CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION A.

Background of The Research The using English is the easiest way to communicate with people from other countries about many aspects in human life such as technology, economy, social, and politics. So, teaching a foreign language has become on of all strategies to promote a nation. Teaching a foreign language has been done in a long time in many counties in the world. In Indonesia, English has been chosen as the first foreign language to be taught as a subject from the first year of junior high school up to college. Even in recent years, English has become one of the subjects taught in the Kindergarten and Elementary school. It is because of people awareness about the importance of mastering English, especially for international communications. There are four skills that have to mastering in English. There are listening, reading, speaking, and writing. Those skills must be mastering by English students/learners. Sometimes, they find some difficulties to mastering them. Those difficulties can be in listening, reading, speaking, or writing. In this case, teacher has more responsibilities about students achievement. In this thesis, the writer wants to focus on reading skill. By reading, students will be able to increase their knowledge by themselves. They can read everything and they get more information that they want to know. Reading should be fun and entertaining activity. If students can enjoy their reading, they will receive information easily. But sometimes, reading become a boring activity both fiction and non fiction. So, students feel difficult to understand what they read. This reading problem is very common in school. Generally, it cause of a teaching method that used by teacher is less support in reading comprehension. That problem not only happened in Indonesia but also in many countries in the world. In 1999, in California, there was developed a new

teaching method that called Power Teaching. It was the brainchild of three instructors, Chris Biffle (college), Jay Vanderfin (kindergarten) and Chris Rekstad (4th grade). They called it Power Teaching until sometime last year, when they reorganized into Whole Brain Teaching. It is as a problem solving in teaching activities. Whole Brain Teaching can use for many subjects, including English. Whole brain teaching is the revolutionary new brain based teaching concept that is presently making waves in traditional teaching circles, which ignores the accepted left brain versus right brain mode of teaching and concentrates instead on educating the brain as a whole. Traditional teaching and learning concepts focus on the "left brain right brain conflict" where the leftbrain model of rote memory learning rather than viewing - and working with the whole brain which would utilize the powerful right brain and integrate the two for a more balanced approach. Whole Brain Teaching is known as fun and active teaching method. It is considered as the solution of teaching problems, such as reading comprehension. By using whole brain teaching, reading comprehension expected to be more fun and helps students understanding their reading. As a fun and active teaching method, Whole Brain Teaching is expected to increase students reading ability. Based on the explanation above, the writer is interested in conducting research entitled THE

IMPLEMENTATION OF WHOLE BRAIN TEACHING IN TEACHING READING COMPREHENSION. Using this research, the writer wants to show that Whole Brain Teaching is one of the methods to solve reading comprehensions problem.

B. Problem Statement Based on the background of study above, the writer formulates the problem statement of this research as follows:

1. How is the implementation of Whole Brain Teaching in teaching reading comprehension? 2. How does Whole Brain Teaching influence students reading ability?

C. Purpose of Research From the problem statements above, the purpose of this research are as follows: 1. To know the implementation of Whole Brain Teaching in reading comprehension. 2. To know the effect of Whole Brain Teaching for students reading ability.

D. Benefit of Research The writer hopes that this research will give everyone some information about Whole Brain Teaching and reading comprehension. The writer divides the benefit depend on theoretical and practical. Those benefits are: 1. Theoretically, this research is expected to give the advantages of implementation of Whole Brain Teaching in English subject generally and in reading comprehension particularly. 2. Practically, the result of this research can help teacher to improve their ability using Whole Brain Teaching. So that teachers can teach reading comprehension with more fun and active. 3. Practically, the result of the implementation of Whole Brain Teaching can help students to improve their reading comprehension. Using this method, students are expected to enhance their reading ability.

CHAPTER II REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

A. Teaching English Indonesia is one of countries that using English as foreign language. Some years ago, English has been taught when learners were in junior high school. Nowadays, English is taught earlier when learners are in pre-school or kindergarten. This is a good opportunity for career of English teacher. It also means that English teachers have more responsibility. There are some definitions about teaching. Tyson says that teaching is a way and a process of reciprocal relationships between teachers and students alike - as the active conduct (http://mitanggel.blogspot.com/2009/09/pengertianmengajar.html). While Tordif says that teaching is an act committed by a (teacher) with the aim to assist and facilitate other people (students) to conduct learning activities (http://mitanggel.blogspot.com/2009/09/pengertian-

mengajar.html). From those definitions, we can see that there is a mutual activity between teacher and learners with the aim for learners. So, between teacher and learners must have a correlation to make an effective activity and to get their correlation, they must enjoy their teaching process.

B. English Skills There are four skills in English which must be mastered, they are: reading, speaking, listening and writing. In this research, the writer focuses on reading. According to Harmer (1985:153) Reading is an exercise dominated by the eyes and the brain. Specifically, Nunan (1989:17) in his book also says that Reading is a process of decoding written symbols, working from smaller units (individual letters) to larges ones (words, clauses and sentences). Reading is also an activity to entertain the reader. Christ Biffle (2007) says that Reading, of all human activities, should be entertaining.

Based on explanation above, the writer concludes that reading is an activity to catch the message or information from the author by its written. By reading, the reader will know what they read and challenged to response the ideas of the author. In order to make the messages or information that comes from the author can be understood and comprehended easily by the reader. It is necessary for the students of Senior High School to master reading comprehension. Cooper (1986:11) stated that Comprehension is a process in which the reader may construct meaning by interacting with the text. In reading comprehension, a reader should have knowledge about understanding the reading passage. The common questions on the passages are primarily about the main ideas, details, and an inference that can be drawn from the passages. According to Singer (1985) reading comprehension has been defined as an interpretation of written symbols, the apprehending of meaning, the assimilation of ideas presented by the written, and the process of thinking while deciphering symbols. Further, reading comprehension is related closely to the cognitive competence of the readers, because this will produce comprehension.

C. Method of Teaching English In teaching English, teacher can use some teaching method. In Richards and Rogerss book, Edward Anthony (1963) says that D. Teaching Reading

CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHOD A. Type of Research B. Object of Research C. Time and Place of Research D.

THE IMPLEMENTATION OF WHOLE BRAIN TEACHING IN TEACHING READING COMPREHENSION

by DEWI RETNO WIDOWATI NIM. 0851800139

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION FACULTY OF BANGUN NUSANTARA UNIVERSITY OF SUKOHARJO 2011

http://yufikbloggeruwet.wordpress.com/2011/05/07/pengajaran-bahasa-inggris-disekolah-dasar/