CHAPTER II

THEORITICAL FRAMEWORK AND ACTION RESEARCH

A. Reading

Reading is saying the words from the book or something written loudly

or silently. Reading has a positive effect on students’ vocabulary knowledge, on

their spelling and on their writing.

1. Definition of Reading

“Reading has always been different from writing. Writing prioritizes

sound, as the spoken word must be transformed or deconstructed into

representative sign(s). Reading, however, prioritizes meaning. The faculty of

reading has, in fact, very little to do with the skill of writing.”1

“Reading is an interactive process that takes place between the text and

the reader is processing strategies and background knowledge.”2

Katharine said on her book :

“It is now well accepted that reading consists of two components, decoding and comprehension. Decoding is the word recognition process that transforms print to words, whereas comprehension assigns meaning to words, sentences, and texts. It is also now widely accepted that reading is a language-based skill. Word recognition relies heavily on phonological

1 Fischer Steven. A History of Reading, (London, Reaktion Book Ltd, 2003), p. 11.2 Kristin Lems, et al, Teaching Reading to English Language Learner, Birch, 2007; Rumelhart, 1980, (New York, The Guilford Press, 2010) p. 33

14

15

and lexical knowledge, whereas comprehension of larger discourse units requires syntactic, morphologic, semantic, and discourse knowledge”3

From Elizabeth and friends, “Reading is about understanding written texts. It is a complex activity that involves both perception and thought. Reading consists of two related processes: word recognition and comprehension. Word recognition refers to the process of perceiving how written symbols correspond to one’s spoken language. Comprehension is the process of making sense of words, sentences and connected text.”4

Readers typically make use of background knowledge, vocabulary,

grammatical knowledge, experience with text and other strategies to help

them understand written text.

According Wikipedia, “Reading is the cognitive process of

understanding a written linguistic message; interpretation: a mental

representation of the meaning or significance of something.”5

Meaning, learning, and pleasure are the ultimate goals of learning to

read. Although fundamental skills such as phonics and fluency are important

building blocks of reading, reading comprehension is the “sine qua non of

reading”. Knowing how to read words has ultimately little value if the student

is unable to construct meaning from text. “Ultimately, reading comprehension

is the process of constructing meaning by coordinating a number of complex

3 Katharine, Elaine, Speaking, Reading, and Writing in Children With Language Learning Disabilitieas: New Paragdigms in Research and Practice. Adapted fromH. Catts&A. Kamhi (1999), Language and Reading Disabilities, Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Reprinted by permission.(New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 2008),p. 454 Pang Elizabeth. Et al. Teaching Reading. (UNESCO. IBE Publication. Switzerland), p. 65 Reading. Download 20 May 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org.wiki/reading.html

16

processes that include word reading, word and world knowledge, and

fluency.”6

2. The Stages of Reading

Geoffrey on his book explains there the stages of reading can be

illustrated as follows7:

1) The symbols and letters have to be perceived and then decoded.

2) We have to understand the words to understand the text.

3) From this, understanding we gather meaning from the text.

Read in the context of teaching English as a foreign language is a skill that is

very complex. There are two aspects of reading skills:

1) Lower order mechanical skill, which consists of skills:

a) Recognition of letter shapes

b) Recognition of linguistic elements (phoneme/grapheme, words phrase,

clause pattern, sentence)

c) Recognition of sound/letter spelling pattern correspondence (ability to

bark at print)

d) Slow reading speed

6 Janette K, et al, Teaching Reading Comprehension to Students with Learning Difficulties, (New York, Guilford Press, 2007), p. 337 Broughton Geoffrey. Et al. Teaching English as a Foreign Language. ( Routledge Education Book,

Second Edition 1980) p. 89-93

17

2) Appropriate to purpose skill, which consists of skills:

a) Reading aloud

b) Silent reading

There are many reason why getting students to read English texts is an

important part of the teacher job. In the first place, many of them want to be

able to read texts in English either for their careers, for study purpose or

simple for pleasure. Anything we can do to make reading easier for them must

be a good idea.

B. Communicative Language Teaching Method

The Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) method is an integration

of skills taught and learned with a communicative view. The objective of this

approach is to help students develop communicative competence, i.e. the ability

to communicate original messages in real life situations in meaningful contexts.

This method was first developed in Europe in the mid 1960s. The increasing

interdependence of European countries required the language teaching system to

change. Linguists called for language teaching to focus on communicative

proficiency instead of mere mastery of structures in order to meet the

communicative needs of people across countries. In this method, students are

supposed to develop their communicative competence in real life contexts.

18

Teachers act as facilitators and directors, while students are the main

actors of the class.

Authentic input and interactive activities are primary. It is fluency focused,

achieving tasks through the use of language, not the analysis of the language. It

emphasizes sensitivity to learner differences and variation in language use.

Students’ initiatives and interaction play a major role in language acquisition.

Harmer explains that the purpose of Communicative Language Teaching as

follows:

The communicative approach or CLT have now become generalized terms to describe learning sequences, which aim to improve the student’s ability to communicate, in stark contrast to teaching, which is aim more at learning bits of language just because they exist and without focusing on their use in communication.8

“Once of the most characteristic feature of Communicative Language

Teaching is that it pays systematic attention to functional as well as structural

aspects of language, combining these into a more communicative view.”9

There are three distinction the proposed from Communicative Language

Teaching (CLT), there are :

1. Mechanical practice, refer to a controlled practice activity which students

can successfully carry out without necessarily understanding the language

they are using. Example of this kind of activity is repetition drills and

8 Harmer Jeremy, The Practice of English Language Teaching, (England, Longman 2003), p. 869 Littewood William, Communicative Language Teaching, An Introduction, (United Kingdom, 2002, University Press Cambridge), p. 1

19

substitution drills designed to practice use particular grammatical or other

items.

2. Meaningful practice refers to an activity where language control is still

provided but where students are required to make meaningful choices when

carrying out practice.

3. Communicative practice refers to activities where practice in using language

within a real communicative context is the focus, where real information is

exchanged, and where the language used is not totally predictable. 10

C. Technique of Teaching Reading through Communicative Language

Teaching Method

There are many reason why getting students to read English texts is an

important part of the teacher’s job. The teaching reading has often involved little

more than assigning the students a text, read, and giving them instruction to

answer the question. This procedure is like testing or evaluation rather than

teaching strategy. They get nothing. They just spent their time without get

comprehension or information from the text.

From his book, Jeremy Harmer said, “There are kind of reading students

should do, if they are all business people, the teacher may well want to

concentrate on business texts. If they are science students, reading scientific texts

10 Richards. C Jack, Communicative Language Teaching Today, (United Kingdom, 2000, Press Cambridge University), p. 15

20

may be priority. But if, as is often the case, they are mixed group with differing

interest and careers, a more varied diet is appropriate.”11 Among things the

teacher might want them to read are magazine, articles, letters, stories, menus,

advertisements, reports, plays extracts, recipes, instruction, poems, and reference

material.

Being able to decode letters and symbols does not signify reading. Neither

does pronouncing the words aloud. The more incomprehensible the text is the

longer it takes to read it. Reading a second or foreign language is a difficult task.

Teachers have to be aware of these factors as they proceed in their instructions.

In teaching reading, we know of pre-reading activities, while reading activities

and post reading activities.

Pre-reading activities are:

1) Providing scaffolding to help students understand text

2) Discuss pictures/activities to activate prior knowledge of the text

3) Vocabulary preview to prepare students for unknown words

Once the text is started, it also requires some skills, such as:

1) Outlining the main idea

2) Developing language-learning strategies use synonyms, antonyms, and

contextual clues.

3) Connecting the reading topic with real life experiences and knowledge of the

world i.e. their schema.

11 Harmer Jeremy, “How To Teach English” (England, Longman 1998), p. 68

21

These activities are not done by the teachers. The teacher's attitude towards these

is that it is unnecessary. They start their tasks with the reading text. Students

need scaffolding, immersion in the language and many follow up activities in

order to.

There some technique how to improve efficient reading skill, there are:

a. Practicing scanning, By scanning, we read briefly to search for specific

information, whether we read a discourse suitable or in accordance with the

data we want. Scanning exercises can be given a tutor to students orally

either individuals or in groups and done fast.

b. Practicing skimming, Skimming requires more concentration than scanning

because it is difficult to scan quickly through a discourse with a group of

friends. These difficulties can be overcome by dividing the discourse of each

member of the group read with the different paragraph Practice can also be

given by a discourse with a few titles, figures topics such as pictures or

diagrams.

c. Making use of all the resource, The book contains a variety of sources of

information that can help readers understand and search for data from linear

and nonlinear discourse we need. From non-linear discourse we are and get a

reference apparatus such as dictionary, appendixes, notes / footnotes,

bibliographical references, list of symbols, list of special terms, glossaries,

etc.

22

d. Improving reading speed, to practice speed reading, we start by selecting

the discourse of the English language that is easy and interesting. Make

reading a fun activity. Reading comprehension is not meant to understand

the meaning of each word is read. To note is the meaning of the sentence or

context in English called 'context'. Main idea of 'subject' and supporting

detail sentences supporting. In the passages, eye movement and sense groups

is essential A good reader, to move his eyes from left to right quickly and

reading is not word for word, but phrase by phrase or group of words or

clauses that are meaningful logic logically.

Before we begin to teaching reading through the communicative

language teaching method, we should do our best to offer a mixture of material

and activities so that the student can practice these various skills with English

text. Jeremy Harmer has reading suggestions as follow: 12

1. Using newspapers: there is almost no limit to the kinds of activity which can

be done with newspapers (or their online equivalents). We can do all kinds

of matching exercise, such as ones where students have to match articles

with their headlines or with relevant pictures. At higher levels, we can have

students read three accounts of the same incident and ask them to find the

differences between them. We can use newspaper articles as a stimulus for

speaking or writing ( students can write letters in reply to what they

12 Ibid p. 80

23

read ).We can ask students to read small ads ( advertisements ) for

holidays, partners, thing for sale, etc, in order to make a choice about

which holiday, person or thing they would choose. Latter, they can use

their choices to role-play descriptions, contact the service providers or say

what happened when they made their choices. We can get students to read

the letters page from a newspaper and try to imagine what the writers look

like, and what kinds of lives they have. They can reply to the letters.

2. Predicting from words and pictures: students are given a number of words

from a text. Working in groups, they have to predict what kind of a text

they are going to read- or what story the text tells. They then read the text

to see if their original predictions were correct. We don’t have to give them

individual words, of course. We can give them whole phrases and get them

to try to make a story using them. For example, the phrases’ knock on the

door ‘, ‘Go away!’, ‘They find a man the next morning’, ‘He is dead’,

‘James is in the lighthouse’ will help students to predict (perhaps wrongly,

of course!) some kind of story about a lighthouse keeper, some sort of

threat and a dead person. They then read a ghost story with these phrases in

it. We can also give students pictures to predict from or slightly bigger

fragments from the text.

3. Different responses: there are many things students can do with a reading

text apart from answering comprehension questions with sentences, saying

24

whether something is true or false or finding particular words in the text.

For example, when a text is full of facts and figures, we can get students to

put the information into graphs, tables or diagrams. We can also ask them

to describe the people in the text (where no physical description is given).

This will encourage them to visualize what they are reading. We can let

students read stories, but leave off the ending for them to guess.

Alternatively, they can read stories in stages, stopping every now and then

to predict what will happen next. At higher levels, we can get students to

infer the writer’s attitude from a text. We can also get the students involved

in genre analysis- where they look at the construction of a number of

different examples of, say, magazine advertisements in order to work out

how they are typically constructed.

D. The Role of Teacher in Teaching Reading

In order to get students to read enthusiastically in class, teacher need to

create interest in the topic and task. However, there are further roles the teacher

needs to adopt when asking students to read intensively:

1. Organizer, the teacher need to tell students exactly what their reading purpose

is, and give them clear instructions about how to achieve it and how long they

have to do this.

25

2. Observer, when the teacher asks students to read on their own they need to

give them space to do so.

3. Feedback Organizer, when the students have completed the task, the teacher

can lead a feedback session to check that they have completed the task

successfully.

4. Prompter, when the students have read a text we can prompt them to notice

language feature in that text.13

E. Classroom Action Research

Action research is a collaborative activity among colleagues searching for

solutions to everyday, real problems experienced in schools, or looking for ways

to improve instruction and increase student achievement. Rather than dealing with

the theoretical, action research allows practitioners to address those concerns that

are closest to them, ones over which they can exhibit some influence and make

change. Practitioners are responsible for making more and more decisions in the

operations of schools, and they are being held publicly accountable for student

achievement results.

“The term ‘action research’ has often been used in a similar way to other

terms used to describe research undertaken by educational practitioners, such as:

‘classroom research’; ‘self-reflective enquiry’; ‘educational action research’ ; and,

13 Loc Cit p. 228

26

‘exploratory teaching and learning’ You may also find it referred to as

'practitioner enquiry', 'reflective analyses or 'evidence-based practice'. The most

important component of action research is that it does include both action and

reflection that lead to enhance practice.”14

“Action research is part of a broad movement that has been going on in education

generally for some time. It is related to the ideas of ‘reflective practice’ and ‘the

teacher as researcher’. Action research involves taking a self-reflective, critical,

and systematic approach to exploring your own teaching contexts.”15

Action research is a process in which participants examine their own

educational practice systematically and carefully, using the techniques of

research. It is base on the following assumptions:

1) Teachers and principals work best on problems they have identified

for themselves

2) Teachers and principals become more effective when encouraged to

examine and assess their own work and then consider ways of working

differently

3) Teachers and principals help each other by working collaboratively

4) Working with colleagues helps teachers and principals in their

professional development

14 Coats Maggie, Action Research a Guide For Associated Lecturers, (Open University, Walton Hall Milton Keynes MK7 6AA 2005), p. 8 15 Burns Anne, Doing Action Research in English language Teaching:A Guide for Practitioners, (New York, Routledge 2010), p. 2

27

1. Characteristic of Classroom Action Research

Classroom Action research has different from the formal research

(conventional). Classroom action Research has some characteristic, there are:

a. On-the job problem oriented, problems studied are the real problems that

arise in the working environment of the researcher.

b. Problem solving oriented, oriented problem solving, an attempt to solve

the problems faced by researchers.

c. Improvement oriented, oriented quality improvement effort in repairing or

improving the quality of the problems that arise.

d. Cycle, concept is applied through a sequence of actions that consists of

several stages of this cycle consists of four steps: planning, action,

observation, analysis, or reflection.

e. Specifics contextual, classroom action research activities triggered by

practical problems faced by teachers in the learning process in the

classroom.

f. Participatory (collaborative), classroom action research conducted in a

collaborative and partnering with other entities.

2. Four Aspects of Classroom Action Research

According to Kemmis and McTaggart who are major authors in this

field:

“Action Research typically involves four broad phases in a cycle of research. The first cycle may become a continuing, or iterative, spiral of

28

cycles which recur until the action researcher has achieved a satisfactory outcome and feels it is time to stop. Planning, developing action plans that are critical to improving what has happened.”16

1)Planning

In this phase the researcher identify a problem or issue and develop a plan

of action in order to bring about improvements in a specific area of the

research context. This is a forward-looking phase where the researcher

consider: i) what kind of investigation is possible within the realities and

constraints of the researcher teaching situation; and ii) what potential

improvements you think are possible.

2)Action

The plan is a carefully considered one which involves some deliberate

interventions into the researcher teaching situation that the researcher put

into action over an agreed period of time. The interventions are ‘critically

informed’ as the researcher question the assumptions about the current

situation and plan new and alternative ways of doing things.

3)Observation

This phase involves the researcher in observing systematically the effects

of the action and documenting the context, actions and opinions of those

involved. It is a data collection phase where you use ‘open-eyed’ and

‘open-minded’ tools to collect information about what is happening.

16 Ibid p. 7-9

29

4)Reflection

At this point, the researcher reflect on, evaluate and describe the effects of

the action in order to make sense of what has happened and to understand

the issue you have explored more clearly. The researcher may decide to do

further cycles of AR to improve the situation even more, or to share the

‘story’ of your research with others as part of your ongoing professional

development.

This model of AR has often been illustrated through the diagram in Figure

below to show it is iterative or recursive nature.

Cyclical AR model based on Kemmis and McTaggart (1988)