THE USE OF FLASHCARDS IN TEACHING NARRATIVE TEXT TO IMPROVE

STUDENTS READING SKILL FOR JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL OF SEVENTH

GRADE BY USING CAR (Classroom Action Research)

A.Research Background
Reading is one of activity when someone looks into a written text and read to get

information from the read. It is because reading is a process to get a lot of knowledge from

written text and interaction process between the text and the reader. It means that the process

of learning is based on the ability to read. The abality of reading is standard capabilities in

English that must be actived at all levels of education including in junior high school. So,

reading skill becomes the priority that must be mastered by the student. it is the main tool to

learn English in reading skill because by read the text the student will gain the benefit such as

get new vocabulaies to enrich their knowledge, understand the grammatical structure, getting

new idea. (The first paragraph seems good but lacks of theories, the researcher could put

some citation about the important of reading and what reading is)

In brief, reading is the key to learn the language. Reading is a serious activity since it

requires more concentration in order to comprehend the text. Furthermore, reading is the

activity which involves two aspects: pronouncing the words and comprehending the content

of the text. However, even though the different aspects exist in reading, the main point is

getting the information from the readable source by comprehending the content. Reading also

is reading a text with understanding in order to extract and process the information

efficiently. It is the process of constructing meaning from text. Pearson and Fielding

(1991:815-860) state“ Reading with students and helping them practice specific reading

components can dramatically improve their ability to read. Scientific research shows that

there are five essential components of reading that students must be taught in order to read.”

Teachers can help the students to learn to be good readers by systematically practicing these
five components. The first component is the students to be taught by the teacher using sounds

to train their hearing reading. The second component is the students to be taught to

understand the relationships between written letters and spoken sounds. It can help the

students to know an unfamiliar word automatically. Furthermore, the students need to

develop the ability to read the text accurately by focusing on decoding words instead of

meaning. The next is the student need to learn the meaning and pronunciation of words by

active build and expand their knowledge. The last component is the students need to be

taught by the teacher use the reading understand the word and connect the word as

communication. (the second paragraph is not connecting with the title, the title talks about

narrative and flashcard but in the second paragraph researcher put misunderstanding ideas

about spoken reading and pronouncing, or if there is any correlation between pronouncing

,spoken reading and flashcard the researcher could put the theories by the experts)

In the process of the reading the students are expected to be able to comprehend the

text such as the meaning of the text, ideas, thoughts, messages that are written down in the

text. It is one of learning ways for students to enrich their ability and knowledge.

Furthermore, the most important things of reading in language learning English is how to get

meaning of vocabularies.

Reading is very essential in daily life, especially in academic field. By reading a text,

students will get much information that is useful for their life. Students should be able to read

English text in order to get the knowledge of certain topic. According to Harmer, (1994: 68)

there are some reasons why the teacher should get the students to read English text. First,

many students want to be able to read English text either for their career, for study purposes

or simply for pleasure. Second, reading is also useful for other purposes: any exposure of

English is a good thing for language students. Next, some of the language stick in their minds
as parts of the process of language acquisition, and, if the reading text is especially interesting

and enggaging, acquisition is likely to be even more successful.

However, reading is a complex task to do as what is stated by Moreillon (2007: 10), in

order to be readers, learners must take their ability to pronounce words and to “read” pictures

and then make the words and images mean something. So, reading is more than just

pronouncing words from the text but the learners should also catch what the text means.

In this research use flashcards furthermore, flashcard is a card containing a small

amount of information, held up for students to see, as an aid to learning. Through flashcard

help the student to understand what the read and make the student enjoyable when the read

some reading. Teaching and learning should be exciting and satisfying for both teacher and

students. The English teacher has to think a suitable way, subject material and how to apply it

in classroom. The English teachers demanded to be a teacher who success in teaching foreign

language especially teaching reading skill subject. They should be creative to teach this

subject in various ways and stimulate students in order to feel comfortable in learning it and

they understand the materials, because English is not the first language for Indonesian

students. English teachers have to be able to organize teaching language activities and make

the student be able to understand what the study. flashcard help the teacher in teaching, make

learning easy and fan for the student. Narrative text is a story with complication or

problematic events and it tries to find the resolutions to solve the problems. An important part

of narrative text is the narrative mode, the set of methods used to communicate the narrative

through a process narration. The purpose of narrative text is to amuse or to entertain the

reader with a story.

 In conclusion, reading skill is an ability to understand information and interpret

meaning from written text as a piece of communication. The indicators of reading are word

meaning, main idea, detail information, purpose, and reference.

1.2 Research Problem

The statement of problem of this research is does the use flashcards in teaching narrative text

to improve student reading skill at the junior high school seventh grade?

1. How is flashcard applied in teaching reading comprehension of narrative text?

2. How effective is using flashcards in teaching narrative text to improve reading skill at

junior high school seventh grade?

LITERATURE REVIEW

This study describes the concepts which are related to the research,, concept of

teaching learning with flashcard, concept of flashcards. This chapter also describes advantage

of using flashcards.

2.1 Review of Previous the Study

Based on this finding of this research, that use flashcard might become one of the solutions

for the teachers to bring the students more easily to comprehend the text especially narrative

text. the researcher focused on how to get the information of the narrative text. In reading

process, the reader should comprehend what they read to get the informations from the text.

Harvey ( 2012, p. 2) states that comprehension is a process that involves thinking, teaching,

past experiences, and knowledge. Reading comprehension requires the reader to actually

know and understand what they are reading. Brassell and Rasinski (2008, p. 17-18) stated
that reading comprehension is the ability to take information from written text and do

something with it in a way that demonstrates knowledge or understanding of that information.

2.2 Concept of Flascards

Flashcards are a set of cards with a picture and word on one side and it is meaning

usually in translation on the other (Lado, 1983). It mean that flashcards include word or

phrase. We know that vocabulary is very essential in learning English so that word in

flashcards can be used to learn and teach vocabulary. Then, he states that flashcards may

have a picture or the native language word on one side and the second language word on the

other.

2.3 Advantages and Disadvantages of using flashcards

According to Wright (1968:73) as quoted by Debora, the advantages of using

flashcards are :

1. It can help the students to ease themselves in memorizing words they have learned.

2. It can be brought everywhere because the size of the cards is not too big.

3. It gives variation in teaching. The teacher is not only to teach and explain the lesson

4. Flashcards are very helpful to refresh the students mind before starting the new lesson

plan.

The disadvantages of using flashcards are :

According to Wright (1968:73) as quoted by Debora, the disadvantages of using

flashcards are :

1. Flashcards cannot be used at all level. For those who have already large amount of

vocabulary. Flashcards are not effective

2. The teacher who wants to make flashcards should have much time in presenting flashcards

as well as making the cards.

2.4 Concept of Flashcards in Teaching

Flashcard is a card bearing number, word, or picture that someone briefly display to another

as learning aid (Webster 1988:514). Wright (1968:73) also says that flashcard is printed with

words and picture which can be handled easily by the teacher. It means that the teacher could

create the flashcards and the size of the flashcards could be determined. Lado(1983) states

flashcards are cards with a picture on one side and a word or phrase in the second and native

language on the other. It is visible that it is designed for increasing students learning ability.

Thus, the function of flashcards in learning vocabulary is as one of visual aids. Kreidler

(1986) says that visual aid can be useful to the language teacher by helping him create

situations which are out side the classroom walls, introduce students to unfamiliar cultural

aspects, give the reality to what might be misunderstood verbally by the students, change

situation, quickly and easily in a drill. Weaver(1950) classifies the kinds of visual aids as

follows:

1. Symbolic aids, those aids that supplement the written and spoken words.

2. Equipments, those aids that can be used, such as blackboard and television.

The ideas above clearly show that flashcard as one of visual aids is very important in leraning

vocabulary and teaching narrative text . In other to help students to master a new language,

they have to master an adequate number of vocabulary. In other words, we can say that the

quality of the language performance of the students may depend on the quality and the

quality of the vocabulary that the students have. The more and the better vocabulary they

gain, the more skilful the languages they can perform.