Collections

Collections

Selasa, 13 Maret 2012

TEACHING READING COMPREHENSION THROUGH MENTAL IMAGERY STRATEGY FOR JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

A.       Background of the problem
In English, there are four major skills that should be mastered by students, they are; listening, reading, speaking, and writing. They will have good English if the students comprehend four skills of it. As one of four major skills, reading is an essential skill for students, it is the most important skill to master in order to success in learning English. It can support the development of the knowledge and it is provides the proficiency to get information. In addition, the learners get a lot of information, ideas and also give useful knowledge such as understanding the sentences, structure of the sentences and can find the topic or main idea of the text.
Reading is one of skills that should be learned by students. It is supported by KTSP (Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan) curriculum 2006 in standard competence of reading skill second semester grade VIII junior high school. The standard competence is students have to understand the meaning simple short essays such as narrative and recount to interactive in their environment. Standard competence above can be found in curriculum 2006 in the reading skill.
In facts, based on the writer’s experience in practice teaching at one of Junior High School in Dharmasraya, most of the students are read only without know what they read. For instance, teacher gives a text to students, and then asks them to read it in order to build their comprehension and show the inference of what they have read. As a result, they do not do what they supposed to do, most of them failed in understanding the text. It occurs when the teacher gives some questions based on the text, their answers diverge to the questions. Sometimes students do not know how to pronounce a word, the intonation, when they should pauses for breathing, longer pauses, stressed syllables, linking words and the pace. Then, they also don’t have enough vocabulary mastery as well as the background knowledge in other words. So, they don’t understand what they read.
Based on the problems above, the teacher needs to develop a good strategy in reading subject. According to Shaffer and Kipp (2010), there are six strategies to help students more understand in reading the texts such as Summarization, Mental Imagery, Self-Generation of Questions, Story Grammar, Question-Answering and Activating Prior Knowledge. Therefore, the writer wants to study about mental imagery. This strategy is one way to help students comprehend what they have read, encourage them to visualize a part of the story in their mind and picturing a character, event or setting of the story. In addition, this strategy is helps the students more understand in reading the texts and teaching learning reading process would be more fun and enjoyable in the class.
B.        Limitation of the problem
According to Shaffer and Kipp (2010), there are six strategies can be apply by the teacher to help students more understand in reading the texts such as summarization, mental imagery, self-generation of questions, story grammar, question-answering and activating prior knowledge. In this paper the writer only focuses on “Teaching reading comprehension through mental imagery strategy at junior high school”
C.       Formulation of the problem
The writer decided to use formulation into following question: “How to teach reading comprehension through mental imagery strategy at Junior High School?”
D.       Significance of the paper
The paper is expected to give contribution for the English teacher, the reader and the writer. For English teachers can use this strategy to make teaching process more effective and enjoyable. Then, for the reader this paper will be good references to improve the knowledge in reading skill especially through Mental Imagery Strategy. Finally, the writer can increase knowledge about teaching reading at Junior High School, moreover, when the writer being a teacher later, this strategy can be used as well.

0 komentar:

Posting Komentar