IMPROVING THE READING ABILITY OF NARRATIVE TEXT TO THE FIRST YEAR STUDENTS OF SMKN I SURABAYA BY USING FUNNY STORIES

By : Emil Hamsah
                                                             

A. Background of the Study

            English is very important today, the need of English mastery becomes increasing day by day with people become interested in studying English since they know that in this globalization era and more in the next free trade era, their lives cannot be separated from English. They will not be able to communicate with foreigners, especially the English people they cannot speak English, besides most information and books about science and technology are presented in English. If people do not understand English, they will find some difficulties in getting the newest information and catching the development of science and technology that is growing faster and faster nowadays. As a result, they will be left behind and cannot improve their potential abilities, as much as possible.
            Considering the importance of English for human life in this era, the Indonesian government has taken a policy to put it as a compulsory subject to be taught from elementary school to university level. All these efforts are intended to develop the Indonesian students ability in English material. And finally they will be able to use English both oral and written fluently. It also has been written in the competency-based curriculum that English is the first foreign language in Indonesian, which is considered important to absorb and develop science, technology and culture, as well as to find relationship with other countries. It is clear that English is realized as an important subject in order to increase the students ability in mastering the other subject and to build better relationship with other countries. (Anderson, Berry, Millicent) 1969:3. “Reading is one of most poorly developed of our daily skills and yet it is a vital medium of communication. Our society, as knowledge rapidly accumulates and is committed to print, greater demand are continually being made on the ability of people to read” (Nuttal 1996:3). “It is not very likely that you were interested in the pronunciation of that you read and even less likely that you were interested in the grammatical structure used. You read because you wanted to get something from the writing.”
            In order to avoid the students’ boredom, this study tries to use funny stories in teaching reading. We know that teenager such us students of junior high school enjoy something that can make laugh. This kind of material is also able more new vocabulary and give them more fun. Thus, they will get a lot of vocabulary items from that reading material, and they will find easier in understanding English text. Funny according to little in his approach to literary (1966: 460. It also called humor, and can be categorized into tree kinds, they are;
1. Humor of character.
2. Humor of situation.
3. Humor of way
Human of character is humor that arises from when the rich of eccentricity of human personality (little, 1996:47) for example: a joker who plays jokes only by showing his/her action or wearing keep clothes can cause laugh. When humor arises from the ridiculous tangles into which people’s action may lead them. We have humor of situation, (little, 1969:47). The emphasis is upon the contrast between what people think they are doing and what they are doing in fact, but the commonest kind of situations is. Of course, one mistake involved identity innumerable comic stories exist in which the character are merely sheathed in, at in the ridiculous situation that causes laugh. When humor arises from cleverness in the use of words, or the playing with ideas, we speak of with (Little, 1996: 470. For instance contrasted hit it is correct.
Humor can easily be seen as away of activity motivation and directing attention but it can also be using in order event as well. From stimulate recall to enhancing retention to electing performance and providing feedback. Humor can help in breaking down the effective barriers, thus increasing enthusiasm and involvement. So that more effective language acquisition and learning can take place.
There are some results of the identification of reading problems in the
classroom by the researcher, namely:
a. students cannot read properly.
b. students lack an understanding of core subject in the reading.
c. ability to identified a text reading decreases.
d. students' understanding.