A.

The Background of the Study

English as an international language has become the global connection of

worldwide communication. Its now widely spoken by many people in six

continents language daily life. So its role as an international language becomes

established and permanent. Computer based technology. For example has led to a

massive extension in use of English. Especially through mediums such as the

internet.

Someone can contact someone else anywhere in the world. But practice

he/she can only do this if he/she sufficiently pro in English. In order to know

English well. Someone has to learn and master English through four skill namely,

speaking, learning, reading and writing. One of the skills become the focus in this

thesis, namely reading skills

For everyone, Reading is important for students in any levels of school.

University even thought for human in the entire of the world. Ali (2012:50) states,

Reading is one of the four language skill should be placed by students priority in

their activities. The four skills in language proficiency beside listening. Reading is

the skill that human use to get knowledge or to find out information. It can be said

as Reading is very useful and important skill. With this skill they are able to

broaden their knowledge by reading, many kinds of english text In reading.

Reading is a complex cognitive process of decoding symbol for the intention of

constructing or deriving meaning called reading comprehension.

1
 Mastering reading is very important for students to be able to master

another Englishs skills. For example, a student who wants to be a good writer,

he/she needs to be a good reader. In addition, the students need to master reading

in order to comunicate and to receive some information (technology, science,

sport, economic, bussiness, news, etc). The information above is usually

transferred in written material like book, newspaper, magazine, journal,

advertisement, article, blog, social media, short message, etc. To be able to get

good understanding of these written materials above, the students need to read it

well and effectively. The importance of effective reading is also proposed by

Greenal and Michaels (1986: 46). They say, effective reading means being able to

read accurately, and to understand as much of the passage as you need in order to

acieve your purpose.

Unfortunately, common readers, especially young learners, do not have a

good reading comprehension in understanding English passages well and

effectively. There are several problems appear in the field of education. First, the

students usually find difficulties in comprehending the text if they do not know a

lot of the words in the text. This statement is supported by Paran in Harmer (2005:

203). He said, if the readers do not know half of the words in a text, they will have

great difficulty in understanding the text as a whole. Second, the condition is

going worse because teaching reading activity which is usually conducted by

teacher is sometimes still unideal. The teachers do not introduce appropriate

activities and strategies in learning reading to the students.

2
 The second problem above also commonly happens in the teaching and

learning process of reading like what the reseacher found in SMA Negeri 1

Bendahara, Sungai Iyu. Since the students are not introduced with appropriate

reading varieties and strategies the students usually perform unappropriate

tendency in reading the passages. For example, the students usually read without

objectives and strategies, overanalyze the passages using dictionary, and perform

bad response in following reading activities. As a result, the students have no

good competence and experience in comprehending the passages well. In other

words, the students do not have good enough reading comprehension to help them

become good readers.

Based on the explanation above, the researcher tries to offer a solution by

using Extensive Reading Activity as the main tool to improve students reading

comprehension in SMA N 1 Bendahara Sungai Iyu

B. The Problem of The Study

Based on the background described above, the writer formulates the

problem as follow : Does the Extensive Reading Strategies on students Reading

Comprehension of the second grade students of SMA Negeri 1 Bendahara,Sungai

Iyu.

C. The Objective of Study

Dealing of the study the object of the research is to find out the effect of

students reading comprehension ability in SMA Negeri 1 Bendahara, Sungai Iyu.

3
 D. The Scope of Study

The scope of the study the researcher want to see the effect of extensive of

students reading comprehension ability in descriptive text of second grade in

SMA Negeri 1 Bendahara,Sungai Iyu.

E. The Significances of Study

This study is aimed for giving a contribution for the following points:

1. For the English teacher, especially those who teach the second class In

order to improve the English competency of their student.

2. For the students, so that they can use the results of this research as a

Support to improve their extensive in reading comprehension.

3. For the writer to improve her/his knowledge especially to know the

students in reading comprehension

4. It is useful to conduct a research In teaching reading comprehension.

F. Theoritichal Framework

1. Reading

Reading is one of the Basic Skills of English. It is categorized as input

skill. It means when people read something they will get information from it.

Nunan (2004: 68) states, reading is a fluent process of reader combining

information from a text and their own background knowledge to build meaning.

4
In the reading, readers combine the infromation from the text and the information

from their exsisting background knowledge.

As a skill, reading can be trained and developed. People who want to be a

good and effective reader, they must master reading skill and its strategies and

technigues. Each reading passage has its own strategies and techniques to read it.

Soedarso (2004: 12) in his book Membaca Cepat (Speed Reading), states that in

the modern era people need to read fast and effective because they have limited

time. They need to select the appropriate strategies and techniques in reading

according to their purpose.

2. Reading Comprehension

The main purpose of reading is to get comprehension. When the students

read a passage, they decode written information and it is combined with the

students background of knowledge in their brains to produce comprehension.

Anderson in McKay (2006: 224) stated, reading is both process and product. The

product of reading is called reading comprehension, or an internal construction of

meaning; that is, there has been understanding of what has been read. Smith and

Robinson (1980:5) defined reading comprehension as the understanding,

evaluating, and utilizing of information and ideas gained through an interaction

between the reader and the author. Furthermore, Harris and Smith (1972:243)

stated, reading is a process intimately linked to think, and there three factors

influencing comprehension, i.e. background experience, ability to use language,

and intelligence.

3. Reading Comprehension Skills

5
 To comprehend the written forms, there are so many skills that can be used

by the students. According to Johnson (2008:110-111) reading comprehensian

skills are strategies readers use to retrieve information and construct meaning

from expository text. They are thinking process, broked down into steps to

comprehend. These comprehension skills can be easily learned and flexibly

sellected to a varieaty of reading situations. Brown (2001: 308) stated, perhaps the

most valuable strategies for learners (as well as native speaker) are skimming and

scanning strategies. Several skills above can be improved, trained and developed

as the way the students grow. Improving reading comprehension skills is valuable

to make them good reader and effective reader.

4. Extensive Reading Activity

According to Brown (2001: 301) Extensive Reading activity is carried out

to achieve general understanding of a usually somewhat longer texts (book, long

article, long essay, crowded advertisement, newspaper, magazine, ect). Extensive

reading activity can be conducted in the class time or outside the class time.

Brown (2001: 301) adds, Extensive Reading activity has advantages. First, it

makes the students to read better. Second, it as a key to students gain reading

ability, linguistic competence, vocabulary, spelling, and writing. By stimulating

reading for enjoyment or reading where all concepts, names, dates, and other

details, need not be retained, students gains an appreciation for effective and

cognitive window of reading. Extensive reading can sometimes help learners get

away from their tendency to overanalyze or look up words they do not know, and

read for understanding.

6
 According to Day and Bamford (1998: 7-8) Extensive Reading has several

characteristics, these are: (a). Students read as much as possible, (b). A avariety of

materials on a wide range of topics are available, (c). Students select what they

want to read, (c). The purposes of reading are usually for pleasure, information,

and general understanding, (d). Reading is its own reward, (e). Reading materials

are well within linguistic competence of the students, (f). Reading is individual

and silent, (g). Reading speed is usually faster than slower, (h). Teachers orient

students to the goal of the program, (i). The teacher is a role model of reading for

the students.

G. Hypothesis

A hypothesis is needed to show the researcher thinking about what the

outcome of the researcher will be. The researcher hyphotesis is followed:

Ha : there is significant effect of extensive reading technique on students

reading comprehension.

Ho : there is not significant effrect of extensive reading technique on students

reading comprehension.

H. Research Methodology

1. Place and Time of the Study

The study Will conduct at SMA Negeri 1 Bendahara,Sungai Iyu. This

study will conduct for six meetings including for pre-test and post-test. It began

on july and ended on august 2017.

7
 2. Research Method

The method of this study is quantitative method, that is experimental

research. As stated by Wiersma and Jurs, an experiment is a research situation in

which at least one independent variable, called experimental variable, is

deliberately manipulated or varied by the researcher to determine its effect.

The design of this study is quasi-experimental research. A quasi experiment is

a design, which is widely used in educational setting, in which there is no random

assignment of subjects because randomly assigning subjects or students to the

groups would disrupt classroom learning.

In this research, The researcher applied pre- and post-test design approach

to a quasi-experimental design. The researcher used two intact classes in which

one of them was as experimental class and another was as controlled class.

Experimental class was class which got treatment or being taught by using

Extensive reading strategy and controlled class was not taught by using Extensive

reading strategy. Both classes were given a pre-test before teaching-learning

activity and post-test after teaching- learning activity. The result of pre-test and

post-test from both classes were compared and calculated to find out the

effectiveness of Extensive reading strategy on Students Reading Comprehension.

3. Population and Sample

The population of this study was all first grade students at SMA Negeri 1

Bendahara,Sungai Iyu in academic year 2017/2018 consisting 114 students who

were divided into 5 classes, XI IPA 1, XI IPA 2, XI IPA 3, XI IPS 1, XI IPS 2.

Then, the researcher took XI IPA 2 and XI IPA 3 as the sample of this study. XI

8
IPA 3 was as experimental class and XI IPA 2 was as controlled class. Technique

sampling used by the researcher was purposive sampling. It is purposive because

the sampling is determined by any considerion; limited time, cost, and energy that

the researcher had. The researcher took XI IPA 2 and XI IPA 3 as the samples of

this study is also because according to the English teacher in that school, those

classess were appropriate to become the samples of this research. The students

from both classes had almost same characteristics and ability in learning English.

Both of those classes consisted of 20 students.

4. Technique of Data Collecting

The technique that the researcher used to collect the data was by giving

test. Hence, the research instrument in this study was test. The test was in the form

of reading test in which the students were asked to read a book based on the topic

which was determined. That reading test was given twice for pre-test and post-

test. Both classes, experimental class and controlled class, were given the same

test. The students were given sixty minutes to do the test .

5. Technique of Data Analysis

The data gotten from pre-test and post-test were analyzed and calculated

by using statistical calculation of t-test formula which is adapted from Anas

Sudijono to find out the effectiveness of Extensive reading strategy on Students

Reading Comprehension.

9
 However, before calculating the t-test value to examine the hypotheses of

this research, the researcher first do normality and homogeneity tests to know

whether or not the data from experimental class and controlled class are normally

distributed and homogeneous.

I. References

Arikunto, Suharsimi. 2006. Procedure Penelitian Suatu :Tindakan Praktik.

Jakarta: Rineka Cipta

Brown, H. Douglas. 2001. Teaching by Principles: An Intteractive

Approach to Language Pedagogy. New York: Longman.

Darmadi, Hamid. 2011. Metode Penelitian Pendidikan. Bandung: Penerbit

Alfabeta.Day, R. R. and J. Bamford. 1998. Extensive Reading in the

Second Language Classroom.Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

Johnson, Andre P. 2008. Teaching Reading and Writing: A Guidebook for

Tutoring and Remediating Students. Estofer Road, Playmouth:

Rowman & Littlefield Education.

Nunan, David. 2004. Task-Based Language Teaching. New York.

Cambridge University Press.

10