Berikut ini, terdapat sebuah contoh latar belakang masalah penelitian di dalam skripsi bahasa Inggris. Peneliti mengambil topik meningkatkan reading skill atau kemampuan membaca menggunakan collaborative strategic reading.

Background

The same as the other languages, English is divided into four skills which are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Reading stands for the third skill and will be always discussed in here. It is a skill that works as a communication way of a written text between a writer and a reader. By using this skill, the readers try to understand what the idea or the information of a text that wanted to deliver by the writer. Mastering reading skill is also becomes a must for all of the students which are studying English as a foreign language.

In the classroom context of reading comprehension, the students take a role as a reader of the text. It means that they must able to comprehend the reading materials which are shown as the written texts. Furthermore, the students are also purposed to pass the final examinations which are related to reading comprehension achievement. In order to achieve those important goals, the teacher should be successful enough in making the students comprehend the text well.

When the researcher practiced to teach in SMPN 1 Sumberjaya, it was found that most of the students were failed to comprehend the reading text well. It caused they did not pass the standard quality of the school (KKM). The students’ failure in passing the examination target is due to many factors; one of them is the strategic that applied by the English teacher. The learning process of reading continuously involved the conventional activity in which the students should read the written text individually and the teacher checked their fluency and pronunciation. That technique seems effective to gain a higher ability in reading a text in the accurate spelling; but it cannot reach the aspects of all the reading comprehension where the students should be able to find the main idea, making inference, making reference, and knowing the supporting details. Furthermore, that conventional technique absolutely made the teacher used the time more and could be stated as an inefficiency, because all the students need to read the text one by one.

The previous study done by Muthiah (2012) showed the students got difficulties to determine main idea and answer questions based on the text. It is because the old technique without collaboration in learning that conducted by the teacher. As the result, their reading achievement was below the expectation. To overcome this situation the teacher should generate students’ interest by applying the various techniques and selecting the proper text. By using the good technique in teaching, the teacher could help the students think critically and develop their ideas. More importantly, the students could comprehend the idea easier and reached optimal results in reading.

The study proves that the teaching reading comprehension is not recommended to be carried out continuously by conventional technique mentioned before. It is good to find a better strategy that more interesting, not wasting the time, and turning into a high quality result. Students’ collaboration is absolutely sure to become a solution of this problem. Learning through collaboration makes two or more students learn or attempt to learn something together. According to Romney (1996), collaborative learning (usually called cooperative learning) is a well-established group work method that provides a useful alternative to teacher-fronted classes. Its various techniques follow a certain number of set rules.

Through collaborating, the students are able to work with others includes actively participation in the learning process, having a brave in showing their ideas, evaluating one another’s ideas, monitoring one another’s work, and avoiding the wasting time. It’s better than checking for each student’s work which will consume time much more. Furthermore, the teachers also have a responsibility to find the best way of collaboration so that the students can work effectively. It is not the strategy that only several students work in a group but also all the students participate well in order to gain the same increase of reading comprehension for each group member.

As seen in many cases of the students in SMPN 1 Sumberjaya, when the learning process sometimes done by working in group, most of groups depended on one until two students for discussing and finishing the task. Meanwhile, the other students had no role in finding the solution and they were like the employees who get a salary without work. That kind of collaboration will have two bad results. First, the students who never work in the discussion and only get a free score will have no increase in their reading comprehension; theirs is only a deceitful score without any proof when they are tested. Second, they will not familiarize their self in collaborating with others; they cannot be brave to share their mind and keep to be a passive student. Because of those facts, the collaborative learning process in the classroom should be revised so that it can increase all the groups’ member reading comprehension.

One of the techniques in teaching reading which guides the students for being able to collaborate well with others is Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR). Klingner & Vaughn (1996), said that the goals of CSR are to improve reading comprehension and increase conceptual learning in ways that maximize students’ involvement. Student roles are the important aspect of CSR because cooperative learning seems to work best when group members have been assigned a meaningful task.

So, it can be considered that it is a good technique because the students are not only encouraged to work together in a well structured procedure but also maximize their involvement and responsibility with different roles and of course with different tasks. Therefore, considering the explanation above, the researcher tries to increase the students’ reading comprehension by using Collaborative Strategic Reading.

Itulah sebuah latar belakang penelitian skripsi bahasa Inggris yang berjudul increasing reading skills by using collaborative strategic reading. Semoga bermanfaat bagi Anda.