CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
A. Background
Reading is one of the important aspects that influence the students’ success in learning English because by reading students can increase their vocabulary and mainly goals of the teaching English in Indonesia to enable the students to use English for communication and to read English and references in English.
For the students who want to develop and extend their knowledge, Reading Comprehension skill is a fundamental skill in obtaining progress. The students can extend their knowledge by reading books. Through reading, the students can improve their knowledge in many fields and sciences.
Reading is an active process of identifying important ideas, comparing, evaluating, and applying them. ( Mc. Whorter, T. Kathleen : 1999 ) therefore, in reading paragraph, we have to try to comprehend the main idea of the reading material, without comprehending the paragraph; it will be difficult to understand what we have read or what the writer means or what reading material.
In teaching and learning English reading process, the comprehension toward the material is the main goals, but the fact show that the majority of the students encounter the problem in comprehending the English texts.
By looking at this fact, the English teachers are expected to always make some effort to help the students to improve their reading comprehension; teachers must give variation in teaching them in reading class. If the students are only taught to read and memorize the grammatical pattern, they will get bored, so variations are really needed to overcome boredom. Byne ( 1998 ; 130 – 132 ) states that students seem to learn better when they are engaged
In teaching reading the teachers find some problems. Edythia (1998) states that it is the fact that the students who study English may be fluent readers in their native language, but they cannot transfer the skills in reading English. When they read an English text, they tend to know or focus to the words rather than on the entire text and they are laid to their dictionary, therefore they read slowly, word by word and have lack of understanding the text.
The writer had done on observation at the Tenth year of SMA Muhammadiyah 9 Makassar, the writer found many problem in teaching learning English especially in Reading. The English teacher at the school said that, in learning a reading text, the students sometimes find some difficulties to comprehend it. They do not understand the content of the material, what the text is about and they are hard to find out the main idea and details from the text.
Based on the result it observation of the research at SMA Muhammadiyah 9 Makassar especially the Tenth Year ( X ) in anomalous semester of school in academic year 2011-2012, it shows that the mean score of the students reading comprehension is low, it about 60 and the score standard is
One of the effective ways to solve this problem is by applying Pre-Reading Plan, where students are trained to free associate on key vocabulary words, reflect on these associations, discuss their associations as a group, and then reformulate their knowledge based on the discussion. This is based on a study by Langer (1981) which is concern about an effort to integrate instructional assessment with pre reading instruction.
The Pre-Reading Plan technique begins with the teacher introducing a key word, concept or picture to stimulate a discussion. By having the students say anything that initially comes to mind and having that information recorded on the blackboard, participants are able to see the associations. By asking the students questions, such as, “What made you think of…?” they become aware of their network of associations. The students also have the opportunity to listen to other explanations and interact with other students. This interactive process also provides students with the opportunity to accept, reject or alter their own initial associations and to integrate them into more accurate pictures of the target concept. After that is the reformulation of knowledge, which provides the opportunity for students to verbalize any changes of modifications of their associations that may have occurred during the discussion. The purpose of helping the student to link his/her background knowledge with concepts in the text is to set up appropriate expectations about the language and content of the passage.
By applying this Pre-Reading Plan technique, it is possible to the teacher to make good decisions about how to increase students’ knowledge. The activating knowledge consists of building students’ awareness of what they already know and elaborating and refining what they know through group discussions. This activating???????????
