CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the research

Language cannot be separated from the life. People use language as an instrument of

communication on their daily life. Language is a means of communication to express a

massage of the speaker’s idea to listener. There are many languages in the world but

English remains the most important language. English is one of the international

languages of the present in this era. This language is used all over the world. As a result,

Indonesian government has decide that English is foreign language in Indonesia. In

addition, it is the first foreign language as a compulsory subject in junior high school,

senior high school, and university in Indonesia.

There are four language skills which students need to be able to use. The four skills in

language are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. It means that the four skills of

language above that need to be mastered by the people.

Reading is one of language skills that have to be mastered. There are many steps to

master this skill; such as word perception, comprehension, reaction, and integration.

Those step can make students master reading skill effectively, because on those steps the

students can understand meaningful text.

According to William Grabe (2009: 15) “Reading is a strategic process in that a number

of the skills and process used is reading call for effort on the part of the reader, to

anticipate text information, select key information, organize and mentally summarize

information, monitor comprehension, repair comprehension breakdowns, and match

comprehension output to reader goals”. Its mean reading is looking for information from
the text, in reading, someone not only reads, but understands the meaning contained in

the reading material.

Because reading as a very important skill in learning to get the main place compared with

other language skills and also reading is one of the communication media and learning

tool in delivering the indispensable function. Therefore, a learning method is needed by

the teacher in the class room in making a connection with the students during the

learning, and can help the students when they find difficulty in understanding the

material. Learning method is very important because it is a strategy to achieve the goal of

teaching.

Therefore, the problem of understanding the text in reading can be caused by many

factors. One of them is the learning strategy in teaching and learning process which is

ineffective in the classroom. Generally, the students only read the text but they don’t

understand its meaning and identification. It is indicated that they don’t get information

from text. If they don’t understand meaningful text, they cannot answer the question

based on the text and cannot identify the structure of the text well.

Metode adalah cara yang fungsinya sebagai alat untuk mencapai tujuan. Makin baik

metode itu, makin efektif pula pencapaian tujuan. Dengan demikian tujuan merupakan

faktor utama dalam menetapkan baik tidaknya penggunaan suatu metode.

Dalam hal metode mengajar, selain faktor tujuan, murid, situasi, fasilitas dan faktor guru

turut menentukan efektif tidaknya penggunaan suatu metode. Karenanya metode

mengajar itu banyak sekali dan sulit menggolong-golongkannya. Lebih sulit lagi

menetapkan metode mana yang memiliki efektifitas paling tinggi. Sebab metode yang

“kurang baik” di tangan seorang guru dapat menjadi metode yang “baik sekali” di tangan
guru yang lain dan metode yang baik akan gagal di tangan guru yang tidak menguasai

teknik pelaksanaannya.

Namun demikian, ada sifat-sifat umum yang terdapat pada metode yang satu tidak

terdapat pada metode yang lain. Dengan mencari ciri-ciri umum itu, menjadi mungkinlah

untuk mengenali berbagai macam metode yang lazim dan praktis untuk dilaksanakan

dalam proses belajar mengajar.

Belajar mengajar merupakan kegiatan yang kompleks. Mengingat kegiatan belajar

mengajar merupakan kegiatan yang kompleks, maka tidak mungkin menunjukan dan

menyimpulkan bahwa suatu metode belajar mengajar tertentu lebih unggul dari pada

metode belajar mengajar yang lainnya dalam usaha mencapai semua pelajaran, dalam

situasi dan kondisi, dan untuk selamanya. Untuk itu berikut ini akan dibahas beberapa

metode yang dimungkinkan dapat digunakan dalam pembelajaran pendidikan seperti

metode ceramah, metode diskusi, metode kelompok dan metode campura