CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. Background
Reading is one of important skills in learning English, reading skills as a far of receptive skills is given the first priority in the language curriculum. Reading is important because it can help the students to gain information such as general knowledge, subject of school. Through reading people can improve their own knowledge which is needed to insure the continuing personal growth and adapt the change in the world. Harvey (1990) argues that the purpose of reading in language is inform our selves about something, we are interested in, or challenges our knowledge on certain matters. In other word, to broaden experience of the world in which we live.
Reading for comprehension is not of course an easy task, especially for senior high school students. Hence, students must posses interpretation ability to the meaning of the words, expression, sentences. Clark and Hanlan assert “sentences is a letter consisting of an address and messages”. Comprehension is much needed to catch the meaning of the text or written information. In other word, students cannot get the purposes or messages of author without comprehension properly, if students read without understanding, they will get nothing from this reading. The comprehension of this case means the ability of students to divine, paraphrase, explain, summarize, make prediction, or catch the meaning of the written information. Based on the statement the writer can conclude that to find ideas of the certain text the students must have ability that link it on it.
Zemelman, Daniel and Hyde ( 1998: 30) State that reading means getting meaning from print, reading is not phonics, vocabulary, syllabication, or other skill, as useful as these activities may be, the essence of reading is a transaction between the words of an author and the mind of a reader, during which meaning is constructed. This means that the main goal of reading instruction must be comprehension; above all, we want students to understand what is on a page.
Teaching reading to English learners is exciting for teachers who have the ability to perform it. They have skills and competence to apply the appropriate teaching strategies and teaching method which can motivate the students to enjoy the printing materials they distribute. Actually the aim of reading depends on the reader. But mostly the purpose of the reader is to get some information.
The writer intends to concentrate on using Directed reading activity method for teaching to improve the reading comprehension of students as a main object of the research.
To improve the students’ ability of the reading comprehension, the teachers have to use a method to teach reading comprehension. Because it is very important to improve the students’ ability in reading comprehension. So the writer tries to use a method to teach students. Actually there are many methods but the writer just want to try to using DRA method.
Tovani (1969) states that Directed Reading Activities.(DRA) is reading activities that use different types of open ended questions along with purpose setting to guide the reader to a more informed and relevant interpretation.
Based on the explanation above, the writer intends to use DRA method to teach reading comprehension, it is expected to discover DRA method effective to increase the reading comprehension ability.’ The title of this research is
“Using Directed Reading Activity Method (DRA) to teach Reading Comprehension to the Second Year Students of MA Syekh Yusuf Sungguminasa”
B. Problem Statement
Based on the background above, the writer formulates research questions as follow:
1. What is directed reading activity method?
2. To what extend is DRA method able to improve the students’ ability in reading comprehension?
C. Scope of the Research
The scope of the research is restricted to find out the students’ ability to comprehend the reading during the teaching and learning process through DRA method. It is applied to the second year students of MA Sungguminasa
D. Objective of the Research
The research aims to find out whether or not DRA method can stimulate the students’ ability in learning reading comprehension.
E. Significance of the Research
1. To know whether directed reading activity method is a good method to improve the students’ ability in reading comprehension
2. To know whether DRA method can improve the students’ ability in reading comprehension
F. The Operational Definition of Terms
In this part, the research would like to clarify some important terms that still need explanation in order to give some perception to wards the research as follow:
1. The directed reading activity is a popular instructional procedure that can be used with both fiction and nonfiction text (Burns et all.1999). originated by Betts in 1946, this carefully structured; teacher directed approach has long been used by publisher of various basal series. Depending on the needs of their students class-room teachers still tie it into lesson growing from quality children’s literature. One way to familiarize you with how this method is used to browse through a teacher’s guide, especially from an older basal series. Current series are more likely to be patterned after a revision of the DRA by Stauffer (1969), which are called the directed reading thinking activity. The lesson in a DRA follows a prescribed structure involving five basic step.
- Preparation
- Directed reading
- Skill/strategy development
- Follow up practice
- Enrichment.
2. Daniel Zemelman and Hyde ( 1998 : 30 ) say that reading means getting meaning from print, reading is not phonics, vocabulary, syllabication, or other skill, as useful as these activities may be, the essence of reading is a transaction between the words of an author and the mind of a reader, during which meaning is constructed. This means that the main goal of reading instruction must be comprehension; above all, we want students to understand what is on a page.
