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Improving Students' Reading Skill Through Communicative Language Teaching Method Chapter II
Improving Students' Reading Skill Through Communicative Language Teaching Method Chapter II
A. Reading
Reading is saying the words from the book or something written loudly
1. Definition of Reading
“Reading is an interactive process that takes place between the text and
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
read. Although fundamental skills such as phonics and fluency are important
reading”. Knowing how to read words has ultimately little value if the student
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. 45
4
Pang Elizabeth. Et al. Teaching Reading. (UNESCO. IBE Publication. Switzerland), p. 6
5
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
illustrated as follows7:
bark at print)
6
Janette K, et al, Teaching Reading Comprehension to Students with Learning Difficulties, (New
York, Guilford Press, 2007), p. 33
7
Broughton Geoffrey. Et al. Teaching English as a Foreign Language. ( Routledge Education Book,
Second Edition 1980) p. 89-93
17
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.
of skills taught and learned with a communicative view. The objective of this
This method was first developed in Europe in the mid 1960s. The increasing
Teachers act as facilitators and directors, while students are the main
achieving tasks through the use of language, not the analysis of the language. It
follows:
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. 86
9
Littewood William, Communicative Language Teaching, An Introduction, (United Kingdom, 2002,
University Press Cambridge), p. 1
19
items.
provided but where students are required to make meaningful choices when
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
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,
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.
Once the text is started, it also requires some skills, such as:
contextual clues.
3) Connecting the reading topic with real life experiences and knowledge of the
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
order to.
There some technique how to improve efficient reading skill, there are:
with the data we want. Scanning exercises can be given a tutor to students
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
sources of information that can help readers understand and search for data
glossaries, etc.
22
the discourse of the English language that is easy and interesting. Make
the meaning of each word is read. To note is the meaning of the sentence or
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
and activities so that the student can practice these various skills with English
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
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
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
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’,
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
3. Different responses: there are many things students can do with a reading
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
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
create interest in the topic and task. However, there are further roles the teacher
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
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
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
13
Loc Cit p. 228
26
important component of action research is that it does include both action and
“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
for themselves
examine and assess their own work and then consider ways of working
differently
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
a. On-the job problem oriented, problems studied are the real problems that
classroom.
field:
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
2)Action
interventions into the researcher teaching situation that the researcher put
into action over an agreed period of time. The interventions are ‘critically
3)Observation
of the action and documenting the context, actions and opinions of those
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
development.
This model of AR has often been illustrated through the diagram in Figure