students have to do with social mediating activity and interaction with others, each member of a team is responsible not only for learning what is taught but also for helping teammates learn.
2. The Definitions of Number Head Together
are given the chance to give the answer of the question. Based on the answer, teacher can develop the discussion deeply. So, the students can find the answer of the question as knowledge.
3. Teaching Reading Using Number Head Together
Reading is one of the important things in learning English. It is support the teaching learning skills (speaking, reading, writing and listening). So, the students have to develop their understanding to find information and knowledge from the reading text. According to Trianto (2009: 82-83) there are some steps of NHT technique in learning process, especially in reading material, those are:
a. Numbering
In this step, teacher divides the students into some groups, each group consist of 4 students and the teacher gives number series for the students in each groups.
b. Giving question
Teacher gives question for each students. The question can be variation or same.
c. Thingking Together
d. Teacher calls one of the number.
The students that have same number in each groups should try to answer the question for the team. Then, teacher choose the group that should answer the question randomly. The students that have same number in another groups should give their opinion about the answer. e. Evaluation
And the last step, teacher and students make a conclusion. Then, the teacher give evaluation for the students.
4. The Advantages and Disadvantages of NHT Technique
Every technique of teaching learning process has advantages and disadvantages. NHT technique also has both of them. Hamsa (2009: 2) stated that NHT technique can make the students ready to do the task, give and answer the questions. The students can discuss the material that is studied and there are cooperation between the students who has more ability than the students who has less ability. However, he also said that this technique is not suitable for the class that have many students because it needs much time and the teacher can not call all of the members to give or answer question. So, to cope the problem, the researcher should continue the discussion the next meeting.
opportunity to deliver their opinion but the teacher sometimes need much time to apply this technique.
D. Basic Assumption
Reading comprehension is the process of understanding and constructing meaning from a piece of the text. This activity is regarded as one of the difficult process of learning because learners must have the ability to understand and find certain details of the reading text. To make teaching reading comprehension more successful, the teachers need an interesting technique.
Number Head Together is one of an interesting techniques from cooperative learning that can stimulate students‟ reading comprehension and cooperation in reading activities in the class because the students can work cooperatively in reading activities by sharing their ideas and information of the text.
