CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Problem

In learning English there are four skills that should be mastered by the students.

Those are listening, speaking, writing and reading. Reading is the important skill

which must be learned and mastered by everyone. According to Siahaan, “The

receptive written language skill called reading is the skill of a reader or a group of

readers to interpret information transferred by a writer 1. According to Patel, reading

is not only a source of information and a pleasurable activity but also as a means of

consolidating and extending one’s knowledge of the language2. By reading, one can

relax, interact with feeling and thoughts, obtain information and improve the

scientific knowledge.

In teaching English especially reading, the teacher should be able to create a relaxed

situation in the class. Reading can provide the students’ message information given in

the form of written text. In relation to this, Nunan states that reading is usually

conceived of a solitary activity in which the reader interacts with the text in isolation3.

It means that reading is the way how anybody learns to do it. The teacher should use

interesting techniques and media to get the best result and to avoid the students’

1
Sanggam Siahaan, The English Paragraph (Yogyakarta: Graha Ilmu, 2008) , p.1.
2
M.F Patel, English Language Teaching ( Methods, Tools, and Techniques) .(New York:
Sunrise Publishers, 2008), p.114.
3
David Nunan, Language Teaching Methodology (Cambridge: University Press, 1981), p.43.
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boredom. The teacher should give explanation about the importance of reading in

learning English.

Reading is also something crucial and be needed for students because the success of

their study depends on the greater part of their ability to read. If their reading skill is

poor they will have difficulties in making progress in their study. In other words, if

they have a good ability in reading, they will have a better chance to succeed in their

study.

Based on the preliminary research, the researcher found some problems faced by the

students at the eighth grade of SMPN 3 Kotabumi, Lampung Utara. The students got

some problems with their reading activities and still had difficulties in

comprehending reading texts. Besides, their ability in learning English, especially

reading comprehension on narrative text was still low because they were not able to

comprehend the text well and they were still confused about what the gist of the text

is. Most of the time, they ended up getting stressed out because they had a hard time

to understand what they read and also lack of vocabularies. In other words, they did

not know what they had read.

There were various factors that might had been cause f the failure in teaching reading.

It was because the students did not practice their English out of class or in their home.

They only learned English when they were studying English in the classroom.

Besides, the students thought English as a foreign language and it was difficult
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language. It was showed when they were studying English, they did not have any

improvement to join English lesson. It could be proved by looking at students’

English score in reading test. The score was displayed in the following table.

Table I

The Student’s Reading Comprehension in narrative text at grade eight of SMPN

3 Kotabumi in 2017/2018 Academic Year

SCORE
NO CLASS TOTAL
<70 ≥70

1 VIII A 18 11 29
2 VIII B 20 10 30
3 VIII C 19 10 29

TOTAL 57 31 88
PERCENTAGE 64.04% 34.83% 100%

Source: SMPN 3 Kotabumi

From the Table 1, it can be concluded that students who got difficulty is 57 or

64.04% from 88 students and only 31 students or 34.83 % who achieved the criteria

minimum mastery score. It means that the achievement of the students’ in learning

reading comprehension in narrative text relatively low and not suitable from the

criteria of minimum mastery (KKM) at the school, the KKM of this school is 70. 4

4
Document of Students for writing announcement in short functional text test at grade Eight
of SMPN 3 Kotabumi in 2017/2018 academic year.
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Therefore, the English teacher should consider the ways or technique and media in

presenting the available subject to the class. Sometimes, the teacher use monotone

techniques which make students get bored.

Besides that, the writer interviewed with some of the students. It was found that most

of the students have difficulties in reading . The students really confused, because

they just saw and listened quietly to the explanation in the classroom. When the

teacher give the exercises, the students still confused. The students did not get

involved with the learning process.

Teaching learning process basically is a process in which teachers and students

interacts each other. The process needs students’ active role. In teaching and learning

process picture series media can help both teacher and students. The teaching and

learning process will run well and the students will be enjoy and relax to join

teaching and learning process. Thus the teacher use the good picture series media it

can be makes the students interested in teaching reading. The reading class will

different if using picture series media.

Media is an object that can be touched, seen, heard and observed. One of media

which is used to help the students reading narrative text is picture series. Picture can

be used to help the students in making cohesive systematic sentences to be the series

of events which is constructed in a chronological order. “Picture Series have a

2. Object of the Research

The object of the research is the use Picture Series and students’ reading
comprehension narrative text.

3. Time of the Research

The research will be conducted at the first semester of SMPN 3 Kotabumi in

the Academic Year of 2018/2019.

4. Place of the Research

The researcher will be conducted at SMPN 3 Kotabumi in the Academic Year

of 2018/2019.