CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

This chapter present the general issues realted to the present study. These include the
background of the study,reason for choosing the topic, research questions, purpose of the
study, significance of the study, research method, research design, scope and limitation of the
study, the hypothesis, and definition of key terms.

1.1 Background of the Study

Reading is one of the English language skills that have to be mastered by all of students.
Having good reading English skill is very important for the students. It can help the students
to enlarge their knowledge because they can get a lot of information through reading.Reading
skill is also very important in learning English as a foreign language. The aim of teaching
reading is to make students able to read English text effectively and efficiently. They do not
only have to understand the structure of the text explicitly but more important they must
comprehend the meaning implicitly. Reading does not only improve their reading ability but
also by having reading activity they can increase their knowledge.

One of the important aspects is linguistic aspect which covers grammar, vocabulary,
pronounciation, structure, and so on. Beside those aspects, the learners also need to master
the skills of the language such as listening, writing, reading, and speaking. However, it
should be kept in mind that those skills cannot be learned more easily. According to Lehr
(2013), reading comprehension is the process of simultaneously extracting and constructing
meaning through interaction and involvement with written language. This means that reading
comprehension is an active process, being able to read many different materials and being
able to understand them.

That is why the reading skills are important to be mastered. However, in some schools,
the researcher found that there were many learners who still had low reading skills. It
was proven when the researcher observed a learning process in one of junior high school in
Garut. The low level of students’ mean may be caused by their lack of strategies in learning,
the purpose of teaching reading at the junior high school is making the students able to
respond the meaning and structural text in the functional text. One type of text is descriptive
text.

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 Descriptive text is a kind of text with a purpose to give information. The context of this
kind of text is the description of particular thing, animal, person or others in general (Genrot
and Wignel in Mursyid, 2018:4). Its mean that the text is describe about thing, person, and
others.

According to Desta Aditya (2017), who is conducted the research about “Improving
students’ reading comprehension ability through story mapping strategy” said the researcher
found that one of the problems faced by the students was that the students often found
difficulty in comprehending the text. They also thought that the way of their teacher teach
them is difficult to be understood. The teacher could not make an interesting learning activity
that may make the student more active and easy to understand the material that is given by
the teacher. The teacher also could not help the students to comprehend English text.

According to Elihami (2017), who is conducted the research about “increasing students’
reading comprehension through cognitive strategies of senior high school of sidenreng
rappang regency” This research was a quasi-experimental research at the objective of finding
the increasing students’ reading comprehension achievement through cognitive strategies
(rehearsal, organization, and elaboration). The research findings show that the students’
reading comprehension is increased for both groups from pretest to posttest. The application
of cognitive strategies also positively influences the increasing students’ reading
comprehension achievement. Thus, it is concluded that the use of cognitive strategies is
useful to increase students’ reading comprehension in teaching and learning words.

According to Detty Varita (2017), who is conducted the research about “improving
reading comprehension through literature circles” there was a significant positive difference
between the result from the students who were taught by the Literature Circles technique and
the students who were taught with the standard teacher-centered approach (Reading Aloud)
which can be seen from the scores from the EG and the CG. In conclusion Literature Circles
can be a better ways for teaching English reading comprehension.

Based on the background of the study above, the researcher thinks that it is important to
conduct a research entitled “improving students’ reading comprehension of descriptive texts
through cognitive strategy”. This study will focus on improving students' reading
comprehension in descriptive texts through cognitive strategy.

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1.2 Reason for choosing the topic

There are two reasons for choosing this research topic. Firstly, reading is concerned as an
important basic skill to be mastered in English because every students has to read something
related to the topic before they are going to write or to speak. Thus, every student should
have a good reading skill.

Secondly, cognitive strategy is one of the effective teaching method to improve students’
reading comprehension and it can make students able to read English text effectively and
efficiently.

1.3 Research questions

Based on the background above, the researcher decided to put the objectives of this
research to find out using cognitive strategy in reading comprehension, and how significant
using cognitive strategy in reading comprehension. It can be formulated as follows:

1. Is using cognitive strategy effective in reading comprehension?

2. How significant is the improvement of using cognitive strategy in reading
comprehension?

1.4 Objectives of the Research

The general purposes of this research are to find out the problems faced by the students of
junior high school. This research has two research objectives. They are:

1.4.1 To investigate the effectiveness of Cognitive Strategy in reading comporehension

1.4.2 To reveal the improvement of Cognitive Strategy in reading comprehension.

1.5 Scope of the study

The researcher focuses on investigating the effectiveness of using Cognitive Strategy in

reading comprehension to the eight graders in one of junior high school in Garut.

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1.6 The Significance of the Study

This research is expected to contribute both theoretically and practically to the lecturers,
students, university, and further researchers. Theoretically, this research might enrich the
theory of teaching reading.
Practically, for the lecturers, this research might provide more information about how to
teach reading, especially reading by using Cognitive strategy. Whereas, for the students,
hopefully, this research may motivate them to learn reading, and improve their reading skill.
For the university, this research might be used as a reflection in order to gain the effective
and innovative teaching process by using Cognitive Strategy to improve students’ reading
skill. For further researchers, this research may be used as an additional source especially for
those who conduct researches on the learning strategy used in teaching reading.

1.7 The Research Method

1.7.1 Setting and Participant
In this research, the researcher involves several junior high school students in Garut,
West Java, Indonesia. A convenience sampling technique is utilized in this research. As
Creswell (2012) says that convenience sampling technique is where the participants are
willing and available to be studied. In addition, one of junior high school as the research site
is chosen because of the accessibility of the site, the appropriateness of the site, and the
appropriate participants for this research objectives.

1.7.2 Research Design

A quantitative pre-experimental research design is applied in this research. As Cohen,
Manion, and Morrison (2007) state that a pre-experimental research design is focused on the
one group pre-test and post-test. Furthermore, the pre-experimental research design is
appropriate with the participants in this research in which there is only one class involved
because the research site has only one class of the intended research participants.

1.7.3 The Data Collection Technique

The main data of this research are collected in the English subject class. In collecting
the data, the researcher utilizes a pre-test and a post-test data collection techniques. The data
are in the numeric form of every student’s reading skill’s score. The researcher applies
several multiple choice questions as the research instrument. The steps of the research are

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pre-test, treatments, and post-test. Pre-test is a test in which it measures some attribute or
characteristic that is assessed for participants before they receive a treatment (Creswell,
2012). In addition, treatment is the way a researcher physically treats with one or more
conditions so that the research participants experience something different in the
experimental conditions (Creswell, 2012). Furthermore, post-test is a test in which it
measures some attribute or characteristic that is assessed for participants after they receive a
treatment (Creswell,2012).

1.7.4 The Data Analysis

After getting the research data, the researcher scores the pre-test and the post-test
results to get the numeric data. The numeric data are analyzed by using a descriptive statistics
test by using SPSS application. As Creswell (2012) states that descriptive statistics
summarizes the overall trends or tendencies in the research data, provides an understanding
of how varied the scores might be, and provides insight into where one score stands in
comparison with others.

1.8 The Research Hypotheses

In this research, the researcher tries to formulate the hypotheses as follows:

Ho: There is no improvement of students’ reading comprehension by using Cognitive

Strategy.

Ha: There is an improvement of students’ reading comprehension by using Cognitive Strategy

1.9 Definition of Key Terms

1. According to Lehr (2013), reading comprehension is the process of
simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and
involvement with written language. This means that reading comprehension is an
active process, being able to read many different materials and being able to
understand them (Fitriani, 2015; Samad, Jannah, Fitriani, 2017).
2. Descriptive text is a kind of text with a purpose to give information. The context
of this kind of text is the description of particular thing, animal, person or others
in general (Genrot and Wignel in Mursyid, 2018:4).

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3. According to Oxford (2010), Cognitive Strategy such as summarizing or
reasoning deductively , enables learners to ubderstand and produce new language
by many different means. Cognitive Strategy is essential in learning a new
language. It is unified bt common function; manipulation or transformation of the
target language of the learners. This is to say that cognitive strategy is an
instructional approach which emphasized the development of thinking skills and
processes as a means to enhance learning. The aim of cognitive strategies are to
enable the students to become more strategic, self reliant, flexible and productive
in their endeavors.