The Teaching of Reading at SLTP Negeri 2 Ngimbang Lamongan: A case study of The Teaching of Reading at SLTPN 2 Ngimbang Lamongan

ABSTRACT

As the first foreign language, English becomes a compulsory subject in schools. The students should learn four major skills. Those are listening, speaking, reading and writing. Even though reading is not the first priority in curriculum 2004, it does not mean that reading is not important. It is important as a means of developing second language competence (Kraste, 1993). Many experts say that by using the power of reading, we could improve the student's vocabulary and grammar. Then, their listening, speaking and writing will be getting better.

Because of the importance of teaching reading, the writer would like to conduct a study, "Teaching Reading at SLTP Negeri 2 Ngimbang Lamongan". In this cage, she formulated two statements of the problems in her thesis : (l) How does the teacher of the second year students of SLTP Negeri 2 Ngimbang Lamoagan teach reading ? and (2) What problems are found in teaching and learning reading?

The writer took the teacher and the second year students of SLTPN 2 Ngimbang Lamongan as the subject of the study. She conducted a case study and used an observation checklist was to 'observe how the teacher taught reading including the techniques he used and the interaction between the teacher and the students. The interview guideline was used to notice the problems he faced in teaching reading. After collecting the data, she analyzed the data by using descriptive analysis.

From the observations, the writer found out that the teacher did three stage in teaching reading called pre reading, whilst reading, and post reading stage. In pre reading stage, he focused the student's attention by giving background know ledge related to the topic. He also told them the purpose of reading, so they already had an idea before they read the text. Those two techniques were in line with the pre-reading techniques proposed by Robinson (1977). In whilst reading stage, the teacher explained the text clearly. First, he asked the students to read silently. Then he asked some students to read the text loudly. One student read one paragraph. After that, he corrected their pronunciation. Next, he explained the text in Bahasa Indonesia. He could not use English as a medium of instruction because they did not understand if the teacher spoke English consequently. He used translation method. Unluckily, he did not help the students to anticipate the questions. As the result, they got difficulty to answer the questions in the text. In post reading stage, the teacher evaluated the student's comprehension by asking some questions. In fact, they could not answer the questions. It was because they were too busy translating every word in the text so that they did not focus to the questions.

Concerning the problems, there were two problems are found in the teaching learning process of reading. The first problem, the teacher could not use English as a medium of instruction. Finally, we should note that the teacher needs to improve his skills. For example, he should use an appropriated strategy in teaching reading. The strategy can be scanning, skimming and concept mapping. Those are needed to help the students to be affective readers and get understanding better.