CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. The Background of the Research

Language is an important part of how human communicate with each

other. Through language, we learn how to mean things and how to share all of

those meanings with others (Halliday, 1993 in Lems et. al 2010:1). Being able to

share meanings with others in more than one language is an even more remarkable

achievement. Language is more than a skill; it is also a tool for all other learning.

Those who teach English as a new language can structure in activities that help

learners learn language, content through language, and about a language.

In learning language, in this case English language, Indonesian students

are supposed to master four language skills namely listening, speaking, reading,

and writing. But in fact they cannot be released from difficulties in mastering the

four skills above, because of the wide differences between English and Indonesia.

Reading ability will be developed best in association with writing, listening, and

speaking activities. So, the writer focuses on reading skill.

According to Nunan (2005:69) Reading is a set of skills that involves

making sense and deriving meaning from the printed word. It means that the

reader should be able to read the words and also comprehend the text. When the

reader reads the text, it is also the way to get information and improve people

knowledge. People can improve their knowledge by reading because the reader

can imagine the text even though she/he never see it. It means that by reading,
people are able to know many things happen around them even they do not have

to see it directly and through reading people can speak and write. Reading helps

people to speak well by the writers experience and also help the reader to write

something to be references. Harmer (1998) stated that one of purposes to reading

is provide good models for English writing skill. The writer can define that the

good writer is the good reader. Because reading against the reader to study

language such as vocabulary, grammar, punctuation, construct sentences,

paragraphs and texts.

Based on the writers experience on teaching practice in VIII grade of

SMP Negeri 6 Pematangsiantar, the writer found students difficulties on

comprehend the recount text. According Gerot and Wignell (1994:196) state

Recount is a text which retells events for the purpose of informing or

entertaining.when the student read the text, they can get some information about

the event. Some problem that the writer found in teaching reading, The students

reading comprehension skill is still poor. The students were difficult to read

recount text, difficult to comprehend the meaning of they had read. They felt

bored and less vocabulary. Some students are scared with the meaning of the

words, because they found unfamiliar vocabulary in the text. The students did not

have enough vocabulary so they were out information or ideas of the text and

could not find way to overcome this problem are by encouraging the students to

read. Besides, the class situation was noisy so the students lack concentration in

learning.
 In fact, most students hardly to comprehend the text. They inclined to

speak than give attention for text. When the writer asked them about the text that

they had read, they chose to be silent. Beside, when the writer gave them task to

answer the question multiple choice related to the text, they chose to talk each

other and in the end the often copy the answers from their friends. The writer also

often difficulties to get the students concentration and its direct to less attention

in teaching-learning. Some students said that the teaching learning process was

bored; they needed something that related to be fun and interesting to learn. They

need new atmosphere in the class, so reading is not the boring thing.

Teaching reading may be affected by some methods of learning. According

to Larsen (1990) there are some methods that can be used in teaching reading,

namely suggestopedia, communicative language teaching, problem based

learning, total physical response, cooperative learning, and etc. One of the

methods is Cooperative Learning. According to Gillies et. al (2008:10) stated that

cooperative learning is presently used in school and universities in every part of

the world, In every subject area and with every age. It means that the cooperative

learning can be used to all level of students. Cooperative learning can use in the

class between student with other student like work together, how the students get

involved in the activity, sharing information, and make a final decision. This

method is good to develop students critical thinking, work team, responsibility,

and also competition. There are some techniques that can be used in cooperative

learning to help students improve their reading comprehension: Pair work, Think

Pair Share, Students team achievement division (STAD), Jigsaw, etc. In

conducting the research, the writer only focuses in one of the techniques, that is

Think Pair Share. Because it is a technique that works in pair to give chance for

students to be cooperative when constructing a text. The students will have more

time to correct their words with their pair in case of to decrease the difficulty in

new words in the text. In fact, if the students work alone, they cannot realize about

the text, they will feel bored, besides by team work they will have confidence with

their ability and can make relationship between students and students or teacher

with students more closer.

Finally, based on the background above, the writer should carry out a

research under title: The Effect of Think-Pair-Share on Students Reading

Comprehension at Grade Eight Students of SMP Negeri 6 Pematangsiantar

B. The Scope of the Research

This research focuses to find out the effect of think pair share to the ability

at grade Eight student of SMP Negeri 6 Pematangsiantar in Reading

Comprehension. This research limit the problem in the think pair share to improve

students ability in reading comprehension.

C. The Problem of the Research

Based on the background written above, the problem of the research is

formulated by the writer as the following: Does using think pair share on reading

comprehension significantly affect on students reading comprehension?

D. The Purpose of the Research

The purpose of the research is to find out the effect of think pair share on

student reading comprehension.

 .

E. The Significance of the Research

It is expected that findings of this research will be able to contribute some

inputs for:
1. Theoretically
This study could provide the information of think pair share on

students reading comprehension.

2. Practically
a. It will be useful for the teacher to improve the student reading

comprehension by using think pair share.

b. For the other researcher, the elaboration of this research can be

used to conduct farther researcher.

F. The Hypothesis
This research is to answer the question about whether yes or no the

effectiveness of using think pair share to the ability at grade eight student

of SMP N Negeri 6 Pematangsiantar in reading comprehension. To get the

answer of question, the research should propose alternative hypothesis

(Ha) and null hypothesis (H0) as below:

Ha : using think pair share does significantly affect the

students ability in reading comprehension.

Ho : using think pair share does significantly affect the

students ability in reading comprehension.

G. Theoretical Framework
There are some theories that the writer use: Gillies et. al (2008), Harmer

(1998), Lansen (1990), Gerot and Wigneli (1994), Nunan (2005), Halliday

(1993),lems et al (2010)
H. The Key Term
1. Reading is a process undertaken to reduce uncertainty about meaning a

text conveys (Oxford,2010)

 2. Reading comprehension is the level of understanding of a

text/message, this understanding comes from interaction between the

words that are written and how to they trigger knowledge outside the

text/message.
3. . According to Gillies et. al (2008:10) stated that cooperative learning

is presently used in school and universities in every part of the world,

In every subject area and with every age (Gillies et. Al, 2008:10)

CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

A. Reading Comprehension

Reading is one of English skills besides speaking, listening, and writing. It

is the way to understand written messages. According to Anderson (2000:5)

reading means a result of interaction between the writers mind and the reader

mind. It is the way how the reader tries to get meaning from the writer. In this
process, it is called the other way to communicate between reader and writer,

which the reader will get meaning or sense meaning of the writer.

According to Pang (2003) in Kusriani (2013), reading is defined as

understanding written text. He said that reading is consists of two related process:

word recognition and comprehension. Word recognition is defined as the process

of getting how written symbols correspond to ones spoken language while

comprehension is the process of making the meaning of words, sentences and

connected text. He added his statement that the reader who has background

knowledge, vocabulary, grammatical knowledge experience with the text and

other strategies can help them understand written text.

According to Nunan (2005:85) reading is a set of skills that involves

making sense and deriving meaning from the printed word. He added his

statement that the reader should able to decode the printed word and also

comprehend what he/she read. This is similar with Pangs explanation. The reader

who has background knowledge and linguistic knowledge will understand what

different written symbols represent. Some of people in the world used language as

communicate, there are some language such as English, Chinese, Arabic, and etc.

The reader can recognize the written symbol represent a specific sound or

phoneme. For example: cat = /kat/ or cereal = /sereal/.

The goal of reading is understand the meaning. Based on definitions above

reading can be defined as the way to understand the meaning of the written text or

sense of the writer. While even though the goal of reading is comprehend the
meaning of the text, the reader should recognize the written symbol and then the

writer will get meaning in comprehending the messages of the text.

Reading holds the important role in learning English because reading is an

activity which cannot be released from our life to search some knowledge from

written text. Thus, the learners should have well in reading skills.

2. Reading Comprehension

Reading comprehension has been defined in many ways over the years.

Nuttal (2000) in Kusriani (2013) suggested that the overriding purpose of reading

is to get the correct message from a text; the message the writer intended for the

reader to receive. The idea of reading has changed and moved from what was

considered a receptive process, as Harmer (2001:199) says that it is the way in

which people extract meaning from the text, to what is now said as an interactive

process.

Nuttall (2000) in Kusriani (2013) stated because both the reader and writer

depend on one another. This interaction may get complicated by the fact that the

writer is absent at the time of reading and this condition may cause

misunderstanding by the reader, except the reader can comprehend the text well.

According to Klingner, Vaughn and Broadman (2007:8), reading

comprehension is a process of interaction between readers and what they bring to

the text, such as their prior or background knowledge and strategy use. This

process also includes the variables related to the text, for example the readers

interest of the texts and their understanding of the genres of the texts. It means

that what the readers learn and how they respond and comprehend the text is
individualistic. The process of constructing meaning depends on the individual

competencies, such as experience and how to interpret the text.

Reading comprehension starts from the small unit of text which is words,

then phrases, clauses, sentences until texts. The comprehension depends on the

ability of the reader to draw meaning from the printed words to interpreting the

information appropriately. This comprehension may include the variable of the

text, such as vocabulary, syntax, and grammatical and the variable of the reader,

like the background knowledge, cognitive development, strategy use, interest and

purpose.

B. Process of Reading

According to Kustaryo (1988:15) there is some process of reading that is

classified into three stages: