CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Problem

In Indonesia, English is teaching as a compulsory subject from the

first year of Junior High School to the third year of Senior High School.

But nowadays, English is not only teach in Junior High School and Senior

High School but also in the Elementary School. But only some Elementery

School that have English Subject. On average, nowdays in junior high

school student are know to English Lessons, especially in school around

the village. We should be master English earlier if we want to

communicate with English well especially convey knowledge to student.1

Furthermore, when the teacher ask the students to do something or

make something that the procedure is already in their book but among

these students still ask their teacher about that procedure. In this case,

laziness of reading can make people difficult to find what they looking for.

Therefore, large of students’ are difficulties understanding vocabulary

because of that, they are also difficult to find the main idea, and

understand factual and detail. From those difficulties, the student can

failled answer the question based on reading passage then their score is

low. Thus, the student should improve their reading component skill.

1
1711040215, FIirdhani Rahmaning Gusti, “An Analysis Of Students’ Literal Reading
Comprehension In Report Text”, Lampung, 2021, Hal 5
 Reading is one of the most prominent of English skill besides

listening, speaking, and writing. Besides that, in reading learners are

anticipate for observing, understanding, and then thinking. Reading is the

window of world that means all information can be known by students

through reading. Therefore, reading is the essential English skill in order

to understand the message of the passage to get as much knowledge and to

find information especially for students.

According to Yusuf (2011) "The initial ability of students is an

ability that has been possessed by the student before he followed Learning

will be given. This initial ability describes readiness of students in

receiving lessons. It will be delivered by the teacher." According to Yusuf

(2011) "Student Ability is a beginning ability that has been own by the

student before he followed Learning will be given. This initial ability

describes readiness of students in receiving lessons. It will be deliver by

the teacher." Or in other words, the initial ability is prerequisite ability that

must be possessed students before being given the material Learning by

the teacher. Ability is a general term used to refer to any characteristics of

a person that makes it possible for him to carry out activity successfully. It

is determined by some factors, namely genetic, practice and training.

Every individual has different abilities. Ability also can be defined as

one’s general capability for performing tasks ability is the quality of being

able to perform something. From the definitions above, it must be clear

 that ability is the quality of being able to do or being able to perform

something. 2

Furthermore, according to Basic Competence which is issue by

Ministry of Education and Culture 2013 the basic competence 2013, the

junior high school of eight grade, learners are expected to comprehend the

structure texts, social functions, then also language features of each

reading texts such as; descriptive, narrative, recount text, and others in an

oral and written form.

In these real situation, learners have not achieve a curriculum

expectation, and then have a low ability in the reading. Language and

people have a close relationship, because the development and growth of

language walk together with the development of people. English has been

used as an international language. Because its rule as an international

language, English is choosen as the first foreign language to be taught in

Indonesia. So Indonesian learners have to study the foreign language

whose system is different from learning Bahasa Indonesia.

There is a previous researches who conducting analysis of

understanding of student reading ability. According to Safdarian, et.al said

that “reading is assumed as the most important skill to gain knowledge of

their own discipline for junior high school students in education today”.

This research aims is in discussing the methods how to understanding

2
The Measurement of Student Ability in Modern Assesment Systems, Brian Jacob and Jesse
Rothstein, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Volume 30, Number 3, 2016 Page 85-108
 reading compenent skill in kinds of text especially in report text. The

researcher focus on to know student ability in reading especially reading in

report text subject. 3

Based on all the explanations and a previous researchers of

students reading ability, for making any differences with the present

research, researcher analyzing students' ability reading compenent skill,

however in report text understanding. Based on preliminary research, it

causes student don’t understand what they read because they know English

subject. The teacher also doesn’t put too much emphasis on learning

reading especially reading in report text. Teacher is only teach English

Subject commonly in junior high school eight grade. Let student learn

reading lesson eventhough they speak English most of them they don’t

know the vocabularies.

Based on the preliminary research that the researcher doing in SMP

Muhammadiyah Pasir Pengaraian, this school presents English is as one of

the subject that teaching three times in a week with duration 2 hours each

meeting. It means that the students have to learn English for 120 minutes

in a week. The researcher interviewed the students and the teacher in this

school and find that some of the students' in reading was relatively low.

The teacher in this school delivered the reading material based on the

curriculum 2013 and explain the material by using some various strategies

or technique to make the students interest and it must understanding the

3
Nomor 1, Edi Wahyono &Dewi Puspitasari, Students need analysis of english reading skills for
academic purposes, Prosiding Ictte Fkip Uns 2015 Vol 1, Nomor 1, Januari 2016, Hal 10007
 reading material. But in fact, some of the students are still unable to

understanding the content being teach by the teacher.

Based on the explanation above, there is a clear issue that the

students have difficulties in reading such as: The students are difficult to

find the main idea and detail information, because they are not interested

to read the English text. Besides that, the students could not identify kinds

of the text, because each text has different generic structure and language

features. Also, students are not able to identify the meaning of a reading

text, because they lack of vocabulary. Then, the students have not way to

read the English text so that they could not get the meaning of the text.

This research focus on students' ability reading component skills.

After that the researcher used report text as the material as a text to know

the students' ability in reading. Thus, the researcher are interest in

conducting research entitle ”An Analysis of Students’ Ability In

Reading Report Text at Eight Grade of SMP Muhammadiyah Pasir

Pengaraian in academic year 2022/2023”.

Considering the importance of reading skill in facilitating the

students’ English mastery, then students’ problem in understanding

English reading text must be identified. By identifying the problems, the

teachers will be able to design a suitable in reading strategy that could

assist the students in improving their reading ability.

B. Identification of the Problem

 Based on the Background of problem above, the problem can be identified

as follow:

1. The students have difficult to comprehend text in reading.

2. The students don't have many vocabularies so they are difficult to

comprehend them.

3. The students' reading ability is still low.

C. Limitation of the Research

Based on the problem above, there is some problems of teaching reading.

Furthermore, the researcher limited the problem into “An analysis students’

ability in reading report text at the seventh grade of SMP

MuhammadiyahRokanHulu. But in this research, the researcher analyzing aspects

of students’ ability in reading about vocabulary, factual data, and main idea in

report text.

D. Formulation of the Problem

Based on the limitation of the problem above, the problem that is

discussing in this research is formulate as follows:

1. What is the students’ ability in reading report text?

2. What are the causes of the students’ ability in reading report text?

E. Purpose of the Research

 In accordance with the formulation of the problems above, there are some

purposes of the research as follows:

1. To find out students’ ability in reading report text.

2. To find out the causes of students’ ability in reading report text.

F. The Significance of the research

The result of this research is expect to give information to :

1. Theorytically

To give any contributions for previous research then provide information

about the students’ ability in reading report text.

2. Practically

a. For the teacher

To give any information to the teacher’about learners’in reading report

text in order to make students’ interested in reading English text.

b. For the students

To motivate the students’ to enrich their reading ability especially in

reading report text.

c. For the next researchers

To give information to the next researchers who will conduct the research

that has similar topic.

H. The Definition of the terms

 To avoid misunderstanding and misinterpretation, it is necessary to define

the term use as follows :

1. Student Ability

In one of the simplest specifications, the probability of a correct

answer is a logit function of the difference between the student’s ability

and the item’s difficulty.Other testing systems estimate student ability

using random effects models, which generate posterior distributions for

each student’s ability (including for those who answer all items correctly

or all incorrectly).4

Ability is estimated most precisely for individuals near the middle

of the measured ability distribution. This is because test items are most

“discriminating,” in the sense that a right or wrong answer provides the

most information about the student’s ability, when the probability of a

correct answer is close to 50 percent.

For this reason, the reported ability measure in this framework will

be shrunk more towards the mean for students who score extremely high

or low on the exam. Importantly, neither posterior means nor posterior

modes are unbiased estimatesof student ability.

2. Report Text

Report text is a piece of writing which aims to describe something in

general way. It means report text is the text to describe the way things are
4
The Measurement of Student Ability in Modern Assesment Systems, Brian Jacob and Jesse
Rothstein, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Volume 30, Number 3, 2016 Page 93-96
 in general, with reference to a range of natural and social phenomena in

our environtment. In this research, report text is one of the genres used by

the researcher in order to know the students’ ability in comprehending

reading text.

CHAPTER II

LITERATURE REVIEW

A. Theory

1. Concept of reading

Being successful in teaching english is the dominant factor that the

English Teacher should pay attention, especially in Teaching reading. The

skill of language is an unique ability and important to grow the knowledge

 and new experiences. Generally, The skill in reading getting by learning in

school.

5
Teaching is definition as an interactive process, primarily

involving classroom talk, which takes place between teacher, pupil and

occurs during certain definable activities. Teaching is one of the language

skills that is one application in learning to students. Reading is one of the

skill which is to be learn by the students in order to master English well.

Reading is also includes into receptive skills besides listening. Reading is

the practice of using text to create meaning. The two key words here are

creating and meaning. Beside that reading becomes a problem for the

students because the purposes of reading and type of the text determine the

specific knowledge, skills and strategies that readers need to apply and

achieve comprehension.

Therefore, in reading needs to be give more attention, particularly

in Junior High School students. Teaching and learning reading in Junior

High School, the students are required to understand the text to get the

information. Students are not require to understand each individual part of

the sentence or paragraph, but they should understand the message the

writer is trying to convey. All of those purpose needs reading

comprehension that will help students to develop their ability in English.

5
52212006,An Amtha, “Kwl Improves Students’ Ability In Reading Of Report Text”, An Amtha,
Sudarsono, Regina, 2017.
 Reading is also one of the most important tools for students to gain

knowledge and fulfills their need for information. Through reading

students can get a lot of information, knowledge, enjoyment and even

problem solution. Reading become the crucial skill that need to

investigating, because reading is one of the important aspects in learning

English that plays a role in the learning process and become the only way

that helps students to keep contact with English.In additional, the ability to

read the text in any form will bring great advantages to the students.

Reading comprehension is the process of transferring ideas from

texts to the reader’s mind, or the process in which students understand and

get the messages from the printed words. The more the students read, the

better their comprehension on the reading material will be.Reading

comprehension is not merely a process of recognizing and understanding

words and their meanings.

Reading for foreign language learners is not an easy task because

reading in English is complicated and it is hard to get the meaning from

the text. Itneeds comprehension to get meaning or to get information

convey by the writer. It can be causes by the language system of English is

different from the students’ own language. However, reading is always

been seen as a fundamental skill that could assist the student in mastering

the other skills.

 Developing meaning from the word by the reader is call reading. Other

than that, reading is activity to interpret meaning or information from a text.

Based on Grabe and Stolle, readings are an ability for drawing meaning from

some printed pages then interpret these information appropriately. 6

That mean through the reading text, people can be communication by

cooperating between brain, eyes movement, then inferring processes that make

some communications between the writer and the reader essential. It means

that the reader makes relation between information in passage then information

in reader’s heads, then making any conclusions.

Based on definitions given by experts above, it can be conclude that

reading is activity to makes communication between reader‟s head with

author‟s meaning than interpret meaning of the passage by cooperating

between eyes movements and brain work.

2. Reading Comprehension

a. Concept of reading comprehension

Reading comprehension is active process which include

understanding meaning of text. Moreover, reading comprehension

implicates interaction among a text and the previous knowledge.

According to Lehr, reading comprehension is the process of

simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction

and involvement with written language.

6
AyferSahin, ”The Effect of Text Types on Reading Comprehension”. Vol. 3 MIJE ,2013.
 In consequence, background knowledge important to comprehend

the text to catch aspects on text and making inference after reading

process. Kintsch in EzgiÇetinkayaÖzdemir and HayatiAkyol notes that it

requires identifying and understanding the important ideas of texts and

making inferences based on both texts and background knowledge. So,

reading comprehension is active process to use background knowledge for

constructing meaning of the text.

B. Factors that affected in reading comprehension7

1. Internal factors and external factors8

Each reader has different in reading comprehension. There are the readers

who have good category in comprehend a text and otherwise. It happen

because there are factors affected the reader‟s in comprehend a text.

Internal factors in reading comprehension such as: physics, intellectual,

and psychological. While external factors include family and school

environments.Beside that, external factors are teaching technique, text, and

7
Lems, K., Miller, L. D., &Soro, M. T.Teaching reading to English language learners: Insights
from linguistics.(New York, NY: The Guilford Press.2010), Hal 112
8
EzgiÇetinkayaÖzdemir, HayatiAkyol. The Development of a Reading Comprehension
Test,Universal Journal of Educational Research, Vol. 7, 2019.
 environment. It can be conclude that, there are many things that affect the

readers‟ reading comprehension from internal factor whether external factor.

2. Readers’ reading habit

9
Reading can be habit if done many time by simple way. Reading habit is

spend time by reading activity in many times until it could be behavior. In

reading habit there are some aspects based on Gaona et.al such as the first,

attitude towards reading. In this aspect the person reports about attitude and

behavior cognitive affective towards reading. The second is reading frequency

means the person informs how often they read books in their spare time. The

third is books read. It is about the amount of books that the readers have read in

many times. The fourth is spend time.10

C. Text

a. Concept of text11

Siahaan and Sinoda said that the texts are meaningful linguistic units in

the context which are written and spoken text. Text refers to some of

meaningful written or spoken. English Learning is the learning for

communicating in culture of English text, if they want to be communicated

9
Edward G.Summers,Instruments for assessing reading attitude:ariview of research and
bibiloigraphy.Journal of literacy research, Vol.9, 1977
10
Ryan, A. M., & Patrick, H., The Classroom Social Environment and Changes in Adolescents’
Motivation and Engagement during Middle School., American Educational Research Journal,
2001
11
SanggamSiahaan and KisnoShinoda.Generic Text Structure.(Yogyakarta: Graha ilmu,2008) Hal
1
 successfully. Text is when this word is put together for communicating any

messages.

In addition, text is the communication systems that organized as cohesive

unit. Text is each communication actions that are completed such as the

speech between friends on the television advertisement, street film, and then

novel.

b. Kinds of text

The text divided into various kinds recount, descriptive, narrative,

analytical exposition, report explanations, spoof, and then procedure. These

all variants are called as genres. Garot states that there are many text kinds :

(1) Recount

This text for retelling events, then the purpose of text to inform or

entertain.

(2) Descriptive

This text for describing the particular person, thing, or place.

(3) Narrative

This text is the story with any complication events, this tries for

finding resolutions to resolve problems. Goals of this test is for

amusing with the story.

(4) Analytical exposition

 This text for persuading all the listener of the reader that something

in these cases.

(5) Report

This text for describing any ways things are with the reference to

arrange of a natural, man –made then the social phenomena in

environment.

(6) Analytical exposition

This text for persuading all the listener of the reader that something

in these cases.

(7) Spoof

This text for retelling any events with the humorous twist.

(8) Procedure

This text is for describing how to make something through some

sequence steps.12

D. Concept of Report Text

a. Definition of report text13

12
Peter Knap and Megan Watkins, Genre, text, grammar: technologies for teaching and assesing
writing.(Australia: University of New South Wales. 2005). Hal 29
13
Barker, Ray, Literacy Connections. (New York : A Catalog Record For This Book Is Available
From The British Library. 2000).p.23.
 This text is the text that presents any information about something; It is the

results of systematic analysis. Beside that definition, there are experts who

explaining the other definition of report text. Report is kind of text that is

written in the chronological order then also created in present tense. This report

describes the method things are related to the science, geography, history, and

then environment phenomenon. It explains the report text should be included

some important information that considers writing as a report.

b. Generic structure of report text14

The generic structures of a report text:

a. Title : It states the subject to describe .

b. General classification of the subject, these parts as the introduction to

main discussions.

c. Series of the description, any phenomenon in the whole paragraph

involves.

From all topic opinions, researcher can resume that the generic

structure of report text contain of two main points:

First, the general classification, it states the classification of the general

aspect of thing such as; public, plant, animal.

14
Budiono, Steven &Christino, Report Text.page: 6. (on-line) available at https://prezi.com/report-
text/)2014. Accessed on 12nd November 2019
 Second, the description describes the thing that would discuss in the detail

parts is to live the creature then usage for the material.

Steven and Christino defined language features and social function of

report text, as follows:

(1) The language features of report text15

a. Using the general noun, that is, an object of the general nature.

b. Using the relating verb for describing features, grammar called a

linking verb.

c. Using the action verb when describing behaviors.

d. Using timeless of present tense for indicating casualness.

e. Using the technical term.

f. Using the paragraph with any topic sentences to organize the bundle

of information; repeats naming of topic as the beginning focus on

clauses. The language features are something that relates to text.

(2) The social functions of report text

The social purposes of these texts are presenting any information

about something. It generally describes an entire group of things.

15
CicihNuraeni,”Improving Students‟ Writing Ability In Report Text By Using P.I.E Strategy.”
Available at https://www.iaimnumetrolampung.ac.id/library/index.php?
p=show_detail&id=34569&keywords= (Dissertation for Bachelor Degree of IAIMNU Metro,
Lampung, 2016).p.25.
 Whether the natural made: planet, rock, sea, transportations,

mammals, then so on.

(3) The example of report text

Cats

Cats also called the domestic cat or house cat (with its scientific

name: Felissilvestriscatus or Feliscatus) is a type of carnivorous mammal

of the family Felidae. The word "cat" generally refers to a "cat" that has

been tamed, but can also refer to the "big cats" such as lions and tigers.

Cats are considered as "perfect carnivore" with teeth and particular

digestive tract. The first premolar and molar teeth form a pair of fangs on

each side of the mouth that works effectively as a pair of scissors to tear

the meat. Although these features also exist in the Canidae or dog, but

these traits are better developed in cats. Unlike other carnivores, cats eat

almost non vegetable substance. Bears and dogs sometimes eat berries,

roots, or honey as a supplement, while cats only eat meat, usually freshly

killed prey. In captivity, cats can not adapt to a vegetarian diet because

they can not synthesize all the amino acids they need from plant material;

it is in contrast with domesticated dogs, which commonly are fed a

mixture of meat and vegetables and sometimes it can adapt to a completely

vegetarian meal.
 Cats have mingled with human life since at least 6000 BC, from

the skeleton of the cat found on the island of Cyprus. The ancient

Egyptians of 3500 BC have used cats to keep away the rats or other

rodents from the barn where the crops were saved.Currently, the cat is one

of the most popular pet in the world. Cats that his lines are recorded

officially as a cat breeds or pure breed are Persian, Siamese, Manx, and the

sphinx. These kinds of cat are usually bred in official captivity animal. The

number of purebred cat is only 1% of all cats in the world; the rest is a cat

with mixed ancestry such as wild cats or domestic cats.16

E. Student Ability

17
Conducting reading class in earlier semester should be avoid. This will

lead to unsuccesful course since the students have not master in their subject fully,

it is better to let the students to cope their subject in English. This is not in

accordance with the learners’ need which should be considered first. The authority

should also consider the time and also the amount of workload of the students. It

is not good to have so many materials but there is not available enough time to

master all the materials. Thus, it is recommended for the teacher to have the most

important parts of the material which meet the students need to be designed in

reading class.

16
Keenza Abriella, https://www.englishiana.com/2016/02/13-contoh-report-text-bahasa-
inggris.html, 2016/02/28
17
Nofrika sari, Jurnal Educative Vol. 1 No. 1 “dalam” JURNAL EDUCATIVE: Journal of
Educational Studies, WidyaSyafitri, Vol.3, No.1, Januari-Juni 2018 Hal 37