Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Developing Reading Instructional Module through Genre Based Approach for 12th Grade Students of Ma Darut Taqwa Purwosari Pasuruan

By Ahmad Taufiq


Reading is one of important English skills beside speaking, listening and writing. It is the way to understand written messages. Although reading is the main part of English skills, some research results from Hamra (1993) and Kweldju (2001) indicated that the ability of Indonesian students to read English texts was very low. It is still a problem for most Indonesian students although they have studied English from the elementary school. According to Yeselson (2000) students have problems in reading comprehension, such as they cannot understand the text at all, they misread the text by totally changing its meaning, and they misread the text by taking words and phrases out of context. So this problem makes student become easily frustrated, depressed, and at the end they lose motivation to read because of incomprehension what they read.
The expectation of mastering English for senior high school students has been unfulfilled. According to Kastaredja (2008) stated that the results of English teaching and learning at senior high school has not been considered satisfying by parents, professionals as well as the university lectures by seeing the fact that most senior high school graduates neither could use their English for reading the scientific books nor communicate orally.  Furthermore, the National Examination (UN) of English for senior high school learners is regarded as a hard job. The English test has lot of reading comprehension test, it is 35 and 15 questions are listening comprehension. This indicates that the students need to have lots of portion of its teaching and learning in order to prepare students to be fluent in reading English texts.
Based on the observation done by the researcher in MA Darut Taqwa Purwosari Pasuruan, several problems related to the reading skill were found. First, the students have difficulties in grammar and structure. They are confused when they use tenses to determine the text. It makes the students cannot understand what they were trying to comprehend the meaning. The second problem, the students have difficulty in understanding text types in English. Most of them do not know the English text types and use them. The third problem, the English reading materials do not meet the students ‘needs. Teachers have difficulties to provide and select reading materials which are suitable with their students’ needs and interest. They only use workbook from certain publisher and it is a foundation’s policy.
Considering the explanation above, it is very important to develop materials to improve English reading skill. Tomlinson (1998, p. 2) states that materials refer to anything which are used by the teachers or learners to facilitate the learning of a language. Materials consist of the knowledge, skills, and attitude that must be learned by the students in the framework of achieving the standard of competency. Through Genre Based Approach (GBA), the target of comprehending the text type, function and the generic structure can be gained. GBA is one of alternative approach and technique that can be used by teacher in teaching learning process. It becomes popular when the Competence Based Curriculum (KBK) was introduced in Indonesia particularly for English language curriculum of senior high schools. Then, implementing School Based Curriculum (KTSP) is still being used. Furthermore, the 2013 curriculum is expected will be able to reinforce the previous curriculum.
Developing the reading materials in module form expects the students to be self-learning and active with lot of opportunity in learning process. Hutchinson and Waters (1987) stated that module should have criteria such as it contains interesting texts, enjoyable activities that engage the learners’ thinking capacities, opportunities for learners to use their existing knowledge and skills, and content which both learners and teachers can cope with.
For those reasons, the researcher wants to develop the English reading materials by using genre-based approach in order to improve the students’ reading ability.

Statement of the Problem
Based on the background of the study, the problem can be formulated as follows: 1) What are the learning needs of 12th grade students of MA Darut Taqwa Purwosari Pasuruan in learning English? And 2) What are the appropriate reading materials for the 12th grade students of MA Darut Taqwa Purwosari Pasuruan in learning English?

Objective of the Development
This study is intended to find out the learning needs of the 12th grade students of MA Darut Taqwa Purwosari Pasuruan  and develop the proper reading instructional module which suitable through genre-based approach for the 12th grade students.

Significance of the Study
This study has two significances as follows: 1) Theoretically, the result of the research can be references for those who want to conduct a research in developing reading material using Genre-based approach, and 2) Practically, this research will help the English teacher to get the variety of activities in teaching reading skill using Genre-based approach in Senior High School and improve both teachers and students ability to solve their problem in mastering reading skill.

Specification of the Product
The final product of this study is English instructional module especially in reading which is developed to support the learning needs in reading class at 12th grade student of MA Darut Taqwa Purwosari. This study used authentic visuals materials and printed materials to be develop in material module for teaching reading comprehension. These materials were taken from some text book, newspapers, magazines, brochures, and internet site or any other sources that appropriate to the study. Each text provide with a pictures that tell particularly about the theme of the text.

Scope and Limitation
This study focuses on the development of reading instructional module as a supplementary for teaching reading comprehension in the first semester for 12th grade students in MA Darut Taqwa Purwosari. The product of the supplementary reading materials limited only for discuss three text types; they are narrative, explanation and discussion text. The materials chosen are adopted from various sources such as internet, books, articles, newspaper and many more.

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