A STUDY ON THE STRATEGIES OF TEACHING READING COMPREHENSION TO THE FIFTH GRADE STUDENTS IN SDN SUMBERSARI III MALANG

Yuli Yani Universitas Negeri Malang, Malang

Abstract: Reading, as one of the skills that is taught at elementary level, can be considered one of the most important skills to be developed. The teaching of reading in the elementary school will help the students to build and have the reading habit and skills which will be very valuable in the future. Teaching reading demands a right approach for a certain level of students. Key words: reading, teaching strategies

English is the first foreign language that is officially taught as a compulsory subject in junior and high schools and as an elective local content subject in elementary schools in Indonesia through the Indonesian government decree No. 060/4/1993. Continuing the decree above, Dinas Pendidikan of East Java, where this research was conducted, issued another decree No. 1702/105/1994 on March 30th 1994. This decree changes the status of English subject in East Java from an elective local content subject to a local content subject in primary schools (Suyanto, 2000). This serious attention to English language teaching is due to the role of English as a means of global communication, and more importantly, the transfer of science and technology. Theoretically, the teaching of English at elementary schools will affect the teaching of English in the following level, meaning that the success of teaching English in secondary schools depends on the teaching at elementary schools. Rachmajanti (2005) supported this idea in her dissertation that there is an impact of teaching English starting at the elementary school on the students achievement of English at the first year of lower secondary school.

Teaching English to primary school students has been considered increasingly important these days. This is because the introduction of English at this level seems to be in line with the argument that the earlier second language is introduced in school programs, the greater the chance of success in learning. Johnson and Newport (1989, in Lightbown and Spada, 1999: 64) through their study found that there was a strong relationship between an early start to language learning and better performance in the second language. Even people who know about the critical period research are certain that in school programs for second or foreign language teaching, younger is better. Many people concluded based on the studies such as by Patkowski (1980) or Newport and Johnson (1989) (in Lightbown and Spada, 1999:67) that it is better to begin second language instruction as earlier as possible. When discussing who the children are and how they learn, both teachers and parents know that every child is unique. Pinter (2006) claims that even in the same context there are often significant differences between children within the same age range. These differences show that children have their own worlds which are different from adults. Teachers and parents often notice that individual children enjoy different activities. Such differences in childrens individuals need to be taken seriously The teaching of English at primary school involves the teaching and learning of listening, speaking, reading, and writing (Depdiknas, 2006: 403). Reading, as one of the skills that is taught at this level, can be considered one of the most important skills to be developed. It is because learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) may find it difficult to pick up a lot of English naturally without being able to read since they are not surrounded by people who speak English and they do not interact with them (Utami in Cahyono, 2010: 37). Unfortunately, reading is not a favorite thing to do. However, when reading has become a habit, students will read not only because they need to read but because they like it. The teaching of reading in the elementary school will help the students to build and have the reading habit and skills which will be very valuable in the future. It is in line with what Angier (2010) describes that reading is a habit

that people generally develop at a young age. Adults are rarely known to pick up the habit if they do not have as a child. Teaching reading demands a right approach for a certain level of students (Paul, 2003). To teach reading to young learners, there are a number of factors to consider. The first is that children are outspoken and enthusiastic so the use of routine and repetition should be emphasized along with opportunities for interaction and cooperation (Lefever, 2007). Secondly, children are active and like to move around, learn by doing or hands-on experience and are also interested in exploration. One way to make the learning more fun is to involve students in the creation of the visuals. Certainly students are more likely to feel interested and invested in the lesson and will probably take better care of the materials (Moon 2000). The third is that young learners tend to have short attention spans (Shin, 2006). One way to have their attention and keep them focus in activities is to enrich the activities with lots of brightly colored visuals, toys, puppets, or objects to match the ones used in the stories that the teacher tells. Another way that can be used is that the teacher had better not spent more than 10 or 15 minutes on any one activity because children tend to become bored easily (Shin, 2006). For young students it is a good idea to move quickly from activity to activity. Three-phase technique can be considered the appropriate technique to be used by the teacher in teaching reading. It consists of three reading phases i.e. pre-reading, whilst reading and post-reading and each phase has its own activities in it. The teacher then will have numerous activities that can be conducted for even just one text of reading material. TEACHING AND LEARNING STRATEGIES OF READING COMPREHENSION IMPLEMENTED BY THE ENGLISH TEACHER IN PRE-READING ACTIVITY In pre-reading phase, the activities should help students to predict the content of the text and understand a reading passage (Lossa: 2010). Previewing a text with students should arouse their interest and help them understand the text in a more meaningful and purposeful manner as the discussion lead them to think about the situation or points rose in a text (Toprak and Almacioglu: 2009). Prereading activities include: discussing author or text type, brainstorming, reviewing

familiar stories, considering illustrations and titles, pre-questioning, skimming and scanning. Before the class began, the teacher did not tell the students the purpose of the lesson since it was already written in the course book. However, it is found from the observation that students rarely bothered to read it since they thought that it was not important. Therefore, the teacher needed to tell the students directly what the purpose they had to reach in every meeting. It could motivate and raise their interests in the text. It is in line with Ringler and Webbers (1984, in Ajideh 2003) statement that providing the purpose of reading can arouse the students interest in the topic or type of the text and motivate them to read the text. In pre-reading phase, the teacher applied some strategies or activities to activate students background knowledge. Based on the result of the observations, it was discovered that the English teacher reviewed familiar stories related with the main text. She used some conversations text that had the same topic as the text that she would use that day. For example, the topic of the text was Going to Plaza. Here, the teacher and the students read and practiced conversation about shopping at a mall. This activity is supported by Toprak and Almacioglu (2009) who suggested reviewing familiar stories as one of the activities that can be conducted in pre-reading phase to help students in defining selection criteria for the central theme or major argument of a story. In addition to reviewing to the related stories, the English teacher did brainstorming (Appendix 7). It was done to call the large number of imaginative ideas from the students. The teacher listed all ideas that came from the students on the whiteboard. It is in line with Brown and Paulus statement (2003) that by using brainstorming, many ideas can be generated in a short time democratically, the results can be used immediately or preserved for possible use in other projects, and also the concept of brainstorming is easy to understand. Besides, the teacher used visual aids such as pictorial flashcards to activate the students background knowledge. According to the teacher, by showing a picture, the students would get the appropriate information to deal with context of the selected text so that they will feel easier to comprehend the text (Appendix 4). Porter (2006) states that visual aids can help students to retrieve appropriate

knowledge. So, the students will have enough preparation to learn about selected topic. Pre-question was also conducted by the English teacher in the pre-reading phase. Here, the English teacher asked the students some questions related to the topic of the text. In asking those questions, the teacher used both English and Bahasa Indonesia. Such questions had to be answered by the students orally in English or if they did not know the English word for the answer, they were allowed to use Bahasa Indonesia. By asking some questions related to the topic, the teacher provided opportunities to the students to express their ideas about the text that were going to be discussed. This activity in line with Hood, et al.s (1996) statement in which they state that the teacher asking the students some questions before they read is to stimulate what they know about the text. On the other hand, the students sometimes had difficulties to understand what the teacher said. It was figured out when the observation was conducted. There were some students who did not respond to the teacher and just kept silent during the pre-questions activity. Thus, the teacher should pay attention to the students problem since it could disturb them in learning reading in class. The teacher should give the students opportunities to ask whenever they do not understand what she said. It could help them to solve their problem. Also, the teacher should try to paraphrase her questions whenever necessary. It is in line with the statement that some questions may be complicated or not properly structured so they needed to be repeated back in order to verify the real meaning of the questions (Vennapoosa, 2009). Then the English teacher went on to introducing the title of the text. This activity is suggested by Toprak and Almacioglu (2009) to be conducted in prereading phase. it was done to check whether the students had any idea about the title of the text or not. Besides, it is also expected to help the students guess what the text was about as what Lossa (2010) states that activity in pre-reading phase should help the students to predict the content of the text and understand a reading passage. The teacher also discussed some new vocabularies from the texts that were going to be discussed. In conducting the pre-reading activities, the teacher

only took a few minutes since the activities were aimed to motivate the students to read the text and prepare them to be able to read it. In conclusion, the teacher did some kinds of activities in pre-reading phase; reviewing related stories, brainstorming, showing visual aids to the students, doing pre-questioning, introducing the title of the text, and discussed some new vocabulary items from the text. These activities are all appropriate to be conducted in this phase. However, there are some details that the teacher should be concerned about. Firstly, during the observation it was discovered that the students did not bother to read the purpose of the lesson. Thus the teacher should tell them directly rather than just expected them to read it by themselves. Secondly, the teacher conducted pre-question activity in pre-reading phase but sometimes several students were just silent since they had difficulties to understand what she said in the activity. In this case, the teacher should give more attention to these students and try to make all of the students participate in the activity. For instance, she could paraphrase the questions into simple ones so the whole class could understand them and participate actively in answering the questions.

TEACHING AND LEARNING STRATEGIES OF READING COMPREHENSION IMPLEMENTED BY THE ENGLISH TEACHER IN WHILST-READING ACTIVITY A study conducted by Toprak and Almacioglu (2009) describes that whilst-reading exercises help students develop reading strategies, improve their control of the foreign language, and decode problematic text passages. In the whilst-reading stage, we generally read a text with some purpose or interest in mind. One important purpose is for the teacher to model good reading strategies such as identifying main ideas, guessing meaning of unfamiliar words in context, and so on. Therefore the stage will be dominated with discussion and activities that match students interest so as to help the teacher ear the activities toward achieving the purpose. Common activities in this stage are: modeled reading, rereading, pause and predicting, asking and answering questions, summarizing,

jigsaw, reading-writing, and reading aloud by teacher or from the tape (Murdibjono in Cahyono, 2010: 84). According to Nuttal (1996: 164), when an intensive work in a whilstreading stage is completed, general comprehension must be intended to. When the whilst-reading stage is completed, the students are expected to have obtained new information from the text. This should bring about a change of some kind such as we would know more, or think or feel differently from before. At this stage the students should be able to evaluate the text as a whole to respond to it from a more or less personal point of view they may be asked to agree or disagree with the author or the characters in the text, relate the contain of the text to their own experience, connect the content with other works in the same field, discuss characters/incidents/ideas/feelings, and predict what can happen afterwards (Murdibjono in Cahyono, 2010: 84). The teacher tended to do modeled reading before reading aloud. It is aimed to help the students to know the right pronunciation of every word in the text through the demonstration done by the teacher and it is also to build the students listening skills. In reading aloud, the students were unintentionally let to concentrate on individual words and at the same time vocalize them. However, it sometimes made the students fail to understand the meaning of the words, phrases, or sentences because in reading aloud, the students tended to read slowly as they read word by word instead of reading a group of words. Yet, reading aloud can be used to improve the students pronunciation, stress, and intonation. It is also used in measuring students comprehension of the reading text. This statement is supported by Sudiana (1996) who states that reading aloud can be utilized as the measuring rod to determine the comprehension level the students have in reading. In this instance, some students made some mistakes when they were doing reading aloud. She would tell the right one after the student finished reading the text and asked all students to repeat after her to pronounce the words correctly. In reading in a group activity, the students can improve their comprehension about the text itself and also from the information obtained from

their friends since they shared with each other what they had known about the text. It is in line with Olivers (1999) statement that in group work, students coached on group skills e.i. supporting differences, listening, providing feedback, ensuring all participate, coaching others, and reading consensus, so every member gets benefit from it. During the reading activity, the teacher gave the freedom to the students to ask whenever they find difficulties in understanding the text. Another activity that the teacher did at this whilst-reading phase was discussing difficult words from the text. She encouraged the students to guess the meaning of the words based on the context in which they are used in the text. She then asked the students to look up the meaning in the dictionary if they could not guess the meaning from the context. Based on the observation in the classroom, it was found out that the students found it difficult to use the dictionary. In fact, students need to know how to use dictionary effectively not only to find out a words meaning but also when they need to confirm their suppositions about something in English e.g. words pronunciation or spelling. It is in line with DeSprits (2006) statement that dictionary is a valuable tool for the students in their learning process so they need to be familiar with the dictionary for a variety reasons. Therefore, students need to have dictionary skills and this is also teachers responsibility to teach the students how to use it effectively. Another problem appeared in this activity since not all students owned a dictionary. They who did not have dictionary just sit on their chairs without doing anything, it would be better if the teacher encourage them to join their friends who had a dictionary and use it together or for long term benefit, she should suggest the students to have a dictionary of their own. When they still could not find the words meaning in the dictionary then the teacher just told the words meaning directly using Bahasa Indonesia. The teachers way in giving the meanings of the difficult words in Bahasa Indonesia is not considered wrong since it made the students comprehend the text easily. It is in line with what Nation (2005) states that one of the ways of giving attention to words is by quickly giving the meaning of the words using L1 translation. In short, the teacher conducted various activities in whilst-reading phase; modeled reading, reading aloud, reading in group, and discussing difficult words

in the text. Murdibjono (in Cahyono, 2010:84) states that rereading, and pause and predicting also might be employed in whilst-reading phase. Thus, it would be better if the teacher employ more activities in whilst-reading phase rather than repeatedly used the same activities in every meeting. She also should teach the students how to use a dictionary effectively since it was found that they had difficulties in using it and suggest them to have one or try to join their friends who own a dictionary if they do not have one instead of just doing nothing during the activity.

TEACHING AND LEARNING STRATEGIES OF READING COMPREHENSION IMPLEMENTED BY THE ENGLISH TEACHER IN POST-READING ACTIVITY Post-reading strategies use reading comprehension and recall process. Group discussions of literary pieces provide a deeper understanding and contribute to the learning process. Common post-reading activities are: creating stories or end of stories, producing posters, reconstructing texts, and questioning text or views of the writer (Murdibjono in Cahyono, 2010: 84). A post-reading strategy that involves a group is called the "Six Question Story Map"; it involves "when, who, where, what the characters are doing, how they react, and how the story ends" (Mike, 2000:110). Another post-reading strategy is the "Group summary" in which all the members of the group help to summarize the text in their own words (Mike, 2000:111). In the post-reading phase, the activities that the teacher applied are questioning, group discussion and giving feedback to the students. In conducting questioning activity, the teacher asked the students to answer the questions provided in the course book. This is used to evaluate the students comprehension of the text and their difficulties. Besides, it also will help the students to increase their reading ability by discussing the text details. It is in line with what Burton (2010) states that early exposure to reading comprehension questions and awareness of story details will help strengthen students ability to process what they read.

The teacher also sometimes divided the students into groups of 6 to 7 students and so the students did the assignment in the post-reading phase together with their friends in the group. This activity is a good activity to coach them how to cooperate with friends and share their opinions about the assignment. This statement is supported by Oliver (1999) who states that in group work, students coached on group skills i.e. supporting differences, listening, providing feedback, ensuring all participate, coaching others, and reading consensus, so every member gets benefit from it. Besides questioning, the teacher also gave the students feedback on the students presentation concerning their performances and their mistakes. This feedback will lead the students to know how well they have performed during the reading process and the points where they can make. This is in line with Rahmiatis (1995) statement in which she states that when students answer questions based on what they have read, teachers need to provide feedback that is to let the students know how well they have performed. In conclusion, all activities conducted by the teacher were already appropriate to be employed in post-reading phase. However, she could do a lot more activities like creating stories or ending of stories or producing posters. This is a good activity to conduct since children are always active exploring their environment and accumulating knowledge and experiences (Mustafa, 2003). Students of fifth grade are between 10 to 11 years old which is according to Piaget (1983) are on concrete operational stage. During this time, children gain a better understanding of mental operation. This is why creating stories or producing posters are recommended activity to be conducted in post-reading phase so they can think logically by doing concrete activities because at their age they still have difficulty understanding abstract or hypothetical concepts. This is also supported by Murdibjono (in Cahyono, 2010:84) who states that common post-reading activities are: creating stories or end of stories, producing posters, reconstruction text, and questioning text or views of writer.

CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS In the pre-reading phase, the teacher activates the students background knowledge by doing pre-questions and brainstorming, and showing visual aids to the students. Besides, the teacher also dealt with new and/or difficult vocabulary items in this phase. In the whilst-reading phase, the teacher applied modeled reading, reading aloud, reading in group and discussing difficult words. In the post-reading phase, the teacher asked the students post-questions and gave feedback. The teacher believed that by using various learning strategies, the learning would be better facilitate, efficient, and effective as the students underwent the learning process of reading comprehension. Based on the observations were done in the classroom during the process of teaching and learning, it can be concluded that the students responded it positively. They enthusiastically participated on every phase of the three-phase strategy that the teacher used. They seemed to enjoy the process by actively following the teachers instructions on every step. For the development of English reading comprehension instruction, it is suggested that the instructions can be more efficient and effective by considering alternative strategies to be conducted on every phase of the three step reading comprehension strategy. For the English teacher, it is suggested that she should make her own lesson plans as the guidance in teaching since lesson plans provided by other teachers might not be appropriate to her class. It is also suggested that she applies more various techniques of teaching reading on every phase so that the students will be more motivated to learn. There are many activities on every phase that she might consider to use such as; considering illustrations of the story in pre-reading phase, pause and predicting in whilst-reading phase, and producing posters in post-reading phase. In terms of material selection; she should try to find more materials from other resources since she mostly only depended on the main course book. It is suggested in order to make the teaching and learning activities more interesting, the students should get new material that they never knew before from the course book. The other suggestion is about the instructional media used by the teacher. The writer suggests that the teacher should use more instructional media

because young learners have short span of attention. By providing more instructional media, it will help the teacher get more attention from the students. Besides, she should also pay more attention to the students problem and find ways to help them. For instance, she should teach them the way of using dictionary so they can use it effectively and try to paraphrase her questions to them when they seem confused into simple ones so that the students can understand the questions perfectly and respond to them correctly. For the principal, it is suggested that he provides authentic fun sources of learning reading such as various material for reading; e.g. English story books and English children magazines, so that the students can enhance their reading skills and develop their reading habits. To do these, the principal can cooperate with qualified language courses. Finally, for the future researchers, it is suggested that they do research on other aspects of the teaching of reading, such as the use of instructional media. Young learners such as elementary students are always active exploring their environment. The use of instructional media is a good strategy to facilitate that characteristic of young learners. This research is still lack of data on the students perspective of the instructions itself, so it is also suggested for the future researcher to gain more data from the students as the reflection of what the teacher have done in the teaching and learning process.

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