Pre-reading activities in teaching reading comprehension at SMA

There are three reading activities that should be done by the teacher in teaching reading comprehension, namely, pre-reading activity, whilst reading activity and post reading activity. Unfortunately, not all of the teachers administer those three reading activities in teaching reading comprehension. Most of the teachers only administer whilst reading and post reading activities, as it is stated by Lucida in her thesis. On the other hands, many experts say that pre-reading activity is important to be done as pre-reading activity can activate the students’ prior knowledge which is relevant to understand the incoming information. Moreover, pre-reading activity can provide knowledge that the reader lack. Therefore, administering pre-reading activity in teaching reading comprehension will help the students to understand the text better, easier and faster. Automatically, if the students consider that reading is an enjoyful thing to do, they will encourage of read more. Unconsciousely, it supports the objective of teaching English at SMA, providing students will a reading ability. It is beneficial to start the teaching of reading comprehension through pre-reading activity, but in fact some of the teachers still ignore it. Therefore, this study tries to find out the advantage of starting the teaching of reading comprehension through pre-reading activity. It is hoped by knowing the advantages of pre-reading activity the teachers will realize that pre-reading activity is important to be done in teaching reading comprehension. Therefore, they will not ignore pre-reading activity in teaching reading. Moreover, to strengthen the idea that pre-reading activity is important in teaching reading, it feels necessary to find out the application of pre-reading activity in teaching reading comprehension. After knowing the application of pre-reading activity, it is more realize that pre-reading activity is important to be done. This thesis is limited to a library study which only discusses the importance of pre-reading activity done in a reading class. In discussing the techniques of pre-reading activity, she discusses three pre-reading techniques, namely, pictorial context, vocabulary pre-teaching and pre-questioning. Since this thesis concerns with the teaching of reading comprehension at the SMA, it is important to hear in mind that the students have known how to read in the sense that they have known how to decode written symbols. It is also supposed that the students have mastered the basic grammar and vocabulary needed, since they have got these things at the SMP. Remembering that this thesis is devoted to teach reading comprehension at SMA, the examples chosen taken from SMA English text book which are approved to be used by Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan. In this thesis the writer starts to discuss the understanding of reading comprehension which is related to her topics. The understanding of reading comprehension which is adopted in this thesis is also influenced by schema theory, so that schema theory is also discussed. After knowing the understanding of reading comprehension adopted in this thesis and schema theory, she discussed pre-reading activity. Then she comes to discuss the application of pre-reading activity by presenting three pre-reading techniques, namely pictorial context, vocabulary pre-teaching and prequestioning. Further, she tries to find get the advantages and disadvantages of pre-reading activity in teaching reading comprehension (in order to make the idea that pre-reading activity is important to be done in teaching comprehension becomes clearer). Finally, she conclude this study and tries to give some suggestions concerning this study which might be helpful for the teaching of reading comprehension at the SMA and also her fellow teacher candidates