CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A.
Background of The Study
Facing the globalization era in
which everything moves fast and the world is getting smaller. Many technologies
are made and developed to fulfill human’s needs. Because of technology, people
can discover the world without wasting time and money. People know what ever
happens around the world by watching television or surfing the internet. To
understand technology, people use language as media.
People around the world use and learn language. They realize that they
use language to express or to communicate their feeling and their thoughts to
interact with others. Language cannot be separated from human being, because it
is the most important tool of communication in the world. There are various
definitions of language. Many linguists define language in many different
views. A number of definitions of language have been compiled by Alwasilah
(1993:82) as follows: 1) “Language is a system of arbitrary, vocal symbol,
which permits all people in a given culture or other people who have learned
the system of that culture, to communicate or to interact”. (Finochiaro,
1974:3). 2) “A system of communication by sound, i.e. through the organs of
speech and hearing, among human beings of certain group or community, using
vocal symbols possessing arbitrary conventional meaning”. (Pei and Gaynor,
1975:119).
Those definitions clarify that the main function of language is
communication. By communication, human beings will be able to do many things
concerned with their life. It indicates that language is something needed in
human being’s daily life.
English is the most important language in the world. It is important,
because English becomes one of the languages that people use from all over the
world, so those who can use the language will be understood by other people.
Furthermore, English is also well known in Indonesia. English in our
country regarded as foreign language and learnt as one of the main subjects at
school. English
is taught as a primary
subject in Junior High School. English is one of the subjects which included in National
Examination
(UN).
The aims of English teaching, as expressed in the curriculum, are
focused on four skills; listening, speaking, reading and writing. Those four
language skills are closing related to one another, and cannot be separated
from the process of teaching and learning. English teacher should design and
apply those four language skills into the process of teaching and learning English
integrally.
Reading is one of language skills
that has to be mastered by students. Reading is a skill that plays an important
role, because every lesson needs reading skill. Reading is a way to comprehend
the text. It means that students can find information by reading the text well,
if students have good reading comprehension ability. Teacher should encourage
their students with some interesting activities in order to improve their
reading comprehension ability.
As a matter of fact, many students in reading class do not successfully
learn their course content at SMP/MTS
level. Buehl (2001: 1-7) states that
teacher may lose confidence at times in
reading assignments and the teachers know that students need to develop effective reading behaviour
in order to survive and be successful in school. Indeed, conversations focus on
dissatisfaction with the students’ performance frequently. Furthermore, Day and
Bamford (2000:28) also claim that in general the students learning to read
English as a foreign language find it a difficult process. As a result, the
students’ proficiency in comprehending English material is
still far
from being
sufficient. Additionally, the junior high school students have
weakness in reading comprehension. They do not know the essential information
needed to understand a word, including how a word is combined with other words
to make lexical grammatical pattern. They still have a habit of word-by-word
reading relying too heavily on individual word meaning.
The low score showed a main problem in reading comprehension to the 8th
grade students of SMPN 1 Kertajati.
By observing the teaching of reading can be delineated as follow ; firstly, the students were confused to
understand the meaning of words in the
text. So, they could not finish all their tasks. Most of them were not actively
involved in the learning process, since
most of them learned English less seriously and the atmosphere of the
class was boring. Based on the students’
performance above and they did not answer the preliminary test correctly, it is
indicated that ; 1) the students have diffiult to get the general idea of a
passage ,2) the students have difficult to find certain information stated in
passage, 3) the students have difficult to identify implicit information of
passage, and 4)the students have difficult to recognize the message from the
passage. Secondly, the teacher came
into the classroom then asked one or two students to get textbooks at the
library and distributed the textbooks to all
the students. Next, the teacher
asked to open the certain page and one untill three students asked to
read loudly. After that, he or she asked the students to do the tasks from the
textbook. The students wasted much time for one task.In short,the teacher,in
handling the reading class, does not employ appropriate strategy. Thus,
teaching and learning proces was not efficient and less interactive.
One effort has been done to improve the students’ ability such training
English teachers in order to be skillful teachers. The role of teacher is very
essential for such goals to be attained. Teachers should be creative in
developing the teaching strategies in order to be good models in the classroom.
They provide guided practice and in-dept explanation to support the learning in
a variety of ways. Skillful teacher can facilitate the students’ development of
appropriate comprehension strategies. And also, skillful teachers gradually
release the responsibility of learning to the students and help them become
independent smart readers.
In
long-term period,
system is found and learning system is developed. Most of us are familiar with
de porter’s success with super cam in quantum learning. Porter (2001:12)
changes an old model of school environment to the new one with the interesting method. She may
combine the conventional method and create learning system, which can motivate
students to improve their achievement,
their self
esteem and make them sure their ability. She also applied accelerated learning
system in the teaching learning program.
The
system can be applied in any lessons including language learning. As mentioned
above, that is learning (anything) is more effective when it is fun. It means
that both teacher and students feel comfortable during teaching and learning
process. The usage of media such as computer, internet, or even picture and
storybook instead of textbooks, become good alternative.
Accelerated
learning system principally states that learning will be more effective in fun
atmosphere, this situation may be created by both students and teacher. Agard (1961:1) stated, “A teacher of violin
or fencing or of, a language can do is to surround his pupils with the best
possible conditioning for his learning and thence forth to supervise and guide
his practice”.
Based on the above description,
the writer is interested in conducting a study of improving student’s
Reading comprehension through accelerated
learning technique. Then, the writer summarizes and chooses the title for this
paper is “The Implementation of Accelerated Learning
Technique to Improve Reading
Comprehension at the Eighth Grade Students of SMPN 1 Kertajati - Majalengka”.
B.
The Statement of the Problem
As
the background above, the writer formulates the statement of the problem in the
following questions :
1.
How
is the students’ reading comprehension at the eighth grade students of SMPN 1
Kertajati before using Accelerated Learning Technique?
2.
How
is the students’ reading comprehension at the eighth grade students of SMPN 1
Kertajati after using Accelerated Learning Technique?
3.
How
is the effectiveness of using Accelerated Learning Technique to improve reading
comprehension at the eighth grade students of SMPN 1 Kertajati?
C.
Objectives of the Study
According
to the formulation of the research statements above, the objectives of the research as follows:
1.
To know
the students’ reading comprehension at the eighth grade
students of SMPN 1 Kertajati before using Accelerated Learning Technique.
2.
To know
the students’ reading comprehension at the eighth grade
students of SMPN 1 Kertajati after using Accelerated Learning Technique.
3.
To
know the effectiveness of using Accelerated Learning Technique to improve
reading comprehension at the eighth grade students of SMPN 1 Kertajati.
D.
The Significance of the Study
The result of this
study is supposed to give contribution for:
1.
For the students:
This
research is intended to give good impact to the students in reading
comprehension. Students can optimize their reading ability and more motivated
in learning English.
2.
For the teacher:
This research is expected to
utilize Accelerated Learning Technique as an alternative solution to the
problem that faced in teaching reading.
3.
For the principal:
The result of this study
will give his/her ideas to motivate the other teachers in the school to develop
appropriate techniques in order that the quality of teaching and learning
activities can enhance continuously.
4.
For future researchers:
This research is also
expected to be reference for other researchers who wish to conduct similar
studies.
E.
Delimitation of the Study
Not all the problems identified in identification of problem
could be solved in this research.
But to make the research more concentrated and get to focus on and due to the limitation of this time and theoretical knowledge. The writer makes limitation of the study on
the implementation of accelerated learning technique to
improve reading comprehension strategy at the eighth grade students of SMPN 1 Kertajati.
The
reading comprehension is delimitated in narrative
text,
it is based on the Competence Standard 2006 that the eighth grade students in this semester have to learn the narrative text. In this study ,the researcher determines the sub-skills
of reading ;1) Deduce the meaning of words by Understanding word formation
(roots, affixation, derivation, and compounding) or Contextual clues, 2) Understand
explicitly stated information, 3) Understand relations between parts of a text
through both lecical devices (e.g repetition, synonyms, antithesis) and
grammatical cohesive devices, especially anaphoric and cataphoric reference
(e.g. he, they, it, the former, the latter) and connectives (e.g since, after,
because, although, however, in addition), 4) Understand conceptial meaning,
especially Cause, result, purpose, reason, condition, addition, contrast,
concession, 5) Identify the main idea and other salient features in a text, 6) Generalise
and draw conclusions, 7) Understand information not explicitly stated by making
inferences, Heaton
(1991: 105).
“Accelerated Learning as
one of the techniques used in
the Quantum Learning
aims to fully
arouse the learners to learn skills, make
learning fun and rewarding for them, and contribute fully to happiness, intelligence,
competence, and their
success as a human being.”
(Dave Meier, 2002).
Based on
the definition above, Accelerated Learning has the procedure to
succeed purposes. The procedures of
Accelerated Learning are: 1) Motivate the mind, 2) Acquire the information, 3) Searching
out the meaning, 4) Triggering
the Memory, 5) Exhibiting
the known, 6) Reflecting how have learned.
F.
Hypothesis
Hypothesis is a
tentative answer or assumption of the result of study. The truth is needed to
test whether it is right or wrong. Starting from thinking the classes taught by
different
strategy, method, or technique,
so
their ability would be different. By implementation of Accelerated Learning Technique,
it will impove
the students’
reading comprehension abilty
and the teaching learning process will take place easily and effectively. So
the hypothesis can be explained that “the implementation of Accelerated Learning technique can improve the reading
comprehesion ability of the students”.
Ha: There is improvement
of reading comprehension by implementating accelerated learning technique.
Ho: There is
no improvement of reading comprehension by implementating accelerated learning
technique.
G.
Definition of The Key Terms
To avoid misconception and misunderstanding of the
study, the researcher defines two key terms used in the study:
1. Reading
comprehension is processing which the reader has to decide
linguistic symbol and reconstruct them up to meaningful whole intended by the
writer. Reading comprehension is only a term
referring to reading skill through the important thing is not on the
pronouncing or load reading, but it is the understanding taken into
consideration.
2. Accelerated learning technique
is one of the most advance teaching and learning methods in use today. It’s a
total system for spending and enhancing both design process and the learning
process. Based on the latest brain research, it has proven again to increase
learning effectiveness while saving time and money in the process. What makes accelerated learning so
effective is that is based on the way all people naturally learn. It unlocks
much of human potential for learning that has been left largely untapped by
most conventional learning methods. Accelerated
learning recognizes that each of learners has an individual preferred way of
learning that suit us best. When we learn the techniques that exactly match our
personal style, the learners will be learning in the way that is most natural
for them. It is basically a “Learn how to learn” program. The techniques are
applied for specific projects including customer’s service for corporation, and
negotiation on as well as strategies for effective teaching in the classroom.
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