EFFECTS OF PRE-QUESTIONING ON THE READING COMPREHENSION ACHIEVEMENT OF THE SECOND GRADE STUDENTS AT SMAN-2 JEKAN RAYA IN ACADEMIC YEAR 20062007

CHAPTER I

                                                                  INTRODUCTION                 

1.1   Background of the Study

                Language is one of the most important things in communication and it is used as a toll of communication among the nations in all over the world. As an international language, English is very important and has many interrelationships with various aspects of life owned by human being. In Indonesia, English considered as the first foreign language and taught formally from elementary school up to the university level.

            In English, there are four skills that should be mastered, they are: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The reading skill became very important in the education field, students need to be exercised and trained in order to have a good reading skill.

            Reading is also something crucial and indispensable for the students because the success of their study depends on the greater part of their ability to read. If their reading skill is poor they are very likely to fail in their study or at least they will have difficulty in making progress. On the other hand, if they have a good ability in reading, they will have a better chance to succeed in their study.

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            In reading, to comprehend the text the readers should be able to manage every part of the text, because it is easy to gain the comprehension in reading when the readers are able to organize the text. Sometimes, they may find form of pre-questioning and it is important for them to comprehend a reading text with having knowledge in general view of the text. Theoretically, pre-questioning itself can build the students’ interest and motivation before students read the whole text. Moreover, the students can predict what will be discussed on the text. In line with this study, students may improve their reading comprehension if they know about pre-questioning and it is very important to understand about pre-questioning in order to get good comprehension in reading.

            Based on the explanation above, the writer is interested in finding out the effects of treatment with pre-questioning and without pre-questioning on students’ reading comprehension achievement and concluded that the pre-questioning consist of some questions provided before the students read the whole text. It tends to build the students’ interest and motivation to read the text.

1.2   Problem of the Study

Based on the background of study above, the problem of the study is as follows:

1.       What is the effect of treatment with pre-questioning on the Reading Comprehension Achievement of the Second Grade Students of IPS classes at SMAN-2 Jekan Raya Palangkaraya in Academic year 2006/2007?”

2.       What is the effect of the student’s gender on the reading comprehension achievement of the second grade students of IPS classes at SMAN-2 Jekan Raya Palangkaraya in academic year 2006/2007?

3.       What is the effect of treatments and student’s gender on the reading comprehension achievement of the second grade students of IPS classes at SMAN-2 Jekan Raya Palangkaraya in academic year 2006/2007?

1.3   The Objective of the Study

The objectives of the study are:

1.       To find out the effect of treatment with pre-questioning on the reading comprehension achievement of the second grade student of IPS classes at SMAN-2 Jekan Raya Palangkaraya.

2.       To find out the effect of the student’s gender on the reading comprehension achievement of the second grade students of IPS classes of SMAN-2 Jekan Raya Palangkaraya in academic year 2006/2007

3.       To find out the interaction effect between treatment and student’s gender on the reading comprehension achievement of the second grade students of IPS classes at SMAN-2 Jekan Raya Palangkaraya in academic year 2006/2007.

1.4   Assumptions

In relation to the study, the writer states some assumptions as follows:

1.       Pre-questioning can help the students to comprehend the reading text.

2.       The students have been taught about how to identify the main idea and      supporting details of a paragraph and how to recognize kinds of text.

1.5   Hypothesis

The hypotheses of this study can be mastered alternative and null hypotheses. The hypotheses are, as follows:

1. Ha:     There is significant effect of treatment with pre-questioning and without pre-questioning on the reading comprehension achievement of the second grade students of IPS classes at SMAN-2 Jekan Raya Palangkaraya.

    Ho:     There is no significant effect of treatment with pre-questioning and without pre-questioning on the reading comprehension achievement of the second grade students of IPS classes at SMAN-2 Jekan Raya Palangkaraya.

2. Ha: There is significant effect of the student’s gender on the reading comprehension achievement of the second grade students of IPS classes of SMAN-2 Jekan Raya Palangkaraya.

     Ho: There is no significant effect of the student’s gender on the reading comprehension achievement of the second grade students of IPS classes of SMAN-2 Jekan Raya Palangkaraya.

3. Ha: There is significant effect of treatments with pre-questioning, without pre-questioning and student’s gender on the reading comprehension achievement of the second grade students of IPS classes at SMAN-2 Jekan Raya Palangkaraya.

    Ho:     There is no significant effect of treatments with pre-questioning, without pre-questioning and student’s gender on the reading comprehension achievement of the second grade students of IPS classes at SMAN-2 Jekan Raya Palangkaraya.

1.6   Delimitation of the Study

In this study, the writer delimits the study only to meet the effect of treatments (with pre-questioning, without pre-questioning) and students’ gender on the reading comprehension achievement of second grade students of IPS classes at SMA N-2 Jekan Raya Palangkaraya in academic year 2006/2007.

1.7    Limitation Of The Study

In this study, the writer only focuses the effects of treatment (with pre-questioning, without pre-questioning) and student’s gender on the students’ reading comprehension. It is conducted only for the second grade student of IPS classes of SMUN-2 Jekan Raya in Academic year 2006/2007.Thus, the result of this study only generalized or applied to the target population, specifically to the Second Grade Students of IPS classes of SMAN-2 Jekan Raya in Kodya Palangkaraya.    

1.8    Significance of the Study

The study is expected to be significance as follows:

1.      Giving a description about the effects of treatment with pre-questioning and without pre-questioning on the students’ reading comprehension achievement.

2.      To prove the result in reading comprehension scores between experimental and control classes of students’ gender (female and male) on the second grade students of IPS classes at SMA Negeri 2 Jekan Raya are different.

3.      Giving a reference to development of teaching learning process especially in reading, that pre-questioning can make the students’ reading comprehension will be better.

4.      Giving a contribution to the students how to improve their skill in comprehending about the reading text.

5.      Giving a profitable description to any further researcher which wants to study the same case, so this study becomes a helpful information and useful reference for the next study.

1.9   Clarification of Key Terms

There are some terms in this study that should be clarified, as follows:

Pre-questioning

            Some questions which are provided before the students read the whole text, in order to build the reading schemata and background knowledge of the students and also to rise their interest, and their cognitive aspect to predict what will faced by them in the next whole text.

Reading Comprehension

Theoretically, reading comprehension is a process of interaction between the reader with the text and the reader relates the idea from the text to prior experiences and their knowledge. In other words, comprehension is a process by which the reader constructs meaning by interacting with the text.

            In this study, reading comprehension achievement operationally defined as the students’ scores in comprehending the text on the reading comprehension tests, after having and without having the pre-questioning.           

SMAN-2 Jekan Raya

            It is clearly stated on the research problem that the SMAN-2 Jekan Raya is the location or site of the research.  

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AN ERROR ANALYSIS ON THE USE OF SIMPLE PAST TENSE AMONG THE NINTH YEAR STUDENTS OF SMPN 3 PARE

CHAPTER I

        INTRODUCTION

1.1.      Background of the Study

English as an international language has an important role to develop science and technologies many countries in the world use English as a medium of communication among people in different countries, and also of writing many kinds of books in which those are spread in different countries. In Indonesia there are many kinds of foreign books written in English, whether they are medical, Economical, Botanical, or other books, they claim Indonesian students to be able to learn and to use English in schools or in society in order that the books they read can be applied in various fields so that the development of science and technologies in Indonesia can be obtained.

For many years, English has been the most important foreign language in Indonesia, Which is taught from elementary school to university. However, in senior high school, English is taught as main subject in which the government has changed the curriculum into Curriculum Based on Competence 2004. According to Departemen Pendidikan Nasional (2003: 36).

“The competence-basing language curriculum is a systematic draft and strategy which build the communicative competence or the competence of contextual. It means that it builds all the basis of competences themselves. They are like linguistics competences, social culture and strategies to make the benefit context.”

From the statement above, it is clear that Curriculum Based on competence 2004 tries to develop and achieve the communicative competence or discourse competence and has perspective that is comprehensive to the discourse. The learners must be able to master the four skills, they are: listening, speaking, reading, and writing, also English components such as: grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, etc.

Among the four skills above, writing is the most difficult one. Because it requires demonstrating the control of a number of variables simultaneously; they are control of content, format, sentence structure, vocabulary, punctuation spelling, etc. Nunan (1989: 35) points out, “It has been argued that that learning to write fluently and expressively is the most difficult of the macro skills for all language users regardless of whether the language in question is first, second, or foreign language.” Another opinion comes from Heaton (1989: 138). He explain that the writing skills are complex and sometimes difficult to teach, requiring mastery not only of grammatical and rhetorical devices but also of conceptual and judgment elements. It means that ability to write needs a special skill and process in organizing language material by using learners’ own words and ideas and to be a good composition.

According to the results of the research done by the students of IKIP Budi Utomo Malang show that in learning English, most of the students find difficulties, especially in applying grammar in their speaking and writing. So, they will make mistakes and errors. It describes that learners’ ability in English is still poor and they need to be taught more effectively.

The learners often make mistakes and even errors in learning English, especially when they try to arrange sentences or use tenses in their writing. As a result, they will write sentences ungrammatically. Actually, ungrammatical sentences have great influence when the learners are writing sentences. That can be influenced by the first language which is different from the second language in written form. Therefore, the first language can interfere learners in the process of the second language. Abbort (1981: 216) wrote,

“For pedagogic purposes, teachers and others more likely to be concerned with the performances of whole groups and especially with the problems they have in commons. For these purposes, we need to ensure that the data comes from fairly homogeneous groups as regards mother tongue, age, previous teaching, and if possible, intelligence. Perhaps the most important of these factors is the mother tongue, particularly if phonological errors arte being studied

From the statement above, it can be seen that errors in learning a second language are caused by the interference of the learners’ mother tongue. In other words, errors made by the learners sometimes are caused by use of the first language.

Making Errors are a natural and unavoidable part of the process of learning English. Many kinds of errors arise when the learners write because they do not master the English structure well. Also, errors are the inability of the students in using rules of the components and elements of the second language. Brown (1987: 170) Said that ”second language learning is a process that is clearly not unlike first language learning in its trial and errors nature”. It means that the learners cannot avoid errors in learning second language. That statement is supported by Wiganti (2000: 11)

“Many linguist and researcher have found out that learners’ errors may account the process of learning a target language, in other words, making errors is considered to be natural to the learners. More extremely, they hypothesize that errors should not be viewed as problems to be overcome, but rather as normal and inevitable features indicating the strategies that learners use.”

So almost all learners must make errors when they are learning English because it is difficult to separate error in the process of learning English.

Students’ errors are very useful ways of showing what they have and have not learnt. Dubin F. and Olshtain E. (1986: 74) reported,:   …    , today errors are viewed as an integral part of the language-learning process from which we can gain very significant insight.” It tells that errors are important to study in order to understand the process of learning. A study of learners’ errors describes what problems the learners are having now and help the teacher to plan remedial work. In addition, the teacher should not see negatively as a sign of failure but see them positively as an indication of what the teacher still needs to teach. So, if the teacher tries to prevent students; errors, he/she never finds out what they do not know.

There are four standard competences in curriculum based on competences in Curriculum Based on Competence 2004. One of them is writing. In writing students are hoped to be able to express many written meanings that have purposes in communicative, text structure etc. They can develop their writing in the forms of genre (kinds of text) such as: narrative, descriptive, recount, news items, etc as a means of communications.

One of genres is recount. Recount tells something happening in the past time, like: history, journey, autobiography, biography, diary, personal letter, etc. As it tells some events, it usually uses sequence words such as: When, while, after, before, until, etc. Then, tense used in recount text is simple past tense, because it tells past events.

To make a good composition, the students must be able to master and apply the structure correctly, especially about tense used. In this case, the tense used is simple past tense. If they cannot do that, of course, errors will arise. Automatically their writing will cause misunderstanding for the readers, because the readers cannot receive the massage or expression of their idea well. Most of the students still find problems in using it, because of their limited mastery, especially the differences between regular and irregular verb. Therefore the writer wants to analyze the errors made by the students and tries to give solutions to overcome their problems. He chooses the title “An Error Analysis on the Use of Simple Past Tense among the Ninth Year Students of SMPN 3 Pare.”

1.2.   Statement of the problems

Based on the background of the study there are problems, which can be formulated after identifying the type errors, omitted among the ninth year students of SMPN 3 Pare

The problem can be stated as follows:

-                What analysis is to be described on the use simple past tense among students of the ninth year SMPN 3 Pare?

-                What analysis is to be described on the frequency occurrence of the errors made among the students of the ninth year students of SMPN 3 Pare on the use simple past tense?

1.3.  Objective of the Study

This study has their objectives relating to the formulation of the problems above. They can be stated as follows:

-          To describe what errors, made among the students of the ninth year students of SMPN 3 Pare on the use simple past tense.

-          To describe the frequency occurrence of the errors made, among the students of the ninth year students of SMPN 3 Pare on the use simple past tense.

1.4.  Limitation of the Study

In this study, the researcher used a test to find the students errors. He gave some material and the students all of them. The researcher only took Indonesian students who were in the ninth year students at SMPN 3 Pare.

The student did not concentrate on all structure/tense problems found in students doing, since the researcher limited his study in the problem of tense especially simple past tense.

1.5.  Significance of the Study

The use of the result of the study has great sign finance:

1.5.1    For teacher:

-     Teacher will know the errors that usually make among students on the use of simple past tense.

-          Teacher will be able to predict the errors that probably will happen to the students so that he will be able to overcome the troubles.

1.5.2        For the students:

-          The students will be able to study the simple past tense more easily.

1.6.  Definition of key terms

To avoid misunderstanding of the concepts used in this study, some definitions are provided as the following:

-     Errors are flowed side learned speech or writing they are those parts of conversation or writing that deviated from some selected of nature language performance.

-     Mistakes are due to memory, lapses, physical static such as tiredness and psychological condition such as strong emotion of the language the learner is making errors are systematically made, it is due to do the learners still developing the knowledge of the target language rule system.

-     Simple past tense; the simple past is the tense normally used for the relation of past event, the simple past tense is used for actions completed in the past at a definite time. It is used for an action whose time now terminated, or occurred in period of time now terminated. It is also used for a past habit, and it is used in conditional sentences, type II.

-     Native language, the learner’s first language or mother tongue, in this case Bahasa Indonesia.

-     Target language, the new language the learners are learning, in this case English.

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AN ANALYSIS OF THE MAIN CHARACTER’S HATRED

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1 General Remarks

Human being is god’s creature, since born he or she has given thought and mind that they use in their interaction in their environment to each other. The thought and mind appear the human’s emotion. The emotion is coming to response anything which derives from outside.

The emotion that owned by human being consists of two kinds. They are good and bad emotion. Good emotion usually fulfills someone’s life dominating with love, kindness etc. however, the people in bad emotion, his or her life will be dominated by hatred. This emotion commonly makes the people in trouble as well as in the big disappointment. Hatred in very bad to be owned. To get the clear understanding on hatred, Webster English language dictionary define :

Strong aversion detestion coupled with ill, either the simple emotion or emotional state of aversion abhorrence.

(Webster, 1974 : 1144)

From the quotation above can be said that hatred is the feeling of dislike to someone because of one or some, reason. The reasons can be caused by disapointed, betrayed etc.

     The quotation above shows that hatred is the feeling of dislike to someone because of one or some reason. At least it can be said that hatred is a response towards someone’s bad behavior or attitude. Dealing with the analysis has taken hatred as the subject matter on this study.

     The character’s behavior or attitude in the novel “Where there’s Smoke” written by Sandra Brown shows the way and the cause of hatred. The character’s behavior are being interesting to discuss as it may give us a good moral lesson in enduring the life.

1.2 Reasons for choosing the Topic

There are some reasons why the topic is chosen to be analyzed. There are as follows:

1.  Hatred in interested to be analyzed as it often appears based on many factors and reasons dealing with the human being’s behavior.

2.  Hatred influences someone’s behavior very much

3.  Hatred which is found in the novel can contribute a very good moral aspect to run the daily life.

1.3 Purposes of the Analysis

The purpose of the analysis are as follows:

1. To analyze the min character’s hatred in the novel “Where there’s Smoke” by Sandra Brown’s.

2. To shows the affect of the hatred.

3. To prove the moral lesson that can be found in studying the main character’s hatred.

 

1.4. Scope of the Analysis

The analysis is limited on the main character’s hatred. Specifically it is focused on Jody’s hatred to Lara Mallory, Jody’s hatred to Key Tackett and her husband, Randal Porter, and those will be discussed in chapter four of the analysis.

1.5. Method of the Analysis

This analysis is the result of a research conducted by  collecting the data from various sources. They are collected from several books. The main data are taken from Sandra Brown’s novel “Where there’s Smoke”. The supporting data and are taken then form some books and references. Those data are then form of description. Then if is presented as a final task which the consider as her thesis.

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