Introduction to Research : Chapter 2

II. Review of Literature

Reading, as discussed above, is an important thing in teaching-learning English. Readers have not only to read the text, but also to comprehend the content of the text. Reading comprehension is very important in getting clear information from the text.
Reading comprehension is ability to understand what has been read. Based on Partnership for Reading (2005), reading comprehension is understanding a text that is read, or the process of “constructing meaning” from the text, because it includes all of the components of reading process working together as a text is read to create a representation of the text in the readers’ mind. There are some factors which influence students’ reading comprehension. One of these factors is pre-reading activities.

The purpose of this research is to find out whether the students’ reading comprehension of class which uses pre-reading activities better than students’ reading comprehension of class which doesn’t use pre-reading activities before the reading process or not. This is based on the fact that not all of teachers use pre-reading activities in their teaching reading process. Some teachers don’t use this; whereas, pre-reading activities has some benefits for the students as the readers.

As mentioned in chapter I, pre-reading activities are some kinds of activities that are done before the reading process. According to Wallace (1992), pre-reading activities provide orientation to content and context. They vary with the nature of the text, the readers’ purpose and context of situation.  Hudson (1982) gives his opinion that one way of facilitating a readers’ interaction with a text for triggering and building background knowledge is through pre-reading activities. By pre-reading activities, readers’ can guess what they’ll learn from the text next. In other words, pre-reading activities give the introduction of the topic to the readers.

Pre-reading activities, of course, consist of some activities. Broadly speaking, the activity which is done by the teachers in reading activities, is giving the questions to the students, which are related to the topic that will be discussed from the text. Tudor (1989) gives five categories of content-related pre-reading activities, they are:

a. Pre-questions to be answered after reading the text

b. Pre-questions to activate the readers’ knowledge about the topic

c. Content organizers

d. Predictions based on the title, subheading, illustration, or skim reading of the text

e. Integrated reading preparation.

Besides from Tudor, the other opinion about the activities in pre-reading activities also comes from Taglibier (1988). He found two other activity-types, using illustration to make predictions and formulating questions, to be more effective in facilitating students’ reading comprehension than vocabulary pre-teaching. This result is interesting, since it shows that heightened background knowledge can enable students to use contextual clues to overcome specific vocabulary deficiencies. 

The other activity in pre-reading activities is discussion. Discussion can activate what students know by changing information, to increase their knowledge of the subjects. Celce-Murcia (1991:225) said that discussion can be initiated by simply posing questions about the content of the text or by using “anticipation guide” which is a series of statements often provocative in nature, which are meant to challenge student’s knowledge and beliefs about the content of the text. Nuttal (1982) gives his opinion that discussion promotes the active struggle with the text and students learn the processes of critical thinking that good readers use. Group work is ideal, because in small group, even the weaker students should be active and learning. The procedure works in almost every level, and discussion can be in L1, if students cannot manage it in FL.

In conclusion, this research investigates the comparison of students’ reading comprehension between class that is given pre-reading activities and the class which is not given pre-reading activities before the reading process. Pre-reading activity is some activities which are done before the reading process. Its purpose is to give a kind of predictions of what the students will learn from the text before they read it. Pre-reading activities can include the following activities : giving question related to the subject which will be read, using illustration to make predictions and formulating questions, and also discussion.