PROPOSAL

A STUDY ON READING COMPREHENSION ABILITY OF THE

ELEVENTH GRADE STUDENTS OF SMA SWASTA BERINGIN
KUPANG IN THE SCHOOL YEAR
2015/2016.

MARIA INA UBA

NIM:1288203143

ENGLISH STUDY PROGRAM FACULTY OF TEACHER

TRAINING AND EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE PGRI
UNIVERSITY NTT
2015
 CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background Of The Study

Language is human speech either spoken or written. Language makes it possible for
people to talk and to write to each other; to express their thoughts and ideas to each other.
Language is, therefore, a medium for communication and a tool for thinking
(Nasar,1980:52).
There are so many languages in this world, and English is one of them. It is used as an
international language, and it has an important role in the world. We can prove it in our life.
If we know English well, we will know about the development that happens in this world.
Language skills consist of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Regarding the four
skills, the writer chooses, one of the skills that is to become the topic of her study. Reading
is one of important materials in the curriculum both as objective and the means of learning
the language. While the reading comprehension means that the reader should comprehend the
information directly and indirectly from the text.
Reading is even regarded both as objective refers to the final goal of the learning
English in high school, that is to be able to read letter in higher education. Whereas reading
as a means of learning a language refers to the fact that, through reading, language learners
can learn the structure of English, vocabulary and pronunciation, as well as the use of
language in which learners use English in discussing materials. The text books used in the
schools contain reading passages that are followed by exercises. This in turn will help the
students develop other language skills.
Considering the discussion above, the writer tries to make a study on reading
comprehension at SMA Swasta Beringin kupang, with the title: A STUDY ON READING
COMPREHENSION ABILITY OF THE ELEVENTH GRADE STUDENTS OF SMA
BERINGIN KUPANG IN THE YEAR 2015/2016.
1.2 Statement Of The Problem
The questions that will be answered in this study are as follows:
1. Are the students of SMA Swasta Beringin Kupang able to understand what they read?
2. What is the ability level of the students in understanding a reading text.

1.3 Objective Of The Study

The objectives of this study are formulated in the following statement:

1. To find out the whether the students of SMA Swasta Beringin Kupang are able to
understand a reading text or not.
2. To find out the students level to ability in comprehending a reading text.

1.4 Significance Of The Study

The result of this study might be beneficial for the following persons.

1. For teacher : this study will inform the teachers of English about their students ability in
reading comprehension, so that they can improve the method of teaching English
particularly in teaching reading.
2. For writer : through this study the writer could know more about reading
comprehension and how to evaluate a reading comprehension ability.

1.5 Scope and Limitation

This study is focused on reading comprehension ability of SMASwasta Beringin Kupang.
There are four types of reading comprehension. They are : literal reading, interpretative
reading critical reading, and creative reading. The writer focuses on literal reading, because in
this paper the writer wants the reader to see the resolve his/her own difficulties such as
remembering in detail, noting the main idea, which is directly stated or skills allow readers to
take the information stated in the text reading given by the writer.
1.6 Definition Of Term

In this section the writer would like to give the definition of term that may help readers
understand as a whole.

1. Reading.

It is an activity of contacting the eyes on the printed materials by which a reader is

led process; and create a new similar to that of the original one (Alderson:1980),while
Karlin defines reading as a complex of skills that the individual uses to drive meaning
from the printed page (Karlin:2003).

2. Ability.

It is a potential or power to do something physically or mentally (Horby:2008). In

this study, it means students ability to understand the text they have read.

3. Comprehension.
a. Hornby (2008) defines understanding as knowing the meaning of importance or
cause of something.
b. According to Crowell (2000), comprehension involves understanding the words
on the page together with understanding of ideas being expressed by the writer.
4. Reading Comprehension.

It is the process of using syntactic, semantic and rhetorical information found in

printed text to reconstruct in the reader’s mind, using the knowledge of the word he or
she possesses, plus appropriate cognitive skills and reasoning ability (Devine:1986).

5. Reading Comprehension Ability.

In this study the capacity of eleventh grade students of SMA Swasta Beringin
Kupang to comprehend the reading text.

6. SMA Swasta Beringin Kupang.

It is one of private Lower High Schools in Kupang City. It is located at Jalan

Delima, No.12 Oepura.
 CHAPTER II
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATRE

In this chapter writer would like to present some related topics which concern with
this study: definitions of Reading Comprehension, review of previous related studies and
Research model.
2.1 Concept of Reading
Webster (1990) say that reading is particular interpretation of something. Reading can be
reviewed from three points, namely, materials, process and product. On the basis of materials,
reading is activity of deciding information from the author by the reader. Reading is process,
because there is a transfer of information in it. In this process, reading employ’s a reader’s
background experience, linguistic competence, and conceptual framework, in processing the
information while as a product, reading affect information getting. It means that, the more the
reader reads the more the reader gets.
Reading is an activity of contacting the eyes on printed material by which a reader is led
to record the information for the brain to process and create a new similar text to that of the
original one (Anderson, 1984).
Comprehension is the process by which a person understands the meaning of the written
or spoken language (Richard, 2006).
Reading comprehension is the process of using syntactic, semantic and rhetorical
information found in printed text to reconstruct in the reader’s mind using the knowledge of
the world he or she process, ability, a hypothesis, or personal explanation, wich may account
for intended message that existed in writer’s mind as the printed text was prepared (Devine,
1986).
2.1.1 The Purpose of Reading Comprehension
Grabe et al (2002:13) state that there are some purpose of reading:

 Reading to search for simple information and reading to skim.

Reading to search for simple information is a common reading ability, though some
researches see it as relatively independent cognitive process. It is used so often reading
 task that is probably best seen as a type of reading ability. In reading to search, we
typically scan the text for the specific piece of information or a specific word.

 Reading to learn from text.

Reading to learn typically occurs in academic and professional contexts in which a
person need to learn a considerable amount of information from a text it requires abilities
to:
a) Remember main ideas as well as a number a details that elaborate the main and
supporting ideas in the text.
b) Recognize and build rhetorical frames that organize the information in the text.
c) Link the text to reader’s knowledge base.

Reading to learn is usually carried out at a reading rate somewhat slower than general
reading comprehension (primarily due to reading and reflection strategies to help
remember information).

 Reading to Integrate information, write and text.

Reading to integrate information requires additional decisions about the relative
importance of complementary, mutually supporting or conflicting information for
multiple sources. These skills inevitably require critical evaluation of the information
being read so that the reader can decide what information to integrate and how to
integrate it for the reader’s goal. In this respect, both reading to write an reading to
critique text may be task variants of reading to integrate information.
 Reading for General Comprehension.
The notion general reading comprehension has been intentionally saved for last in this
discussion for two reasons. Reading for general comprehension, when accomplished by a
skilled fluent a reader, requires very rapid and automatic processing of words, strong skill
informing a general meaning representation of main ideas, and efficient coordination of
many process under very limited time constrains.
2.1.2 Types of Reading Comprehension.

 Skimming
It is the specific reading technique in order to get the gist of the written text, to know how
it is organized or to get on idea of the tone or intension of the writer. Skimming is
therefore a more through activity which requires an overall view of the text and implies a
definite reading competence.
 Scanning
It is the specific reading techniques that the reader only tries to locate specific information,
such as: birth date, location, name…..
Scanning is far more limited since it only means retrieving what information is relevant to
our purpose.
 Extensive Reading Types
Reading longer text: usually for one’s own pleasure. This is a fluency activity mainly
involving global understanding.
 Intensive Reading.
Reading shorter texts to extract specific information. This is more an accuracy activity
involving reading for detail.

2.1.3 Reading Skills.

The reading skills are the thinking process which the students need to develop to read
English effectively (Mickulecky, 2002). Skills in reading for reading ideas depend on several
abilities, but he teacher should ever be aware that these are influenced by two other factors,
intelligence is intimately related to the ability to extract meaning from printed symbols-
witness the difference on the reading performance of slow learners and high achiever.
Grellet (2003) n his book “Developing Reading Skills” defines reading comprehension
has extracting the required information from text as efficiently as possible. The elements of
reading comprehension are:
2.1.4 Method In Teaching Reading
Reading strategy can be defined as “a plan of problems encountered in constructing
meaning” (Duffy, 1993; 232). The range from bottom-up vocabulary strategies, such as looking
up known word in the dictionary to more comprehension actions such as connecting what is
being read to reader’s background knowledge.
There are four-step strategies for reading and taking notes from chapter in a textbook.
Each latter stands for one step in the strategy. Using SQRW (Survey, Question, Read, and Write)
will help the students to understand what they learned they written record will be valuable when
the students have to participate in class discussion and again when the study for a test four steps
in SQRW strategies:

1) Survey
Surveying brings to mind what the students already know about the topic of a chapter and
prepares them for learning more. To survey a chapter, read the title introduction, heading
and summary or conclusion. By surveying a chapter, the students will quickly learn what the
chapter is about.
2) Question
Students need to have question in their mind as they read. Question give them a purpose
for reading and help them stay focused on the reading assignment. From questions by
changing each chapter reading into a questions.
3) Read

Student read the information that follow each heading to find the answer to each
questions formed. As student do this they may decide they need to change a question a turn
in to several questions to be answered.

4) Write
Students, write each question and its answers in their notebook. Reread each of their
written answer to be sure each answer is legible and contains all the important information
needed to answer the question.
 I. General Strategy Discussion
In general, reading strategies are defined. The teacher explains and the class discusses
why learning and practicing strategies are important. There following three points are
examples:
 Strategies help to improve reading comprehension as well as efficiency in
reading.
 By using strategies, student will be able in the way that expert readers do.
 Strategies help readers to process the text actively to monitor their comprehension
and to connect what they are reading to their own knowledge and to other parts of
the text.
 Teacher modeling
A second important feature of strategy introduction is regular teacher modeling of
expert behavior. Teacher reads aloud. A short of the text and as the teacher does
do so, teacher thinks aloud. Teacher exposes several subject strategies, as asking
question, quizzing retelling, etc.
 Student reading
Teacher also encourages students to read and think aloud from the very
beginning, though the expects that familiarly with this process will take time.
Reading and thinking aloud present a very high cognitive load for the readers, yet
not an impossible one. The reader can be heard predicting and checking the
correctness of her predictions.

2.1.5 Basic Levels of Reading Comprehension

Chusenbery (1988) identified for basic levels of reading comprehension skills:

a) Literal Reading
In this level the readers remember details, note mind ideas, which directly stated or
this skills enables the reader to take out of the information that explicitly stated the
reading text.
b) Interpretative Reading
It is the level in which the reader is expected to discover the author, draw conclusion
from what is written, and find the main ideas and cause and effect relationship when the
 factors are stated. The reader must concentrate fully on the reading passage in order can
get out the message of its author because the information is implicitly in the text.
c) Critical Reading
At this point, the student are expected to determine if a statement is a fact is a opinion.
d) Creative Reading
This level enables the reader to use the printed matter to solve problem, make value
judgments regarding action of characters, and draw conclusion about what they have
done.
 CHAPTER III
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

In this chapter the writers want to discuss about research design, subject of the study,
instrument, and procedures.
3.1 Research Design

The purpose of the study is to measure and to identify reading comprehension ability
of the eleventh grade students of SMA Swasta Beringin Kupang, therefore the suitable method
used in this study is the descriptive survey method. The descriptive survey method is a method
used to canvass the present condition of something. It is a range of activities that describe
systematically the fact and characteristics of a given population or area of interest, factually and
accurately.

3.2 Subject of Study

The subject of this study is the eleventh grade students of SMA Swasta Beringin
Kupang in the school year 2013/2014. They are 30 students (XI IPA + XI IPS ), and all of them
will be taken as the subject of the study. In tjis school, doesn’t have language class so total
amount of class 2 ( Sains 2 = 26, the writer take 15 of them and Sosial Sains 2 = 48, the writer
take 15 of them).

3.3 Instrument
In obtaining the data the writer will prepare reading comprehension test. Its consist of
one passage and respondents are asked to answer the question or do the exercises, which are
related to the passage. The test consist of two kinds they are multiple choice consisting of 25
items (test A), essay test consisting of 5 items (test B).
The test as a whole covers 30 items. The time allocation for the test is 90 minutes.

1.1 Standard of Measurement

The essential activity is to give score to the students answer sheets. To determine the
scores the writer uses the standard of measurement applied by the research school.
The range of measurement is 0.0 – 10. For the complete one see the following:
 9.6 – 10 : Excellent
8.6 – 9.5 : Very good
7.6 – 8.5 : Good
6.6 – 7.5 : Fairy good
5.6 - 6.5 : Average
4.6 – 5.5 : Below average
2.3 – 3.5 : Very low
1.6 – 2.5 : Bad
0.0 – 1.5 : Very low
The formula is used in calculating the students answers to get they ability level.

3.5 Procedures
The steps used in collecting the data cover two mind procedures they are data gathering and data
analysis, the procedures and detail are presented below:

 Procedures of data gathering

a) Asking the recommendation from the Head of English Study Program and the
Dean of Teacher Training and Educational Sciences Faculty (FKIP) of PGRI
University NTT.
b) Asking permission from the Headmaster and English Teacher of the
researched school to provide the time for the writer to conduct to research.
c) Observing the class by meeting and discussing the research plan with the
English teacher.
d) Preparing the test ( instrument).
e) Administering the test.
 Procedures of data analysis
In analyzing the data, the writer will use the following procedures:
a) Correcting or checking the students answer sheets.
b) Scoring and grading the students answer sheets.
c) Tabulating the percentage of correct and incorrect answer.
d) Classifying the students level of ability.
e) Reporting the result of the study in readable form.