STUDENT'S READING STRATEGIES AND THEIR READING COMPREHENSION
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
This research is intended to investigate the students' reading strategies and their reading comprehension in a junior high school. This chapter illustrates the background of the study, the research problems, and the purposes of the study. This chapter also includes the significance of the study, and the hypothesis. Moreover, this chapter also presents the research method and organization of the thesis.
A. Background of the Study
Reading is an essential skill for English as second/foreign language (ESL/EFL) learners; and for many, reading is the most important skill to master (Anderson, 1999). Anderson also states that with good reading skills, ESL/EFL readers will make great progress and attain great development in all academic areas (1999 : 21).
In a junior high school in Indonesia, reading skill is a first priority. The goal of reading in Indonesia English curriculum is to make the students comprehend what they read, and enhance students' oral and written communication ability (SMP-SBI curriculum 2007 the third grade of a junior high school). Further, SMP-SBI curriculum 2007 the third grade of a junior high school clarifies that the communication in this case is the ability to understand and to express the feeling, thought and information, to develop science, culture and technology (Depdiknas, 2007). It is also stated that standard competence of reading is to understand a meaning of procedural, report, explanatory written text or short essay, narrative, and news items, in order that students are able to communicate in daily and academic context.
In the last decade, many reading experts have investigated English reading strategies in order to solve the reading problems. Reading strategies are considered one of the fundamental factors that promote students' comprehension improvement in reading. Furthermore, reading strategy "is the foundation of students' self-regulated reading" (Syafrizal, 2000 : 4). A motivated and self-regulated reader will encourage himself to set his own planning in determining his reading strategies which contribute a great deal of success to his reading comprehension (Wenden, 1987 : 11).
Based on the description above, it can be said that reading strategies play an important role in reading English texts, especially in a junior high school. In line with this, the present study focuses on the investigation of students' reading strategies and their reading comprehension, a case study at a junior high school.
B. Research Problems
The study is aimed at investigating the junior high school students' reading strategies and their reading comprehension. Specifically, this study investigates the following questions :
1. What reading strategies are used by the third grade students of the junior high school ?
2. Is there any correlation between the students' reading strategies and their reading comprehensions ?
C. Purposes of the Study
The study was conducted in order to :
1. discover the reading strategies used by third grade students of the junior high school.
2. find the correlation between the students' reading strategies and their reading comprehensions
D. Significance of the Study
This study is intended to find the correlation between the junior high school students' reading strategies and their reading comprehension. Hopefully, the study will be valuable for teachers and students, for improving the teaching learning process. By knowing the students' reading strategies and their reading comprehension, the teachers could also select and design the appropriate teaching materials and techniques. Besides, by identifying reading and its strategies, it could be expected that some valuable findings could be implemented in the process of reading in order to make reading course better. Moreover, this study could also become an empirical study over viewing classroom learning activities in Competence-Based Curriculum. It could be an insight to teaching and learning activities in KTSP context. Furthermore, it can be a bridge for the students to encourage them to improve their reading comprehension by using reading strategies.
In addition, this study can be valuable for researcher because the result of the study provides some informative input to conduct another investigation in the same field in different contexts.
