Friday, March 20, 2015

Developing Supplementary Reading Materials for the Students of Eighth Graders at Mts Nahdatul Wathan Bagik Payung

By Muh. Bisyrulhafy



Among other language skill, reading is the most important skill for academic purpose in second language acquisition. A lot of foreign language teaching often emphasize on reading activities. Therefore, various pedagogical purposes help reading to receive this special focus. For example, national examination (UN) in junior high school level emphasize on the reading comprehension skill. Most items in national examination in junior high school are related to reading comprehension. It means that the student in junior high school level should have reading comprehension well to prepare of the national examination and to continue to a higher level of education.
This research is conducted in eighth grade at MTS Nahdhatul Wathan Bagik Payung because the students of that level show the low mean scores almost all text reading of middle test and final examination are the proof of the students have lack of reading skill. Even, some students do not like to read English reading material because they think that the language used in the available reading materials are too difficult for them. Based on this condition, the teachers have to find ways to solve problem.
Reading skill plays an important role in English learning process, especially when stu­dents have to deal with final examination which includes reading and writing skills. Rea­ding is an ability to draw meaning from the printed page and interpret this information appropriately. So, the important aspects to acquire by the students of junior high school are vocabulary and grammar since they are still in the basic stage of learning and have lack of vocabulary or it is called as lower level reading process (Grabe, W. & Fredricka L. Stoller, 2002).
To have good reading skill, students need to receive ample reading input or many reading materials. According to Krashen (2003), the learner need to be exposed a large amount of comprehensible input in their new language in order to acquire the language. These reading input are not only in the intensive reading activity but also in the extensive reading activity where the student can read freely inside or outside the classroom. Harmer (2007, p. 283) assert that to get optimum benefit from reading , student need to be involved in both intensive and extensive reading. It is because of the teacher develops students’ reading materials, logically the materials selected for the module should be able to trigger students’ motivation to read.
According to the statement of the problem, the purpose of this study is producing a book about Supplementary Reading Materials to help students for reading skill especially to the eighth Graders of at MTS Nahdatul Wathan Bagik Payung. As it stated in Cunningsworth (1995) that supplementary material especially graded book expected to answer the disadvantage of coursebook that is improving varieties in teaching procedures, responding individual student needs and problems, and also improve the creativity in teaching technique and language
            The final product of this development is in the form of book entitled “let’s read” supplementary reading material for the eighth grader”. The cover was designed in bright blue with attachment of globe which is surrounded The cover was designed in bright blue with attachment of globe which is surrounded by girl who is reading at left side, and man is reading at the right side.. The second part is the title of supplementary that followed by the name of writer, lay-out, illustrate, cover design, edition and year. The third part is preface; it describes the reason why supplementary reading material is developed and the aim of providing supplementary reading. Next is to the teacher, it introduces the content of product. It is followed by list of content and continued with the map of content. The next part is the materials staring with Unit 1 till unit 3, in each unit provides a meaningful picture and the objectives of instructional activities. The last part is answer key and teacher’s guide.
The result of the study would be useful for the English teacher of MTS Nahdhatul Wathan Bagik Payung and other English teachers in other schools to overcome the problem reading and student’s difficulty in reading skill. This study can also become one of the guideline for teachers and further researcher who will develop other supplementary materials. The result of this supplementary material is also expected to complement the previous and available the materials of reading in course book.
The product is developed on the basis of the assumption that the supplementary materials are suitable for the students’ need and interest and also the material can improve the students’ reading ability. It is based on Crawley & Mountain (1995) suggests that material adjustment can be made in a number of ways; one of them is supplementary reading. It is very essential to use reading in the content areas. Supplementary reading should be compilation of sources such as pictures books and trade books (Roe, Stood, and Burns, 1995). They state that supplementary reading can developed critical thinking skills, to make a connection between reading and writing, and to develop vocabulary.
The supplementary materials focus on the topics about fantasy; legend, fairy tale and fable, then is about experiences: holiday to Bali and vacation to Jogja, and the last is autobiography; R.A Kartini, soekarno, Hatta, and so forth. Based on the result of preliminary study, topics mostly are rarely used in reading text of course book. Also, students only have less reading English text about stories are such as: princess mandalika, aji saka, gift from daughter, the little mouse and so on. So, those are expected that he students motivated to read much more story by focusing the material development on the topics.
The definition of supplementary material is the material that supports the main course book usage. The contents are only additional materials, which support and give reinforcement for the proposed and selected materials in the course book. Reading text materials are interactive activity that consists of colorful picture; match picture, match picture into good paragraph , match picture in jumble paragraph, WH-question, Yes/No question and so forth.  They are used in the eighth grade of MTS Nahdhatul Wathan Bagik Payung.


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