CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

This chapter presents the introduction of this research. It has seven parts.

There are: rationale, research questions, objectives of the research, scope of the

research, hypothesis, methodological outline, weight and relevance, and clarification

of terms.

1.1 Rationale

In educational world, English is being important role to learn by many

people, especially Indonesia. Indonesia applies English in all levels of education,

starting from primary school level, junior high school level, senior high school

level, and university level. It is expected that Indonesian learners will have a

good chance to improve their competence in English communication.

In learning a language especially in learning English, there are four basic

skills that should be mastered as mentioned by Harmer (2007, p. 265) such as

listening, reading, speaking, and writing. Those are skills divided into two types,

there are receptive skills and productive skills. Reading and listening involve

receiving the message which include to receptive skill, while speaking and

writing involve to the language production and it is related into productive skill.

However, as foreign learners who want to learn English and mastering those

skills, it will be hard but they have to need a strong desire to learn it.

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 In teaching language, reading is one of the skills that have an important

role. Learners must know and understand well about the certain purpose of

reading, so practical and suitable methods are needed to reach those purpose.

As people know, reading is being a part of activity that always happens in

daily life. According to Ministry of Education of Ontario (2004, p. 7) “reading is

the active process of understanding print and graphic texts”. People tend to face a

lot of written texts in their life, such as in books, magazines, newspapers, article

on the internet, and so on. Through reading those written text, people can get

advantages for themselves, such as giving them useful information, add their

knowledge, and give the enjoyment for them. So, people who want to reach all

those purposes they must have reading skill because they will always face written

texts, and they have to comprehend it well. That is the reason why reading skill is

being important to be mastered.

Talking about reading, people might realize that it will relate to what the

name of comprehension and understanding. Snow ((2002: 11) defines reading

comprehension as the process of simultaneously extracting and constructing

meaning through interaction and involvement with written language. Through the

process of comprehending, reader use their knowledge to make an approximate

about the message which was written by the writer. So, if the reader is given

questions about what they have read, and he or she can answer questions well, it

means that reader understands it and that is as the main goal of reading.

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 However, in teaching reading of English is being not easy, because teacher

is faced some problems as shown that reading is an activity that is not liked by

the most of students. Based on that situation, good solution is needed to

overcome the difficulty that students face when they learn English as foreign

language by using some ways that teacher use to teach. The researcher tries to

use a strategy to make the students easy to learn and understand about the lesson

that will be learnt. By using story mapping as a strategy to teach reading, the

students are expected to be able to show their aptitude in reading skill.

The reason why the researcher chooses this topic is because she wants to

know the most effective way which can be used to improve students’ reading

comprehension skill. The researcher uses story mapping as a strategy to teach

about narrative text and to know the progress of the students’ reading

comprehension skill. Among the problems that will be faced in teaching English

in the school, managing the condition in teaching and learning process is needed.

Genre narrative will chose as a media for storytelling technique. This genre

is chosen because it will show students’ emotional like sadness, happiness,

surprise, curiosity, etc. Blake Education (2008, p. 4) mention that narrative text

relates a realistic, imagined or fictitious story which is written to entertain, amuse

and interest the reader. Most learners have grown up in a learning context full of

narrative stories, both real and fictional and students were familiar with the story

which is used. Students were familiar with the traditional story and fairy tales

(Ellis and Brewster, 2014, p. 14).

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 The uses of story mapping as a strategy to make students understand about

the text and the use of map is hoped can give positive impact to improve

student’s reading comprehension skill. Ministry of Education of Ontario (2004,

p. 48) states that concepts map is useful way to make information easier to be

understood by us. The use of story mapping as a strategy that is useful to open

students’ visualization and understanding on the story.

Based on the problems in reading skill, the researcher tries to do the

research which is titled “The Effectiveness of Story Mapping to Improve

Students’ Reading Comprehension Skill (A quasi experimental study at

Second Grade in one of Junior High School in Kuningan)”.

1.2 Research Questions

This study is formulated to answer the following research questions:

1. Does story mapping effective to improve reading comprehension skill by

using to the eighth grade students of SMP in Kuningan?

2. How are students’ attitudes toward the use of story mapping in the class?

1.3 The Objectives of the Research

The objectives of the research can be stated as follows:

(1)To know whether or not story mapping technique is effective to improve

students’ reading comprehension skill.

(2)To know students’ attitude on the use of story mapping.

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1.4 Scope of the research

This research focus on how the effectiveness of story mapping to improve

students’ reading comprehension skill on learning narrative text from eighth

grade of Junior High School in SMPN 2 Cimahi in academic year of 2016/2017.

1.5 Methodological outline

This research use quantitative method by using quasi-experimental

design. This research is an experimental research because the researcher do

experiment to the students which are divided into two groups namely control

group and experiment group to find out the result of improving students’ reading

skill is effective by using story mapping.

The researcher use written test as the instrument in this research. In

collecting the data, the researcher uses pre-test, post-test, and questionnaire. First

step through conducting pre-test, the researcher uses pre-test for both of the

groups before giving the treatment. It is used to know whether there is the

different score between control class and experiment class. Then, it also show

how students’ understanding about the narrative text before giving treatment.

Second step, the researcher gives post-test after students receive the treatment.

Last, the researcher uses questionnaire to know students’ attitude on the use of

story mapping in reading comprehension skill.

The researcher uses SPSS 20.0 as a tool that is used to analyze the

normality, homogeneity, validity and reliability of test. While in the analysis of

questionnaire, the researcher count manually.

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1.6 Hypotheses

In this study, the data will be explained quantitatively, so that is why the

researcher uses hypotheses in this study. According to Creswell (2012, p. 111)

hypotheses are statements which the investigator makes a prediction about the

result of a relationship among attributes or characteristics. Kothari (2004, p. 185)

mentions one of the basic concepts in the context of testing of hypotheses is

explained through Null hypothesis and alternative hypothesis. The null

hypothesis is generally symbolized as H0 and the alternative hypothesis as Ha.

Based on that description, the hypotheses of this study is:

a. (H0): Using story mapping does not effective to improve students’ reading

comprehension skill.

b. (Ha): Using story mapping effective to improve students’ reading

comprehension skill.

1.7 Weight and Relevance

The result of this study is expected to give some benefits both

theoretically and practically. The following are some benefits of this study:

a. Theoretically

After doing this research, the researcher expects that this research will

give contribution to improve students’ reading comprehension skill by using

story mapping strategy especially to increase students’ understanding of the

story in form narrative text. The researcher also expects that it will provide

more information as mention:

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 1. For other researcher

This research will give the benefit information to be as a reference for

the next researcher who will do a research about the of using story mapping to

increase students’ reading comprehension skill in learning narrative text and

it will be useful for the readers also.

2. For teacher

This research will be good way as a reference that can be applied by

teacher in teaching reading. It hopes can make teacher easier to stimulate and

engage students to understand the text.

b. Practically

The researcher is expected that it will be useful in terms of:

1. For the students

Students are expected to get better learning in English and they will be

able to improve their reading comprehension skill especially in understanding

narrative text. Besides that, it will be better if they like to learn English and

enjoy learning it.

2. For the teacher

The English teacher can develop the process of teaching-learning by

using story mapping as a technique that can be used to language teaching

methodology especially for reading comprehension skill and understanding

narrative text .

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1.8 Clarification of Terms

There are some terms that will be found in this research which are

mentioned below:

a. Story Mapping: Story Mapping is a technique that is used to analyze the

elements of the story or write a summary of the story.

Story maps are visualization and framework that

students can use to identify the elements of narrative

stories (Zygouris-Coe and Glass, 2004). Story mapping

here means that students will be able to understand a

whole of story such all elements of story like characters,

setting, event, problem, resolution and theme of the

story. Students can use it as the tools for help them in

learning reading.

b. Reading Comprehension Skill:

Reading comprehension is defined as the process of

simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning

through interaction and involvement with written

language (Snow, 2002, p. 11). In this research, reading

the narrative text and can comprehend a whole of the

text, like the elements of the text by using story

mapping strategy.

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c. Students: Students as sample who are participated in this research.

The students are taken from eighth grade of Junior High

School in SMPN 2 Cimahi in academic year 2016/2017.