AN INVESTIGATION OF THE TEACHING OF READING : A Case Study at Three Level Classes: Acceleration, International and Regular Class at an International Standard State Senior High School in Sumedang Regency

摘要

Reading is the most useful skill for foreign language learner since reading skill mastery is the key to be successful in academic life, to widen horizon and to get access to new knowledge and information (Campbell, 1995). It can be deduced that reading is a tool to keep up with the world’s fast changing development. Due to that reason, the ultimate goals of reading in Indonesia curriculum focus on equipping the students with reading competence in daily life context and to access knowledge. The existence of international standard school in Indonesia is expected to achieve those ultimate goals of students’ reading skills. Therefore, an investigation in the teaching of reading is needed for the improvement of students’ comprehension in reading.ududThis study aimed to investigate the teaching of reading with the focus on the teachers’ goals in teaching reading, teachers’ techniques in teaching reading, the problems encountered by the teachers in teaching reading, and the students’ perceptions on the teacher’s techniques in teaching reading. The investigation was conducted at three different levels of classes: acceleration, international and regular class.ududThe researcher combined quantitative and qualitative method in analyzing the data. Quantitative method was used in analyzing the data gathered from closed-questionnaire, whereas a case study with qualitative method was used to analyze the data from interview, observation and open-ended questionnaire. ududFrom the data analysis, it was found that the goals of the teachers of acceleration, international and regular class are to enable the students to understand the meaning and the rhetoric steps of the texts accurately and fluently and to answer the comprehension questions correctly. The goals were set to equip the students to face the English test, especially the test for National Examination. However, the goal of reading to make a connection between the text and the students’ contextual situation as also required in the curriculum and in the goals of reading as social context, from which this study was drawn, seemed to be neglected by the teachers. Moreover, there were two common reading techniques which were applied in the three levels of classes: comprehension question and vocabulary instruction. In detail, some techniques found in the reading activities namely: Pre-reading Questions and Brainstorming Technique (Wallace, 1992), Question-Answering Techniques and Question-Generating Technique (Edmondson, 2006) in the form of Comprehension Questions, Vocabulary Instruction Technique (Closs, 2006), Recitation and Review (CAL, 2001). These findings support the previous research on the teaching of reading, especially in EFL context conducted, among others, by Wallace (1992, 2001) and Li-Juan (2007). However, the teachers still encountered some problems in teaching reading such as teaching time allocation, development of additional materials, and students’ lack of enthusiasms in learning reading.ududTherefore, based on the findings of this study, it is suggested accordingly that there should be improvement in reading activities, materials and exercises in a reading class. Trainings, seminars and workshops were also needed to enhance the teachers’ theoretical knowledge on teaching reading.