TEACHING READING COMPREHENSION BY COMBINING SELECTIVE UNDERLINING AND DOUBLE-ENTRY JOURNALSTRATEGIES FOR SECOND
GRADE AT SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL By:
Sepria *)
**) Armilia Riza, M.Pd Staff Pengajar Program Studi Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris STKIP PGRI Sumatera Barat
ABSTRAK
Reading merupakan salah satu keterampilan bahasa Inggris untuk membuat seseorang mendapatkan informasi dari apa yang mereka baca. Di dalam reading siswa dapat memperbaiki cara berpikir mereka. Jadi, siswa harus memiliki keterampilan reading yang baik untuk menambah informasi dan memperkaya pengetahuan siswa. Namun, pada kenyataannya, banyak siswa hanya bisa sekedar reading tetapi reading dengan memahami isi teks tersebut sangat sulit. Dalam makalah ini penulis membahas bagaimana mengajarkan reading dengan menggunakan dua strategi. Pertama, Selective Underlining strategy adalah strategi yang digunakan untuk mengembangkan kemampuan reading. Strategi ini merupakan strategi yang tepat membantu siswa belajar bagaimana untuk menggarisbawahi ide-ide kunci dalam teks. Didalam strategi ini siswa dengan mudah mengingat informasi dari teks. Kedua, Double-Entry Journal siswa membuat dua kolom, dikolom kiri merupakan hasil yang siswa dapat dari kutipan mereka berdasakan informasi dari sebuah teks tersebut dan dikolom kanan merupakan sebuah reaksi atau respon dari informasi yang siswa dapatkan dari teks yang dipelajari sehingga satu teks memiliki sudut pandang yang berbeda dari setiap anak. Dalam kombinasi selective underlining dan Double-EntryJournal pada pengajaran reading dapat meningkatkan motivasi siswa dalam membaca teks dan meningkatkan minat siswa untuk belajar reading. Kemudian, melalui kombinasi strategi ini, siswa dapat menikmati pelajaran dan membuat mereka memahami teks dengan baik dan membuat mereka bisa berpikir kritis.
Key word: Selective Underlining, Double-Entry Journal Strategies and Reading Comprehension
INTRODUCTION
Reading is an important skill that should be mastered by the students and also one of skills from four skills that students learn in learning English. By reading, the students can get information and knowledge such as educational, business, science, and technology. Thus,
students will get more background knowledge and experiences than people who seldom read. Besides that by reading, the students can increase their critical thinking and ideas.
Furthermore, in School Based Curriculum ( Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan 2006), the students demanded
to comprehend several types of the text that related to genre based approach, such as narrative, descriptive, recount, procedure, report, analytical exposition, spoof and so forth. Especially for the second grade of senior high school, the standard competence stated that the students should be able to respond only three types of the text. They are descriptive, narrative and recount texts. It means that the students are expected to understand those types of text in order to achieve the level of comprehension.
However, reading is not an easy job.
There are some students problem in comprehending a text. During teaching practice, the writer found two problems. It comes from both students and teachers.
Firstly, it is from the students. They are difficult to get meaning of the text, because the texts are printed in high level of English word.
Moreover, it is from the teacher. They still use conventional strategy, there are some strategies that can be used by teacher
in the learning process. First, Dialogical Thinking is a strategy through discussion and collaboration. Students learn to reflect and think critically about a central story issue. Second, KWL strategy, this strategy focuses students on their assigned text and assist in organizing what knowledge they already process. Third, Paired Summarizing is a strategy for having pairs a students read a text closely for understanding. Fourth, Selective Underlining is to make the strategic, selective and purposeful underlining. The last strategy is double-entry journal; it provides a structure for reading response, to make decisions about significant aspect of the text, and to reflect on personal connection to the text. These strategies help students understand about the written text and comprehend about what they have read.
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
Reading is an important activity for human’s life especially for students
because by reading they get much information. According to Nunan (2003 : 68) reading is a fluent process of readers combining information from a text and their own background knowledge to build meaning. It means that it is an activity to find information and produce the meaning from sentences or paragraphs that they have already read. The readers try to analyze the materials which consist of information and create the ideas intended by the writer.
Snow (2002:11) defines reading comprehension as the process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with written language. It means that the readers should do interaction with written language to comprehend the text and then readers’
knowledge and experiences to achieve deep understanding.
Moreover, Nunan (2005:71) explains that teaching reading is a process to teach students in deriving meaning as well as
analyzing and synthesizing what they have read. It means that in teaching reading the teacher should have appropriate ways to make students comprehend what they are reading. In the process, the teacher guides students to develop their background knowledge and bring it to the text. Shortly, it can make students easier in understanding text
Based on the explanation of some experts above, the writer can conclude that reading is an activity of communication process between the readers and written words for getting the ideas or information and derives meaning based on their own background knowledge. So in reading process, readers are hoped to get the understanding of the information which is talking in the text. The aim of reading is that getting the comprehension of all information existed in the text read.
In this paper the writer used Selective Underlining combined with Double-Entry Journal strategies in teaching reading comprehension.
There are some experts who give definition of selective underlining strategy.
According to Santa (1996) selective underlining strategy is a strategy that helps students learn how to underline key ideas in a text. It also helps in organizing and remembering information. In other word, selective underlining strategy can help students to learn and to know the key word in the text. Then, it also give opportunity for the students easy in finding the key word and remembering information have they read.
According to Duchownski, Sheffield and Kutush (2005) Selective Underlining Strategy consists of the following procedures :
1. Hand out a copy passage.
2. Ask the students to read the passage and highlight/ underline what they think is important (the entire class should highlight/ underline in the same color).
3. Ask the students to read the piece again and this time to use a pink
highlighter and mark the places that a realtor would find important.
4. Have the students read the piece a third time and highlight in yellow what a thief would find important.
5. Ask the students what they notice about the three times the highlighted. Point out that the first time was probably the hardest because they lacked purpose.
6. On the board, overhead, or piece of chart paper, jot down what the students think important from two of the perspective used above.
Compare the two lists and discuss how they are the same and how they are different.
According to Strickland (2002:204) double-entry-journal is journal in which the pages are divided into two columns. In one column students write a quote from their reading; in the other they write their reaction. In other word, students divide their journal page into two columns. They write quotes in their journal in the left
column and respond the reaction in their journal in the right column.
Strickland (2002:204) state that, there are some steps for the Double-Entry journal strategy:
1. Have students divide a page in their reading log into two columns. Have them label the left column ”Quote”
and the right “Reactions” or
“Reflection”.
2. As students read, have them select quote that is particular interest.
Their selection will just as likely be based on how the author said something as on what the author said. Have them write down the quotation under the Quote column and record the page number where they found it. If they prefer, they may mark the location with sticky note and record the quote after they complete their reading.
3. Ask students to record their reaction. They might recall a similar experience and tell about it, relate a
character’s description to one in another book they have read, explain why they chose a particular phrase (simile, metaphore, and idiom) and what they think it means, compare a time or location in their reading to another with which they are familiar and so on.
DISCUSSION
In teaching learning activities, the teacher should be able to improve students’ reading comprehension that teacher applied in teaching reading process. If the teacher can apply and develop it based on students’ need, it will give conducive and good atmosphere for students and teacher because a model has important role in order to give comprehend at the material in teaching learning activity.
The writer will discuss about the procedure of teaching reading by combining selective underlining and Double-entry Journal strategies for second
grade at senior high school. The procedures of teaching reading by combining those strategies will consist of three main parts, they are: preparation, implementation, evaluation. Firstly, preparation is the section for preparing all things needed by teacher before starting their teaching. The teacher has responsibility to prepare all of things related to their teaching for reaching the goal of it. Secondly is implementation, it consists of three parts, they are: pre- teaching activity, whilst-teaching activity and post-teaching activity. Finally is evaluation. The teacher evaluates the achievement of students’ based on the combination of both strategies.
For beginning the teaching activities in classroom, the teachers should prepare everything which they need to make teaching itself runs properly. The factors which should be prepared by the teachers as follow:
1. Prepare a Lesson Plan
Before the teacher starts of teaching reading, the lesson plan should be prepared by the teachers.
Lesson plan is very important thing in teaching because its includes planning, directions and rules for setting teaching and learning process.
So that the teaching process will appropriate with step of lesson plan.
2. Prepare a Topic and Material
The teacher should prepare an interesting topic and select the appropriate material to be taught based on the topic that chosen by teacher. It will make the students are interesting in learning, especially in teaching reading. Actually, all type of text can be used in this application of combining strategy. They are : Descriptive, Narrative, Report. But, in this paper the writer only used narrative text.
3. Time Allocation
The allocation of time in teaching process is very crucial aspect which
should be considered by the teachers.
Thus, for this reason, the teacher should be able to use and limit the appropriate time consuming during the teaching and learning process. The time consuming for a meeting is about 2x45 minutes, it will be spent about fifteen minutes for whilst teaching activities, sixty minutes for whilst teaching activities, and fifteen minutes for post-teaching and closing activities.
4. Media
The teacher should prepare media that suitable with the combination of selective underlining strategy and Double-Entry Journal strategy. There are media can be used in this combination such as: video, real object, picture and card. But in this case, the teacher uses a picture as media to be performed in the front of the class.
In the implementation section, the writer will show about the steps of
teaching reading through selective underlining strategy combined with Double-entry Journal for second grade at senior high school students. The procedure can be classified into three steps; pre- teaching reading activity, whilst-teaching reading activity, and post-teaching activity, there follow:
1. Pre-teaching Reading Activity Pre-teaching activity is very important to begin the lesson. It is aims to make the students get full concentration and more ready to begin the lesson as well as to introduce a new topic. There are some activities described as follow:
a. The teacher greets the students pray together.
b. The teacher asks students about their previous material.
c. The teacher brainstorms to the students by giving some questions related to the picture.
2. Whilst-teaching Activity
In this case, whilst teaching activities are the activities which done by the teacher
in presenting the combination of selective underlining strategy and double-entry journal strategy in teaching process. There are three steps in these whilst-teaching activities as follow: Exploration, Elaboration and Confirmation. Thus, the teachers have to teach the students as the following steps.
a. Exploration
In exploration this session of teaching and learning process, the teacher uses selective underlining strategy which has some procedures. The procedures are:
a. The teacher hand out a copy passage.
b. The teacher ask the students to read a passage and underline what they think important.
c. The teacher asks the students to read the piece again and this time to use a different highlighter and mark the places that a realtor would find important.
d. The teacher ask the students read the piece a third time and highlight in
different color what a thief would find important
e. The teacher asks the students what they notice about the three times the highlighted. Point out that the first time was probably the hardest because they lacked purpose.
b. Elaboration
In this part, the teacher uses Double-entry journal which has some procedures. The strategy’s procedures are:
f. The teacher asks the students to divide a page in their reading log into two columns. Have them label the left column “Quote” and the right
“Reactions” or “Reflection”.
g. The teacher asks the students’ to read, have them to select quote that is particular interest. Their selection will just as likely be based on how the author said something as on what the author said..
h. The teacher asks students to record their reaction.
i. On the board, overhead, or piece of chart paper, jot down what the students think important from two of the perspective used above
c. Confirmation
In confirmation session, the teacher and students can do activities:
1) The teacher write the answer of Double-Entry Journal strategy.
2) The teacher and students discuss about the information and complete all ideas and information and repair errors in reaching the ideas.
3) The teacher gives appreciation to students.
4) The teacher and students make conclusion of the lesson.
3. Post-Teaching Activities
a. The last section of teaching reading process is in post teaching. The teacher asks the students about their difficulties in understanding the material.
b. Evaluation
c. Closing
CONCLUSION
The writer can conclude that reading is a process of learning done by the readers with the aim to get information, ideas and add the readers’ knowledge as a result from what they are reading. In teaching reading, the teacher should know the principle and purpose of teaching reading as a skill that have to be learned by students, especially for students at Senior High School. But in fact, some students still have problem in reading. It was difficult for them to find the main idea.
Next, they did not have satisfying result in reading comprehension. Then, the way of the teacher in applying the strategy was not appropriate for the students’ condition.
To overcome the problems above, the teacher should consider a good teaching strategy for teaching reading. The teacher not only can use one strategy, but also can combine two strategies in teaching reading, such as: combining Selective
Underlining and Duble-Entry Journal strategies in narrative Text. Selective Underlining is a strategy in which the students will be encouraged to increase their reading because this strategies help students to understand the text precisely and helps to know the key ideas, remember an information. Besides, Double-Entry Journal is strategy in which the pages are divided into two columns. In one column, students write a quote from their reading.
then, they write their reaction. The writer believes that Selective Underlining and Double-Entry Journal strategies can increase the students’ reading comprehension. By using these strategies, the students will learn how to deliver their arguments in discussion and also the students can predict the text that is given and increase their motivation in reading.
SUGGESTION
Based on conclusion above, the writer would like to give several suggestions to English teacher while teaching reading as the following: first, the teachers should
prepare appropriate material and strategy that will be used in teaching reading in the classroom. Selective Underlining and Double-Entry Journal strategies could be used by English teacher in teaching reading for narrative text; it is a way to increase the students’ understanding and ability in reading the text at Senior High School. Second, the teacher can share thought processes with the students. Last, the teacher should be able to see how students comprehend the text and help the students to increase their comprehending of text.
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