action research 01

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1. Background

Reading is one of the skills that Students should

master in learning English. Based on the curriculum

for Madrasah Aliyah No: 373 December 22nd 1993 the

main Objective of the Teaching English is developing

students ability to read. The Students should be able

to read the subject and get the information from the

reading text.

In reading activities, as stated in the

Curriculum of Madrasah Aliyah the purposes of teaching

reading are; First, Students are excepted to find

certain Information of the reading material. Second,

Students can find the general Information of the

Reading. Third, Students can find Main Ideas

implicitly. Fourth, Students can find the Main Idea

explicitly. Fifth Students can find all detail

information implicitly. Sixth, Students can find

information explicitly. Seventh, students can guess

the meaning of the words; phrases and sentences based

on the context. And eighth, Students can get enjoyment

(DEP. AGAMA 1993).It is generally believe that reading

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should be learnt by the students from the first to the

third years. The fact, it is difficult to make the

students understand the reading text. They have

difficulties to catch the ideas of the reading text

and they often misunderstand and misinterpret about

the content of the text.

Because of difficulties of reading comprehension,

the writer assume that the students are bored because

of uninteresting teaching techniques. Therefore the

writer will try to apply one of the techniques to help

the students by using small groups work discussion in

reading classroom. Using small groups work will make

the students learn selves and it can help them to

develop their ability by themselves. By a good leading

of the doing technique in reading classroom activities

students are expected to be able to catch the content

of the topics, get the ideas, get general or specific

information in reading text which they will discuss in

small group discussion.

From the explanation above, the writer is

interested to carry out the research on the Improving

Students ability in reading comprehension through

small groups work.

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The writer hope this technique can help the students

improvement in reading comprehension.

1.2. The Setting of the Problem

There are some problems the writer found after

teaching at Madrasah Aliyah Negeri (MAN) Bengkalis,

the problems can be caused by some aspects that may

influence students in comprehending reading materials,

it can come from the teachers capability, such as

techniques, roles, or performance, the time schedule,

the school environment and the students capabilities,

such as their background knowledge, vocabularies, and

their knowledge about the topics so the students have

problems in understanding reading text. The problems

are: Why do most of students have difficulties in

answering question? Does it happen because of their

vocabulary, their knowledge in structure or other

skills needed to comprehend the text and to answer the

questions or the teacher techniques? How the problems

can be overcome? Can small group work discussion

techniques solve the students problem?

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1.3. The Limitation of the Problem

Since it is impossible to cover all the problems

mentioned above, limitation should be made. In this

term the writer want to discuss how to increase

students attention in learning process. In reading

activities, the writer use some themes and topics of

the subject. The topics of the subject were:

Education, Family Planning, Healthy, Galaxy, and

Olympic. The small groups work in reading classroom

activities suitable with the subject.

1.4. Formulation of the Problem

Based on the background the problem can be

formulated as follows:

Do the students have better reading comprehension

achievement when they are taught in small group work?

Can teaching reading in small group work improve the

students achievement in reading?

1.5. The Objective of Research

The objective of this research is to know the

techniques for improving students Comprehension in

Reading through small groups work technique in

classroom activities.

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1.6. The Need of research

The research is intended to know the students

with the small groups work have better comprehension.

And it can improve themselves.

1.6. The Definition of the Term Used

The terms used in this research are explained as

follows:

- Improving: the ways to become better than

before(Hornby 2000).

- Ability: capacity or power and skill to do

somethings(Echol,1995).

Based on this definition, the writer defines that

students ability is students capacity to

comprehend the reading texts.

- Reading: study, perusal of written or printed matter

intended to be read ( Witty,228.1971).

- Comprehension : the ability to understand/an

exercise that trains the students to

understand(Hornby 2000).

- Small group: group consisting of 3 or 4 students

- Small group work: it is an activity done by learner

to select and discuss the content of reading text

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with the teacher and the learner during the process

of teaching and in a reading class (Harmer,1991).

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CHAPTER II

THEORICAL FRMEWORK

2.1 The Concept of Reading Comprehension.

Talking about the concept of Reading

Comprehension some expert have given their thought as

follows: first reading is an interactive process

between what a reader already knows about given topic

or subject and what the writer writes (Nunan, 1990;

33). Second reading is a process of understanding of

the Symbols (Lado; 1964).

In the development of the theory of reading

comprehension bottom-up and top-down processing

strategies are important for readers ( Nuttal 1996;

17).

Bottom-up reading belongs to the theory that

states that the reader will understand the meaning of

the text only after the action of reading. According

to the theory the readers understanding of the text

will depend only on the meaning of the words,

sentences, and paragraph. The meaning of the words

will contribute to the meaning of a sentence, a

sentence to a paragraph and so on. This theory claim

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that the readers background knowledge does not help

or influence the readers understanding to the text.

Top-down reading on the opposite, is the theory

that states that reading is dynamic process. There is

an interaction between the reader and the text. The

readers understanding and interpretation to the text

will depend not only on the meaning of the words and

sentences, but also on the readers background

knowledge and past experiences related to the topic of

the reading. A substantial body of research indicate

that many readers do not fully understand the text,

not because they do not know the meaning of the words

and sentences in the text but because they dont have

appropriate background knowledge about the text.

Moreover reading has been called a process of

decoding a particular writing system into language or

a process of getting meaning from written materials.

According to Reinking and Scheiner in Kustaryo (1988)

define reading as an active process of interacting

with print and monitoring to establish meaning.

Kustaryo (1988) mentioned that reading is meaningful

interpretation of printed or written verbal symbols.

Furthermore, he concludes that reading is combination

of word recognition and intellect, and emotion

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interrelated with prior knowledge to understand the

message communicated.

Horn (1971), indicate that to understand the

message mean to comprehend the text. The comprehension

of the written language involve large factors such as

lexical, grammatical, cultural meaning, connection

between sentences, paragraph structure, the

organization of longer elements and many other. In

order to read confidently, students should understand

what they read.

2.2. The purpose of Teaching Reading

According to the GBPP of Madrasah Aliyah 1993,

reading is the most important skill to be developed in

the classroom. This means that teaching/learning time

must be very much devoted for the students

development of receptive skill.

The aim of teaching reading is to help the

student to develop students skill, so that they can

read English text effectively and efficiently, and

also to enable them to interpret of what they read.

Thus effective reading is always purposeful.

Mc Donough and Shaw (1993 : 102) Claim that much of

the currents thinking on reading tends to focus

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primarily on the purpose of the activities even if

reading is done for pleasure, it is purposeful. In

general, the purpose of reading is classified into as

follows :

1. Getting general information from the text.

2. Getting specific information from the text.

3. Reading for pleasure or for interest (William 1984).

In addition Gallert (1986) stated that there are

some goals of reading activities:

- Recognizing the script of a language

- Deducing of the meaning and use unfamiliar lexical

item

- Understanding explicitly stated information

- Understanding information when not explicitly stated

- Understanding the communicative value (function) of

sentences

- Understanding relations within the sentences

- Understanding relation between part of a text

through lexical cohesion devises

- Interpreting text by going outside it

- Recognizing indicators in discourse

- Identifying the main point or important information

in a piece of discourse

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- Distinguishing the main idea from supporting details

- Extracting salient points to summarize

- Selective extraction of relevant points from a text

- Basic reference skill

- Skimming

- Scanning to locate specifically require information

- Transcending information to diagrammatic display

2.3. The Concept of group work

The group work is designed for collaborative

activity in teaching learning. Group work seems to be

extremely attractive idea for a number of reasons.

When all the student in a group are working together

to produce an advertisement, for example they will be

communicating with each other and more importantly co-

operating among themselves (Harmer,245.1991).

There is some research that indicates that the

use of groups work improves learning outcomes. It can

improve motivation and contribute to a feeling

cooperation and warmth in the class (Penny,232.1996)

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2.4.Importance of Small Group-work in Language learning

Group-work in learning language is significant

to increase learners language quantity. Students are

able to increase their language store as they listen

or read authentic linguistic materials or event the

output of their fellow students in discussion, joint

problem, solving tasks, or dialogue. Moreover, in

group work student can use all the posses of the

language, all they have learned, in real life

exchanges where expressing their real meaning is

important to them (Rivers1998).

Cotteral (199O), has developed reading

strategies trough small groups. He examined the

reading behavior of a group of students involved in

interactive reading strategy training program. The

study paid attention to the learners processing of the

text in foreign language. The experimented technique

seek to bridge the gap between students current level

of reading performance in English and that required

for successful reading through a combination of

strategy training and groups work.

The uses of small group work in reading

classroom can improve the quality of students ability

because: (1) students obtain face to face

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communication for conversation in a small groups; (2)

two or three students working together are not limited

to producing hurried, isolated sentences so that they

can develop discourse competence; (3) students are

able to develop at least some of the variety of skills

which make up communicative competence in a foreign

language/second language. For additional information,

Livia Savova and Richard Donanto point out the feeling

of positively contributing to the successful

achievement of task, typical for group work, increase

students motivation to learn.

Furthermore, the use of small group student can:

Collaborative gather information,

support opinions

Solve the problems, evaluate and make

decisions

Collaborate in readers response

activities: analyzing, evaluating and student

essay (Blanton 1992, Savova and Donanto 1991).

The next, Nunnan (1990: 35) argues that successful

reading, can involves:

Using word attack skills such as

identifying sound/symbol correspondences;

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Using grammatical knowledge to recover

meaning ;

Using different techniques for

different process, such as skimming and scanning

for key word or information;

Relating text content to ones own

background knowledge of the subject at hand;

Identifying the rhetorical or

functional intention of individual sentences or

text segments, for example recognizing when the

writer is offering a definition or a summary even

when they are not explicitly signaled by phrases

such as X may be defined as

In small groups work the students can discover

what they know and what they dont know, what they

understand and what they dont understand.

2.5. Three phases in Teaching Reading

To help student to develop their ability in

reading comprehension the teaching learning process

will involve these phases: Pre-reading, Whilst-reading

and Post reading activities.

Pre-reading

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Pre-reading activity is the activity before reading

process then, the aims of this phase are;

- To introduce and a rouse the interest of the

students to the topic.

- To motivate the students to give a reaction for

the reading.

- To provide some Languages preparation for the

text.

Whilst-reading.

Whilst-reading activity is the chore of the lesson.

What is done in this phase is for development of the

students reading skill as demanded by the GBPP. In

this phase the students divided into small groups. A

group consists of three or four members to discuss

the tasks. Through whilst reading tasks, students

are trained how to read the text effectively and

efficiently, for example to read according to the

purpose. In this phase the students do activities

which focussed on:

- Read the text once or twice silently;

In this task, the students are asked to read the

text by themselves.

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- Discuss the general topic of the text in their

group;

The students are asked to find the general topic

of the text that they read.

- Discuss the content of each paragraph;

The students are asked about the content of each

paragraph according to the text

- Discuss the main idea of each paragraph;

The students are asked to find the main idea of

each paragraph

- Getting some specific information of the text;

The groups are asked to discuss and find some

specific information of the text, and

- Getting information explicitly.

The groups asked to find information of the text

explicitly.

Post-reading

This phase is the last activities for reading class

which the aim as follows;

- To consolidate or reflect up on what has been

read.

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- To relate the text to the students knowledge

interest or views.

In this phase student still work in small group. By

evaluating the task, they can share their idea,

knowledge based on the reading text and relate to

their real life.

2.5. Hypothesis

The writer proposes on his experience and

supporting theories that had been mention in the

previous pages before the result of this research is

conducted. The hypotheses is as follows; the small

groups work is one of significant techniques for

improving students ability in reading comprehension

at the first year students of Madrasah Aliyah Negeri

Bengkalis

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CHAPTER III

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1. Research Design

This research can be categorized into action

research. It has developed with a simple model of the

cyclical nature of the typical action research

process. Each cycle has three steps: intend, act, and

review (Rory, 1998). At the beginning, the writer

tries to collect some information about the students

problem in reading activity. The writer chooses the

reading materials for teaching based on the theme, sub

theme and topics. Finding a good technique that can be

used to improve the students attention in reading

class. It can help him to make some planning for

teaching learning process in reading classroom. Then

apply the small group work discussion as a technique

in teaching learning process and finally, evaluate the

technique to see the improvement of the students

ability in reading comprehension.

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3.2. The Location and Time of research.

The research was conducted at Madrasah Aliyah

Negeri (MAN) Bengkalis. It was located at Jalan

Pembangunan I Bengkalis. The research is held from

July to August 2003.

3.3. Population and Sample

In this research the writer took the first year

students academic year 2003-2004 as population with

the number as follows:

Class Student numberI.1

I.2

I.3

I.4

I.5

33

35

32

34

33

Total number 172

In this term the writer got the class I.1 as

sample for the research and class 1.3 for trying out

of the test. It was taken randomly. The main reason

to choose the sample is that they are relatively have

the same characteristics such as the ages, they also

have same prior of Learning English achievement,

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background taught using the same methods by the same

teacher.

3.5. Data Collection Technique

In this research, the writer used two phases of

reading test by pre test, teaching in small groups and

posttest. The pre test used to figure out the

students abilities whose chosen as sample. The

teaching in small group is significant activities to

get the result of the research. The small group work

was employed to subject in the action research to the

subject. And the last phase is administering posttest.

The result were taken is analyzed in order to know the

effect of the two different teaching techniques.

Validating and reliability the test

Validity is the most important feature of a good

test. A test is considered valid when the test

measures what is supposed to measure. For the purpose

of the present study content validity was used as an

achievement test. The result of try out reading

comprehension test is analyzed by using two ways.

Determining item difficulty and item discrimination.

The first step is to determine the difficulty level of

each item. It is done by finding the percentage of the

research subjects who answer each item correctly. The

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numbers of students who answer correctly were compare

to the total number of students who are involved in

the test. The second step is to determine difficulty

index of each item, that is how well each item

discriminates between high and low level of the

subject ( Harris 1974: 105 106).

Then Heaton (1975) show the formula to

calculate the difficulty index (facility value), it

can be calculate by using the following formula;

R

FV = N

Where

FV = Facility Value

R = The number of correct answer

N = The number of Students

The items discrimination shows the extend to

which the items discriminate among the students who

are able to mastery it. It is calculated by the

following formula:

Correct U Correct L

D = N

D = Discrimination Index

N = Number of student

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U = Upper group answering ( upper half)

L = Lower group answering ( lower half)

From this formula, it can be said that the items,

which get the standard discrimination index below 0,30

or above 0,70 should be revised and changed into the

new ones which are more appropriate ( J.B Heaton;

1975).

Reliability of the test is a necessary

characteristic of any good test. In order to find

reliability of the test is used the following formula:

N m(N-m) rtt = 1-

N-1 N (x)2 Where

rtt = Reliability of test

N = The Number of test items

m = The main score of the test of try out

test

x = Standard deviation of try out test

(Heaton, 1975)

3.6. Instrument

To collect the required data in the present

study, the writer decided to use reading comprehension

test. In this term the writer apply 25 test items to

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be done by the students. The test was in multiple

choice formatted. The tests are divided into five

groups of items based on the topics; 5 items refers to

Education, 5 items refers to Family Planning, 5 items

refers to Keep Healthy, 5 items refers to Galaxy and

5 items refers to Olympic.

The table of items specification

Topics Reading Skill Item

Education

Family planning

Healthy

Galaxy

Olympic

Finding main idea

Finding general information

Finding specific information

Finding explicit information

Finding content of paragraph

5,8,14,20,23

1,9,15,16,21

2,10,13,19,24

3,6,11,17,22

4,7,12,18,25

The test procedure were taken as follows: At the

beginning the students were given pre-test to know the

students mastery in reading comprehension before

taught in the small group discussion. Than in the

process of action applying the groups work technique.

Finally, they were given post-test to see the

increasing of the students comprehension on reading

the text.

Here is an example of the test.

Choose the correct answer by crossing a, b, c, d or e.

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Besakih, is the location of.

a. largest and holiest temple in Bali

b. many sandstone shop

c. many community

d. Balinese painting

e. The Goa gajah

3.7. Data Analysis technique

The final data analysis is done in order to get

the answer of the research question in this action

research. Data will be analyzed by comparing the

result of pre-test and post-test score. The data will

be analyzed by t formula:

Md

t = x2d

N(N-1)Where ;

Md = Mean deviation of Pre-test and Post-test

xd = Deviation of each student

x2d = Total quadrate of deviation

N = Number of Student (Arikunto 1993).

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CHAPTER IV

RESEARCH FINDING

4.1. The Result of Try Out

After doing the try out, the writer found that

there were some items should be changed or rewritten

because their index of difficulty could not reach the

standard of difficulty items. The items should be

changed or rewritten were the item number

1,2,7,9,11,17. They were categorized as too easy one

because their difficult index of the tests item was

above 70% (see appendix III). While the items number

6,15, and 22 were changed because their validity value

was below 0,30. They categories as difficult one (see

appendix III).

After knowing the difficulty level of the test,

the writer would present the discrimination index and

reliability of the test. To be more clearly, it can be

seen in appendix V.

4.2. The Presentation of The Data Analysis

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After conducting the pretest and posttest of the

students and analyzing the result, the writer shows

the result of the test, it can be seen the sum of the

students score in the pre test is 2144 and the sum of

the posttest is 2306, the score increased 162 when

its compared to the sum of pretest and posttest the

students score have improvement. It shows that the

mean score of pretest is 64,97 and the mean score of

posttest is 69,87. From the data analysis t

calculated is 4,67 (see appendix VI).

After consulting the t table with 32 degrees of

the freedom (N-1). The t value is needed for the

selected significant level of 0.01 is 2.75 and

significant level of 0,05 is 2,04.

The analysis of the t-test as presented in

chapter IV result in a finding that in general

students taught with the small group work get better

score in reading comprehension test. As a result, the

null hypotheses is rejected, while the working

hypotheses is accepted. This indicate that the present

study proves that the small group work of teaching

reading comprehension develop students skills more

effectively.

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CHAPTER V

CONCUSION AND SUGGESTION

5.1. CONCLUSION

Based on the results of data analysis, some

conclusions can be drawn:

a. The small group work technique of teaching reading

comprehension has better achievement for improving

students ability in reading class. In other words,

the former of technique facilities learning more

than later.

b. The score of the students has increased between

pretest and posttest

c. Most of students got mediocre score.

5.2. SUGGESTION

Having seen the results of the research, the

writer would like to offer some suggestions.

1. The small group work technique can be done in order

to make the students reading comprehension

achievement better and better.

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2. The teacher who want to use the small group work

technique, suggested select the reading materials

that appropriate for the technique.

3. A good performance of the teacher to lead the

students in using the small group work technique

will get reading comprehension achievement well.

action research 01

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