[MUNAZIRAH AMLY BT.

RAMLI] 711022095006001 CHAPTER 1 RESEARCH PROBLEM

1.0

Introduction Reading is a complex cognitive skill (no one fully understand it) which we cannot break down into a series of steps that a teacher can take into a classroom and teach (Dubin, Eskey and Grabe 1986:5). According to Williams (1984:2) Reading is a process whereby one looks at and understands what has been written. For a student, to be able to write, he firstly must be able to read. Secondary students are expected to read and comprehend increasingly difficult text in a variety of content areas. Students are also expected to use their background knowledge to read and understand large amounts of texts, to understand the meaning of vocabulary and to decode multisyllabic words encountered in the content materials. Weak readers may demonstrate difficulties with a variety of reading skills that impede their ability to interpret what they read. The nature of reading disability is typically categorized by difficulties with word identification, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension skills. Comprehending text is the goal of reading; hence, this research is to expose the students with the skills of scanning in reading to help them in summary writing.

1.1

Statement of the Problem Secondary students as early as Form One, will be tested on summary writing in their examinations. Students are required to summarise a given passage by using their own words. Before they start with writing a summary, they need to read the original text given to them and then pick up the relevant ideas from the text.

[MUNAZIRAH AMLY BT. RAMLI] 711022095006001 In the curriculum specification for Form Two syllabus, one of the main objectives of learning English is By the end of Form Two, learners should be able to obtain information from various text-types such as articles and reports and present the information briefly to others orally and in writing. The quotation above proves that reading and comprehending the text is important for the learners as well as extracting the specific information before presenting them briefly (summarizing) either verbally or in written form. Through my experience as a teacher, most students, especially in lower secondary levels are not able to write a good summary due to several reasons. Among the reasons are difficulty in comprehending lengthy texts, unable to identify the content points, unable to differentiate between the topic sentence and supporting details and limited vocabulary. This study aims to assist the students to understand the text given and provide them with some practice of scanning skill to look for accurate main points, ideas, key words, phrases and other relevant clues in order to overcome their problems.

[MUNAZIRAH AMLY BT. RAMLI] 711022095006001 1.2 Conceptual Framework

READING TEXTS

READING DIFFICULTIES

WRITING SUMMARY

SCANNING
( identifying and extracting main points)

Figure 1: Conceptual Framework of Research

Figure 1 shows how the research will be conducted. Through the reading texts, students will be guided on how to make reading successfully and meaningfully. The purpose of scanning is to train students to select only the important points instead of unnecessary ones. By using the selected information or points obtained upon the scanning stage, students will proceed with their summary writing.

1.3

Aims of the Research

The aims of this research is to increase the ability in comprehending texts among the Form Two students as to enable them to select main ideas, essential points and other relevant clues appropriately for writing summary.

[MUNAZIRAH AMLY BT. RAMLI] 711022095006001 1.3.1 Objectives of the study: i) to help students to be more strategic in their reading by learning to prioritise their learning. ii) to expand their reading skills for reading effectively. iii) to guide students to look for specific information or to locate the main points from the text. iv) to ensure the students are able to write summary from the information taken from the text.

1.3.2

Research Questions i) What is the purpose of reading? ii) What reading strategies should the students use? iii) How to use scanning? What to scan? iv) How does scanning help the students? Does it suitable for the purpose of reading?

1.3.3

Research Hypotheses i) Studies by the researchers have found that readers essentially need to maintain their mental engagement with the text while they read to help them make sense of what they are reading. ii) Researchers also found that proficient readers break texts into comprehensible units by using a variety of strategies. It is a very useful way of reading when comprehending text fails to take place.

[MUNAZIRAH AMLY BT. RAMLI] 711022095006001 iii) Proficient readers read texts with different techniques or styles and it depends on their reading purpose. Hence, the reading purpose affects the way readers choose to approach the texts.

1.4

Significance of the Research Good reading strategies help the students to read in a very efficient way. Readers will get the maximum benefit from their reading with the minimum effort. Effective and efficient readers learn to use many styles of reading for different purposes. Skimming, scanning and critical reading are examples of different styles of reading and information processing. These reading strategies or styles give students the ability to approach the texts in comprehensible way. Teachers need to show them these different reading styles and guide them in practicing these ways depending on the situations or purposes. Teachers will have more time to proceed with, when the students ability in comprehending the text increases. If the students are able to comprehend the text better than before, they will not waste their time focusing on the content or words difficulties. This research is to study the effectiveness one of those reading strategies namely scanning in order to help the Form Two students from Sekolah Menengah Syed Sirajuddin, Jejawi, to write summary. To enable the students to write a good summary, they will be trained on how to scan for important points as well as to guide them to distinguish main ideas from the supporting details.

1.5

Limitations of the Research This research is to be conducted for the Form Two students of SMK Syed Sirajuddin, Jejawi, Perlis. The school is located in a rural area and most of the students also come

[MUNAZIRAH AMLY BT. RAMLI] 711022095006001 from villages and housing areas nearby. The participants are about 35 students which will be divided into two groups. One is experimental group and the other one is control group. The expected result may be differ from other schools because of the students level of proficiency, the background of the families, their surrounding, the community and etc. The result among the participants may also be differ because of their different levels of proficiency. Some of them may have been exposed to the L2 from their early age.

1.6

Definition of Terms The definitions of some important terms used in this research proposal are given.

1.6.1

Scanning It is a technique you often use when looking up a word in the telephone book or dictionary. You read to search for key words or main ideas. In most cases, you know what you are looking for, so you are concentrating on finding a particular answer or information. Scanning involves moving your eyes quickly down the page seeking specific words and phrases. Once you have scanned the text, you might go back and skim it. Scanning is also used when you first find a resource to determine whether it is the information that you need.

1.6.2

Summary Writing Summary or prcis ( a French word pronounced /preIsi:/ ) writing means to write a passage precisely. It involves writing the main points of a passage in as few words as possible. A student has to include all essential points of the original passage so that anyone who reads it can grasp the main points and the

[MUNAZIRAH AMLY BT. RAMLI] 711022095006001 general feel of the passage summarized. A summary has to be shorter than the original passage as it is meant to express only the important point, devoid the unnecessary details. The skills involve in writing a summary are the topic of a paragraph, identifying general and specific ideas, identifying the main idea of a paragraph and selecting important supporting details.

1.6.3

Skimming Skimming is used to quickly identify the main ideas of a text. When you read newspaper, you are probably not reading it word-by-word, instead you are scanning the text. Skimming is done at a speed here to four times faster than normal reading. People often skim when they have a lot of materials to read in a limited amount of time. We use skimming when we want to see if the text or article meets our need or interest.

1.7

Summary This research proposal is an attempt to help students especially in the rural areas comprehends text by using scanning strategy and a little bit on skimming. The objectives of the study are as mention below: i) to help students to be more strategic in their reading by learning to prioritise their learning. ii) to expand their reading skills for reading effectively. iii) to guide students to look for specific information or to locate the main points from the text. iv) to ensure the students are able to write summary from the information taken from the text.

[MUNAZIRAH AMLY BT. RAMLI] 711022095006001