BINA NUSANTARA | Library & Knowledge Center
CHAPTER 2
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
In this chapter, the writer will discuss and elaborate some theories relating to teaching reading for comprehension purposes for elementary schools students. The theories that will be discussed in this chapter are some theories about the nature of reading, teaching reading comprehension, reading activity, theories about the effectiveness of teaching reading comprehension in small group, teaching reading comprehension for elementary school students and reading comprehension measurement.
2.1 The Nature of Reading
A common way to start the discussion about reading is to provide the definition of reading itself. Attempts to define reading have been numerous and a great variety of definitions have been developed. The writer has read several definitions about reading; according to Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (2009), “Reading is an activity or skill of understanding written words.” In Teaching Elementary Reading 4th edition, Tinker and McCullough (1975) also admitted that the definition of reading is as follows:
Reading involves the identification and recognition of printed or written symbols which serve as stimuli for the recall of meaning built up through past experience, and further the construction of new meaning through the reader’s manipulation of relevant concepts already in his possession, the resulting meanings are organized into thought process according to the purposes that are operating in the reader. (p.9)
Another definition from Grabe and Stoller (2002: p.9), “Reading is the ability to draw meaning from the printed page and interpret this information appropriately.”
In accordance to what the experts previously said, the writer tries to simplify the definition of reading itself. Actually reading is the ability to process and construct the meaning from the written words or symbols, so that the reader would interpret or receive the information in the written words or symbols itself.
1. Purposes Of Reading
In the book Teaching And Researching Reading, Grabe and Stoller (2009, p.11) also mentioned about the purposes of reading. According to them, reading purposes can be classified under seven main headings. The first one is reading to search for simple information. It is a common reading ability as a relatively independent cognitive process and typically scan the text for a specific piece of information or a specific word. It involves in essence a combination of strategies for guessing where important information might be in the text, and then using basic reading comprehension skills on those segments of the text until a general idea is formed. The second purpose is reading to skim. Reading to skim quickly is similar to reading to search for simple information, it is for general understanding, and it is a common part of many reading tasks and useful in its own right. In reading to skim, it involves the strategies for guessing the important information from the text. Moreover, the third purpose is reading to learn from the text. Reading to learn from texts typically occurs in academic and professional contexts in which a person needs to learn a considerable amount of information from a text. The fourth is reading to integrate information. In here the reader 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. The fifth purpose according to them is Reading to write. This purpose is to search for information needed for academic writing .The sixth is reading critique texts. Reading to critique texts and reading to write may be task variants of reading to integrate information from a text. Both of them represent common academic task that call upon the reading abilities needed to integrate information. The last purpose of reading is reading for general comprehension.
After reading the theory about the purposes of reading above, the writer wants to focus on point number one, four and seven as the purposes of the method used in the research because basically the aims of the research is to improve students’ reading comprehension by using small group activity, so that they can easily memorize the vocabulary and get the information from the reading text.
2.1.2 The Aspects of Reading
According to Burns, Roe, and Ross in Teaching Reading in Today's elementary schools (1984, p.2), the aspects of reading are explained that reading act has two components, they are reading process and reading product. They conceit that the product of reading act is the consequence of utilizing certain aspects of process in an appropriate sequence. The product of reading is the communication of thoughts and emotions by the writer to the reader, the reader's understanding of ideas that have been put in print by writer. Communication is dependent upon comprehension, which is affected by all aspects of the reading process. As well as being a means of communicating generally, reading is a means of communicating specifically with friends and acquaintances that are nearby, the reader must derive meaning from printed page more than decoding symbols into sound.
Besides of the reading product, the other components of reading act are the reading process. Reading process is a method, a movement toward an end that is accomplished by going through all the necessary steps. The aspects of the reading process combine to produce the reading product. When they are combined harmoniously, good communication between the writer and the reader will be created.
Those are the theories about the nature of reading itself, and after reading these theories, the writer tries to create the reading activity which will improve students' comprehension by applying the reading aspect and product in her lesson plan. While creating the lesson plan, the writer also concerns at the process of the activity, which should make the students move and feel challenged for the activity, to make the students feel easier to achieve the aims that are made by the teacher, and also to improve their reading comprehension.
2.2 Teaching Reading Comprehension
According to Grabe & Stoller (2002, p.17), “Reading for general comprehension is, the most obvious sense, the ability to understand information in the text and interpret it appropriately”. The writer thinks that the main aim for reading comprehension is, to understand the information and the reader would interpret the text in their own perspective based on their own background knowledge. It means that teaching reading really needs a good preparation brefore the process of teaching to reach out the aim.
In teaching reading, especially for comprehension purpose, the teacher cannot teach the students without any preparation, moreover in teaching reading for ELLs (English Language Learners) students, because once the teacher is less prepared, he/she might not teach in systematic ways and that might result in students’ difficulty in reading comprehension, and it also might make the students feel bored in the learning process of reading lesson, and the worst they might hate reading. In the theory of teaching reading “Becoming Creative Teacher” Halimi (2009, p.4) “Effective lessons are those that cause the students to think. The term critical thinking refers to the thinking skills that give students a foundation for studying topics logically. Learning to think critically can give students a practical set of skills for using English. Basic critical thinking skills can be taught to elementary students and can be developed into more advanced skills.” To make the learning process goes smoothly, and the reading text is easily understood, the teacher should create the condition or the theme in delivering the lesson to the students, make a communication need of any activity to sharpen their critical thinking, because students would understand the lesson easily, if the learning process make sense (logical) and fun.
2.2.1 Strategies of Teaching Reading Comprehension
There are so many strategies for teaching reading comprehension, but the writer chooses the theory by Moreillon as the guidance for this thesis. In Collaborative Strategies For Teaching Reading Comprehension Maximizing Your Impact, Moreillon, (2007, p.11) identified seven reading comprehension strategies:
1. Activating or building background knowledge
2. Using sensory image
3. Questioning
4. Making predictions
5. Determining main ideas
6. Using fix up options
7. Synthesizing
The previous theory of strategies of reading comprehension becomes the basis of the research. In the writer’s lesson plan, the first step of teaching reading is, the teacher creates the situation or theme to begin the activity, and then the teacher also uses images which are stuck on the board to create background situation. For the questioning, the teacher also provides pre-reading questions while creating the theme and reading guide questions for the students while they are reading the text. In the reading text, the teacher uses jumbled letters as the prediction strategy, so the students are forced to guess the word by the jumbled letters, and hopefully by doing this strategy the students would get the idea, and get the information of the paragraph itself.
2.2.2 Reading Activity
Before the writer creates the lesson plan, she had already read the theory about reading activity. To make the students feel enjoyable at the reading, the teacher should create creative activity in the classroom to improve their reading comprehension. In Halimi (2009, p.31), it is mentioned that there are several kinds of reading activity such as extensive reading, intensive reading and predicting. Extensive reading is when the children read from other sources outside class such as magazine, novel, article, etc. It is as reading for pleasure for children, usually they can choose what they love to read.
Intensive reading takes place in the classroom. It is usually taken from students’ text book. The teacher usually uses intensive reading to improve their reading skill such as skimming for general information and scanning for detailed information, and it’s very useful for comprehension purpose. In this research the writer uses the intensive reading, because the writer takes the material from students’ CLC (Creative Learning Centre) material and honestly the aims of this research is to improve students’ reading skill for comprehension.
The other activity to make the students enjoy reading is predicting activity. This process helps students to predict what they are going to read, and also for recalling vocabulary and knowledge relating to the topic, and in order to make reading easier to be understood. For the predicting activity, the writer uses jumbled letters as predicting strategy. Hopefully the students would understand the text clearer by using this method.
Besides improving reading comprehension, by teaching reading activity the teacher can also improve other skills such as, speaking, listening, and writing. “Reading comprehension is an extraordinary feat of balancing and coordinating many abilities in a very complex and rapid set of routines that makes comprehension a seemingly effortless and enjoyable activity for fluent readers” stated by Grabe & Stoller, (2002, p. 29). The benefits of teaching reading by Halimi (2009), she mentioned that writing and speaking skill can also be included in teaching reading.
• Reading expands children’s knowledge of vocabulary, spelling, and writing.
• Reading texts give good models of writing.
• Good reading texts stimulate discussions and imagination.
• Reading aloud exposes children to grammar, phrases, and vocabulary that will be useful inimproving their speaking skills and in their ability to express themselves well (p.30)
Based on these resources, the writer tries to make the reading activity cover the others skills such as speaking, listening and writing. So the writer creates the activity where the students are forced to speak, listen and write in English by using fun ways. The details of the activity will be discussed in chapter 3.
2.3 Teaching Reading Comprehension In Small Group
Students will easily understand the lesson if they enjoy the learning process. To make the learning process more fun and easily to be understood, the writer creates the activity in groups. While children are learning in a group, they will learn from each other. In Teaching Reading In Small Groups by Jennifer Serravallo (2010, P.5) it is written that “when children are part of group with a common goal, it makes it more likely that they will reach out to peers when they encounter difficulty. Small groups give children the chance to hear other students’ thinking about their reading process and responses to the text”. When students are learning in groups, it is also beneficial for the teacher and students. Learning in groups is beneficial to of help students build reading relationship with each other, as well as helping teacher easily to monitor the students because the teacher can see the students altogether at the same time.
Based on that theory, the writer tries to create the fun and enjoyable method for teaching reading comprehension, which is involved by group activity. In the group activity, it has been designed to make all the students have the same chance and the same portion to get involved in the activity itself.
Serravallo (2010) said that “small-group conferences accomplish and complement these same goals. Although one on one conference is an important weekly meeting between a teacher and a student, we can supplement an individual conference in a small group conference more efficiency. This efficiently is especially important in today’s classroom with higher benchmarks, larger class size and increasing demands placed on students and teacher” (p. 5)
Teaching reading in small group activity is much more beneficial than individually. By learning in groups, students would feel more enthusiastic and they would learn from each other’s ways about how they interpret the reading, about how they pronounce the words, how they engage the meaning of reading text itself, and it is more challenging for them compared to studying individually. Serravallo (2010, p.3), mentioned that small group will help children to:
1. Read with engagement and enthusiasm
2. Read strategically
3. Engage in meaningful, invigorating conversations about books
4. Read fluently and with expression
5. Read increasingly more challenging text
2.4 Teaching Reading Comprehension for Elementary School Students
As what have been discussed before, that teaching reading comprehension really needs well preparation to reach out the aims. That is why, the teachers have to design a good and creative method to make the students enjoy and understand the reading passage itself. After reading several books about teaching reading the writer concluded that in order to make a good and creative method, the teacher also needs to know about the characteristic of the students first, and then the teacher should have to know the learning type of the students, and the last the teacher should have to know about the strategies to make the students be good reader, so that they will understand the reading comprehension well. The physical development for elementary school students in teaching reading is important to be explored, because it is related to the students’ characteristics and by physical development learning not only reading skill that will be practiced, but the other skills would also very possible to be included. The writer will explain more about these theories above, to get more details of the knowledge for teaching reading comprehension in small group for elementary school students.
2.4.1 Characteristics of Primary School Students
The teacher should know well about the students’ characteristics before designing the method for the teaching. It is used to make the created method suitable to the students, especially for teaching reading in elementary school students. In Educational Psychology Developing Learner Fifth Edition, by Ellis, J.O. (2006, p.28), she stated that children (6 or 7 years until 11-12 years) “...they demonstrate deductive reasoning: they can draw logical inferences from information they are given.” After reading about the theory of psychology of learner, the writer realize that pre-reading and creating students’ background knowledge before the reading activity is very important to be taught, because it will sharpen their logical thinking and make them easier to understand the lesson.
After reading several books about teaching reading comprehension, the writer also found theory which stated that “Children are natural learners because they are curious about the world around them. They learn by doing and like to have fun in the process. Children learn most efficiently when all of their senses (sight, touch, taste, smell, hearing) are engaged and when they are allowed to experiment”. Halimi (2009, p.1). Based on this theory the writer decides to use a game for group activity, because by using game they would learn by doing the activity in fun way. However when the students get difficulties during the activity of reading in group, unconsciously will learn from other group member. By learning in this way they would remember the discussion in the group activity. To maximize the result of the thesis, the writer has to know first about the characteristics of primary school students especially 4th grade students, based on the selected category from Ellis, J.O. (2006):
Table 2.1 Characteristics of Elementary Schools Grade 3-5
|GRADE LEVEL |CATEGORY OF TYPES |AGE TYPICAL CHARACTERISTICS |SUGGESTED STRATEGIES |
|3-5 |Linguistics characteristics |Increasing understanding temporal words |Teach regular word form |
| | |(e.g., before, after) and comparatives |Begin instruction about parts |
| | |(e.g., bigger as big as) |of speech |
| | |Occasional confusion about when to use the |Use group discussion as a way |
| | |versus a |to explore academic subject |
| | |Incomplete knowledge of irregular word |matter |
| | |forms |have students develop short |
| | |Increasing awareness of when sentences are |stories to present orally or in|
| | |and are not grammatically correct |writing |
| | |Pronunciation of sound mastered by age 9 |When articulation problems are |
| | |Sustained conversation about concrete |evident in the upper elementary|
| | |topics |grades, consult with a |
| | |Increasing ability to take listeners prior |speech-language pathologist. |
| | |knowledge into account during explanations |Encourage jokes and rhymes that|
| | |Constructions of stories with plot and |capitalize on double meaning |
| | |cause effect relationship |and homonyms |
| | |Linguistics creativity and word play (e.g.,| |
| | |rhymes, word games) | |
| |Sense of self |Increasing awareness of, and |Focus students’ attention on |
| | |differentiations among, particular |their improvement overtime |
| | |strengths and weakness |Encourage pride in individual |
| | |Association of such emotion as pride and |and group |
| | |shame with various self perceptions |Achievement, but be aware from |
| | | |some ethnic groups may prefer |
| | | |that attention be given only to|
| | | |group achievement |
| | | |Provides opportunities for |
| | | |students to look at one |
| | | |another’s work only when all of|
| | | |them have something to be proud|
| | | |of. |
| |Intelligent and its measurement |Success in test item that involve defining |Individualize instruction to |
| | |concrete words, remembering sentence and |accommodate students’ varying |
| | |short sequence of digits, recognizing |abilities to learn classroom |
| | |concrete analogies and identifying |topics. |
| | |absurdities in illogical statements |Do not assume that poor |
| | |Emerging ability to define common abstract |performance in some domains |
| | |words |necessary indicates limited |
| | |Some consistency in overall test scores |ability to learn in other areas|
| | |from one occasion to the next | |
| | |Tendency for some cognitive abilities to be| |
| | |more developed than others. | |
| |Typical learning strategies |Spontaneous, intentional and increasingly |Emphasize the importance of |
| | |effective use of rehearsal to remember |making sense of, rather than |
| | |things for a short time period |memorizing information. |
| | |Increasing use of organization as an |Encourage students to organize |
| | |intentional learning strategy for verbal |what they are learning; suggest|
| | |information. |possible organizational |
| | | |structure or topics |
The method that applied to the students, is designed by measuring from the theory above. The teacher designs the activity in small group activity based on the suggested strategies in linguistics characteristics type. This activity in small groups also encourages students to present in written and orally. The details benefits of the small group activity for elementary school students have been discussed in the previous sub chapter.
According to sense of self type collumn for elementary students, the teacher will also focus on students’ improvement each time. In this case, the teacher will use their reading comprehension score of each meeting to check their improvement. While doing the activity, the students have the opportunities to look on the other group members about how they pronounce the words and how they interpret the information from the reading passage. The teacher also gives them praises and builds their pride to make them more confident, moreover the teacher gives achievement reward for the winner at the end of the activity.
In accordance with Intelligent and its measurement collumn on its suggested strategies, the writer tries to give clear instruction so that every students would understand the procedures of the activity. Based on the second point suggested strategies, if there is a student that has low abilities or low score in one of the meeting, the writer does not assume that poor performance as a generalization to students’ abilities.
In Typical learning strategies, there suggested to emphasize the logical making sense strategy. Due to that, before the activity begins the teacher gives the students theme setting by using logical scene, so that they would emphasize of making sense activity rather than memorizing the information about the reading passage that will be done in the group activity. While giving the instruction, the teacher tries to use well organized instruction, to make the students easier to understand the activity.
2.4.2 Involving Physical Development
According to the theory about the characteristic of elementary school students above, the teacher also has to know about what makes the students enjoy the activity, and know what the learning type of the students is. Why is it important to include the physical development in the reading comprehension activity? Because there are three types of students’ learning; visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. In the real classroom there would be so many students who must have these three kinds of learning types. So, it is important to cover all students with different learning types. Hopefully by including the physical development it would also be cover all learning types. According to Burns, Roe, and Ross (1984) they said that children must develop skill in motor coordination to be successful with reading. To develop motor muscles coordination, many physical activities can be created by the teacher. But the activities should follow three major categories; visual skills, auditory skills, and motor (kinesthetic) skills.
Good visual acuity, at near and far distances, and eye coordination are important to adequate visual functioning in reading. The child’s need to make fine visual discriminations ( to see likenesses and differences) is obvious, and suggest the usefulness of early activities that involve forms and shapes (such as picture puzzles) and latter activities that involve letter recognition (word beginning or ending alike, so on). Auditory acuity is also important in learning to read. Phonic is based on the ability to hear sounds and discriminate among them. Activities that emphasize beginning sounds rhyming words are especially useful in developing auditory skills. (p.55)
The students who have visual type of learning, they are more likely to receive the lesson by seeing objects such as text or pictures. These types of students are experts in visual perceptions. “Perceptions refer to the brain’s processing and understanding of visual stimuli; memory to child’s ability to recall what he or she has seen” Burns, Roe, Ross (1984, p. 56). To put this theory in this research, the writer provides pictures that are related to the reading passage, during the scene setting of pre reading, and the jumbled letters on the reading passage, which is stuck on wall, to help students with visual type of learning easily understand the reading.
Auditory skill is necessary to be involved in the reading activity, to help students with auditory type easily to understand the reading passage to improve their comprehension’s skill. Students with auditory type, they are more likely understand and memorize things by hearing. “Auditory perception is the way the brain comprehends information it received by sounds” Burns, Roe, Ross (1984, p.57). After reading about this theory, the writer also put the auditory type in the activity. The students with auditory type would easily understand the reading passage, because there is part of the activity which forces them to deliver the reading passage to their group by repeating the sentence they read, to their friends in the group.
Kinesthetic students are they who love to learn by moving. These types of students are likely in direct experience. They easily understand the reading passage if the activity of the reading involves physical movement. “Most children learn to read readily through an audio-visual approach, but kinesthetic-tactile activities are also useful for teaching letter, word and shapes. These activities utilize the sense of touch and whole body movement for learning letter form” Burns, Roe, Ross (1984 p. 60). The activity which is provided by the writer also covers the kinesthetic students. In the activity of the reading comprehension which is created by the writer, the students have to run from their chair to the wall behind, to read one sentence of the reading passage and deliver it to their group. It really covers the kinesthetic students, because it covers body movement.
2.4.3 Becoming Great Reader
Actually, the other important points to make the children understand the reading comprehension is just to keep them enjoy and feel easy during the learning process. How to make the children enjoy and feel easy during reading, In Best Practices For Teaching Reading, by Stone (2009, p. 6), there are ten steps how to make elementary school students become great reader, but there are only several points which relating to this thesis.
The first step to make elementary school students become great reader is, expect noise and plan for it. Commonly, while reading, children are messy, and noisy, but actually the teacher should not ask them to be quiet, because they love to be active, and by reading aloud they are learning about punctuation and anything about exclamation point enthusiastically, which make reading easier to understand. At that time their focus is making meaning of the words on the text. The second is reward progress, while students are reading the teacher should care about their progress. Once the teacher recognize about it, then the teacher should give them reward or praises for them, because it will motivate the students more to continue the struggle to read. The third is, keep the activity fun. To make the activity fun it can be so many ways, such as give the students’ fun atmosphere, motivates the students more and maybe challenge the students to read for rewards. While they are enjoying the activity they would easily understand the learning process unconsciously. Then the next one is grouping. Students who are learning to read need an audience, because they need to be heard. It can be more effective by putting them in group of four or five students and then they take turns reading to each other aloud. By learning in groups, it establishes rules and procedures about how to listen, give appropriate feedback, and take turns. The next step is comfort. To comfort the students, the teacher should put them in comfortable sitting arrangement. The teacher should put the students to sit with their group. The last step is systems and procedures. Before the students start the activity the teacher should give them clear instruction about how the activity will be done, and what they will do during the activity. The activity also has to be logical and make sense for the students to sharpen their critical thinking.
2.5 Reading Comprehension Measurement
It is important for the teacher to know about how to measure the students’ understanding, whether they understand the reading passage or not. According to Klinger, Vaughn, and Boardman (2007) in Teaching reading comprehension to students with learning difficulties,
“reading comprehension assessment typically range from determining a students’ reading comprehension competence relative to a normative group, to determining students’ general strengths and weakness, to assessing the students’ reading level, and to assisting teachers, researchers, and any others in determining the effects of an intervention on reading comprehension. For example comparing a students’ score with those of others same age or grade students requires a normative assessment.” (p.16)
Based on Klinger, Vaughn, and Boardman it is said that determining the effect of students’ intervention on reading comprehension can be done by comparing the students’ score with those of the others same age students. In accordance with that, the writer will analyze the data of the research by accumulating the students’ score to get the average score of their score, in order to see their comulative score performance after being taught by the same method for four times, and compare to the others’ score, and to check students’ average score in each meeting.
To support the theory above, the writer tries to find the other supporting theory about how to calculate the average score , to help the analysis to be more valid. According to Brown (2007, p. 66), the single most commonly reported indicator of central tendency is Mean. Mean is the average of students’ score when grading classroom test. It is a very simple formula to get the mean (X), just add up (Ʃ) the scores (X), and find the number of the scores, and divide the totaled scores by that number (N). Here is the formula:
X = Ʃ X
N
Where, X = Mean, X= scores, N = Number of scores, Ʃ = sum (or add)
The theory of Mean above is going to be used in chapter 3 of the analysis, to see the average score of the students in both classrooms and see how their graphic score is. The formula of mean is also going to be used to find out the average of students’ individual score and group score in order to see how is the students’ score performance after being taught by the method for four times. The writer is also going to use the CLC’s formula to check their general performance score between their individual and group score. The formula that is used by CLC to calculate the students’ score in their Extracurricular is provided bellow:
Performance Score = (40% x A) + (60% x B)
A : The average group score
B : The average of individual score
The data of this method have two variables, those are individual score and group score. Therefore each student’s performance score is evaluated by combining his/her group score and individual score using this formula
Klinger, Vaughn, and Broadman (2007, p.16) stated that promising assessment practices will reflect authentic outcomes. To check the authentic outcomes, can be taken from the students’ progressive score of each meeting, and the students result in their final test. The statement which support what Klinger, Vaughn, and Broadman said is from Beaulieu and Utrecht (1987, p. 214). They mentioned that students’ achievement on final exam improves in classes in which teachers give weekly quizzes. According to what the experts said about reading measurement, the writer decides to calculate the students’ individual score and compare to the final exam score. It is used to see, whether the method which has been applied, is effective or not, and to find out students’ achievement on their final test. To prove that this method is effectively applied to the students in reading comprehension lesson, the analysis will be done by seeing the students’ progressive score of each meeting. The analysis will also be done to the students’ progressing score in every meeting. It is used to see the percentage of students who have increasing and decreasing score after being taught by the method in four meetings.
In teaching reading comprehension to students with learning difficulties Gunning (2002 p.18), stated that If the students cannot read at least 95% of the words, comprehension will be hampered. Based on that theory, the writer interpreted that if any students got bad score or grade D in the individual score of reading comprehension for every meeting, it is considered that students do not understand the reading passage more than 50%. Regardless on the effect on students learning process, the writer thinks that if the learning process is done effectively, the students would have satisfying score.
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