A Study On The Ability Of The First Year Students Of SMAN 1 Kampar Utara In Comprehending Recount Texts

Abstract

A STUDY ON THE ABILITY OF THE FIRST YEAR STUDENTS OF SMAN 1 KAMPAR UTARA IN COMPREHENDING RECOUNT TEXTS FERNANDO ERNI SYAFRI K Teachers Training and Education Faculty Riau University Abstract Reading is one of difficult basic skill for Indonesian student in learning English. Reading is an interactive process, a process in which the reader engages in exchange of ideas with an author via the text. From the definition above, it can be inferred that there are four components in reading: reader, writer, reading text, and the writer’s message. The writer transfers his message in mind (it may be an idea, a fact, etc) to the reader through text. To get the writer’s message, the reader must comprehend the text.Brown (1982: 9) says that a person must be able to understand what the author writes in order to be an effective reader. Nuttal (1996) says that one reason for reading is that we want to understand other people’s ideas; if we are all identical, there would be no point in most communication. It means that the background of someone is important in understanding a reading text. If the writer and the reader have similar background, training, attitude and so on, the reader is likely to interpret the text with no conscious effort. Recount text is a text that delivers information to readers. Recount is a text which retells events or experiences in the past. The improvement of the language use in the recount text may not consider the level of the reader because the text is for any person. The ability and experience in reading of the students are not same. Some students may understand easily. For some students may find difficulties in understanding recount text. Therefore, it is expected to conduct a scientific study about the ability of the first year students’ of SMAN 1 Kampar Utara in Comprehending Recount Texts. The subjects were 40 students from X 1 class at SMAN 1 Kampar Utara. This research is a descriptive research. This type of research is used to describe the data in order to get a generalization or a conclusion to the population. Descriptive research is done to describe the facts and the characteristics of a given population factually and accurately. The specific objective of this research is to find out the ability of the first year students of SMAN 1 Kampar Utara in comprehending recount text. To find out the weakness of the first year students of SMAN 1 Kampar Utara in comprehending recount text.In conducting this research, the writer collected the data by distributing reading test to the students. In this case, the data collection tec