CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

In this chapter the researcher presents some aspects that underline the

topic of the research; they are background of the study, formulation of research

problem, objectives of the research, significance of the research, scope and

limitation of the research and definitions of key terms.

A. Background of the Research

English is one of international languages which has an important role in

the world. English as an international communication is clearly needed by

many learners to deliver and interact in variety of situations. Teaching of

English in Indonesia is focused on the four language skills: listening,

speaking, reading, and writing. The students need to master all of the

language skills and also need to master various components of language such

as grammatical, pronunciation, and vocabulary.

Among the four skills above, Reading is one of the important skills to

have. Patel and Jain (2008: 113) state that Reading is an important activity

in life with which one can update his/her knowledge”. It means that reading

is a part of human life and society. The students should have ability in

understanding and using the word and meaning. The students not only know

the words, but also the meaning. Reading involving using a range of think

skills in order to make sense of texts (Biddulph, 2002 : 8).

Reading is also a constant process of guessing, and what one brings to the

text is often more important than what one finds in it (Grellet, 2010 : 7). It

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means that reading is connecting the information that the reader is got from

previous knowledge and writer. Knowing that reading is the most important

one of four skills, it becomes a challenge for the English teacher to arouse

students’ motivation to read. It is because the students’ motivation is low

(Nuttal, 2000:3). Students motivation can be increased by giving explaination

what the purpose for reading and what they get. By knowing the purpose of

reading, students are expected to grasp what the reading text tells them about

and what the interest that they get by reading.

Comprehension is the process of making sense of words, sentences and

connected text. According John. Kruidenier (2002:27) elaborated of

comprehension that is an active process and the reader mush interact and be

engaged with the text for it to work well. It means the students need to

comprehend what the text about not read only. According to Snow

(2002:11), “reading comprehension is the process of simultaneously

extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement

with written language”. It means that reading comprehension skill shows the

ability of people when they are understanding the meaning of the text.

Therefore, the students should have ability in reading comprehension.

Teaching reading for junior high school should be different from that for

children in Elementary school. Because Students in this level who are

believed to be in the transition level from children of young learner to

adolescent learners. It has different characteristics of their psychological

background in order to reach the goal of learning. Teachers need to be

creative in correlating the main topic to real situation and students can learn

the linguistic features automatically in teaching Junior High School. So, the

teacher’s role in teaching will take important part in the process of motivating

the students to get a lot of information about the language itself.

Reading should be learned in the classroom activities in junior high school.

There are many kinds of reading texts that should be learned. Based on

Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan (KTSP) 2008, there are some types of

texts which are expected to be mastered by Junior High School students,

they are: Descriptive text, Procedure text, Recount text, and Narrative

text. Furthermore, based on KTSP, the eighth grade junior high school

students have to master the standard competence in reading activity. The

standard competence in reading activity is to understand the meaning of a

short simple essay form recount and narrative text to interact in environment

around. It means that, narrative text is one of reading texts that should be

learned by the students.

Actually, there are various reading strategies that can be used in

order to assist the students to gain the comprehension level to achieve the

goal of reading activity. One of the strategies that can be used in reading

activity is called 3-2-1 strategy. it is an active and meaningful method that

helps students engage and interact with the text (Zygouris-COE, et. al, 2005).

It is a strategy that requires students to focus on the major elements of a text

and to decide what is important. When reading longer texts, this strategy

helps readers by allowing them to review what they read.

The previous studies prove that 3-2-1 strategy is effective

to be used for students reading comprehension. Alsamadani (2011) in his

study reveals that the use of 3-2-1 Reading Strategy is effective in boosting

reading comprehension for training EFL students. In addition, Marlini (2014)

also found that 3-2-1 strategy has increased the score in students reading

comprehension to the tenth grade students of senior high school Ethika

Palembang. In line with this, Aini (2015) prove that 3-2-1 strategy is

effective to improve students’ reading comprehension on third year students

of Vacational High school saraswati salatiga. Based on the previous studies

above, it can be concluded that 3-2-1 strategy is effective to be used on

teaching learning process. It shown that 3-2-1 strategy can make the student

interested in reading because this strategy involves training students on

recalling what was read by summarizing three main points in the text.

As the following statements above, the 3-2-1 strategy was

successfully implemented in Senior High School, Vacational high school and

ELF Students. Yet, There has not been a study proving whether the 3-2-1

strategy is effective to improve the students achievement in reading

comprehension of narrative text for the students of Junior High school.

Therefore, it is essensial to conduct a study entitled “ “The Effectiveness of

Using 3-2-1 Strategy towards Students’ Reading Comprehension The

Eighth Grade at SMPN 3 Kedungwaru”

B. Formulation of the Research Problem

Based on the background decribed, the writer formulates the research

problems as follow:

1. How is the effectiveness of using 3-2-1 strategy toward students’ reading

comprehension in SMPN 3 Kedungwaru?

2. Is there any significant differences with using and without being taught by

using 3-2-1 strategy toward students’ reading comprehension in SMPN 3

Kedungwaru?

C. The Objectives of the Research

Based on formulation of research problem above, the objectives of the study

can be described as follows:

1. To know whether the implementation 3-2-1 Strategy is effective toward

students’ reading comprehension of the eighth grade at SMPN 3

Kedungwaru.

2. To find out the significant differences of the students’ reading

comprehension of the eighth grade at SMPN 3 Kedungwaru with and

without being taught using 3-2-1 Strategy.

D. Significance of the Research

The researcher hopes that the result of the study will give contribution to:

1. The teachers, to know the level of students’ ability in reading

comprehension and the result can become an input to determine the step

strategy for teaching reading comprehension.

2. The students, it can be used to improve the students’ mastery in reading

comprehension.

E. Scope and Limitation of the Research

The scope of the study is reading comprehension in a text. Then, because

there are some types of texts which are expected to be mastered by Junior

High School students, they are: Descriptive text, Procedure text, Recount

text, and Narrative text. The researcher only focuses on Narrative Text.

This study is limited only on reading comprehension about Narrative Text by

Using 3-2-1 Strategy of the Eight Grade Students at SMPN 3 Kedungwaru.

F. The Definition of Key Terms

The definitions of key term are necessary to be given in order to avoid

misunderstanding. The definitions of key terms in this study are defined as

follow:

1. 3-2-1 Strategy

3-2-1 Strategy requires students to participate in summarizing

ideas from text. It encourages students to think independently and invites

them to become personally engaged in the text (Zygouris-COE, et. al,

2005).

2. Narrative text

According to Djuharie (2007) Narrative text is kind of text

contents a story or fairytale aims to amuse the reader. In this study,

Narrative text is defined one of the text types that junior high school
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students learn in their English classroom. The researcher used narrative

story as a basic to analyze of 3-2-1 strategy.