Improving the Students’ Reading Comprehension through Semantic Webbing Strategy.

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A.    Background

In learning English, there are four skills we must study. They are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Reading' is a complex cognitive process of decoding symbols
for the intention of deriving meaning (reading comprehension) and/or constructing meaning. It is the mastery of basic cognitive processes to the point where they are automatic so that attention is freed for the analysis of meaning. Reading is a means of language acquisition, of communication, and of sharing information  and ideas.
Like all language, it is a complex interaction between the text and the reader which is shaped by the reader’s prior knowledge, experiences, attitude, and language community which is culturally and socially situated. The reading process requires continuous practices, development, and refinement.Readers use a variety of reading strategies to assist with decoding (to translate symbols into sounds or visual representations of speech) and comprehension. Readers may use morpheme, semantics, syntax and context clues to identify the meaning of unknown words.

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 Readers integrate the words they have read into their existing framework of knowledge or schema (schemata theory). Other types of reading are not speech based writing systems, such as music notation or pictograms. The common link is the interpretation of symbols to extract the meaning from the visual notations.Reading is complex process. Teaching reading material to the students can be obtained from many sources. Those that magazines, articles and tourist brochures

Students must assimilate the information read into their own schemata to facilitate long-term memory. Isolated and unconnected pieces of information easily fade from memory, but post reading activities provide the glue to make a cohesive picture of what is read. Semantic Webbing organizes information and relationships in a visual display (Freedman. G. and Reynolds. E. 1980: 677).  It assists in reading comprehension and concept attainment and in the setting of purpose for reading through prediction  and  used as a tool for prediction in a story, with continued reading to verify or disprove points raised.  It can follow a story to chart character or plot analysis.  It assists in clarifying opinions and points of view.

  In SMP Negeri 1 Takalar  have the same problem from the diagnostic test the subjection mean of observation is 50 from 35 students so the writer want to improve to 75 with using Improving the Students’ Reading Comprehension through Semantic Webbing Strategy.

B.      Problem Statement

Related to the background above, the writer formulates research question How is the improvement of the students’ literal comprehension through Semantic Webbing Strategy?

C.    Objective of the Study

Based on the problem formulation above, the objective of this research is to find out whether the students literal comprehension through Semantic Webbing Strategy.

D.    Significance of the Study

This research gives positive result, it is expected that the result is able to give some benefits for students, teachers, and other researchers.

1.      For the students, it is expected that this technique will help them improve their reading skill. The students will be able to:

a.    Understand the main idea and detail information of the text by skimming

b.   Understand the goal, the parts, and the language features of narrative text

2.      For the teachers, it is expected that the result of this research will give them a reference in their teaching so they can apply Semantic Webbing Strategy in improving the students' reading skill

3.      For other researcher, it is expected that the result of this research will help them in finding references or resources for further research.

E.     Scope of the Research

The writer is limited to the use of Semantic Webbing Strategy to improve the students’reading comprehension especially in literal reading comprehension that includes main ideas and sequence details in narrative materials.