USING ETR ( EXPERIENCE TEXT RELATIONSHIP) METHOD TO

IMPROVE TENTH GRADE STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION

OF NARRATIVE TEXT AT MAN 2 PALEMBANG

1.1 Background of Study

Grabe (2009, p. 4) states that reading is something that many people take for
granted. He claims that as a part of modern societies, a person must be a good
reader to be successful in comprehending the text because reading can contribute
advantages for a person to develop his or her abilities in English. It means
someone becomes a skilled reader in English, he or she used his or her reading
skills to engaged in advanced studies, get a good job, gained accessed to
information, become more cross culturally awared, and communicated with other.

In English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom, reading is a kind of

crucial activity since it has a role to improve the students’ general language skills
in English. Reading can enrich the students’ vocabulary mastery, improve writing
and speaking skills, and reading is a source for student to know new knowledge
about language. Furthermore, reading appears in many kinds of exams such as
school exam, national exam, and any other exams, therefore that it is a must for
students to have good reading skills to pass the exams.

Reading activity had a purpose to comprehend the text to gained the

information and knowledge. Reader’s ability to used their background knowledge
or often called as prior knowledge or “schema” and related with the information
from the text affected their comprehension in reading. As Nunan (2003) says
reading is a fluent process of readers combining information from a text and their
own background knowledge to build meaning or reading. However, in Indonesia
building meaning of an English text by EFL learners is a challenging task. Since
English is a foreign language, most learners faced difficulties in comprehending
the text. As the result, students’ ability in reading comprehension still needs
improvement.

According to Nur (2013) in his study the students at Junior Boarding

School Darel Hikmah Pekan Baru indicated that the problem of English reading
comprehension were some of the students did not know how to identify the main
idea of the text, some of the students were not able to identify word meaning in
the text, some of the students were not able to identify information from the text.
some of the students were not able to identify the word reference in the text, some
of the students were not able to identify the generic structure of the text (p. 3).

Based on preliminary and interview to the teacher of English at MAN 2

Palembang, many students had problems in reading. The students lack of
vocabulary mastery and lack of motivation in reading . Carrell and Floyd (Ajideh,
2003, p. 5) argue that the teacher must provide the students with appropriate
schemata they are lacking, and must also teach the students how to build bridges
between existing knowledge and new knowledge.
As stated in International Reading Association, Inc. (2004), using a
method that can involve students’ experience in reading provides some
advantages. In most cases, language experience is best used to introduce students
to some of the basic concepts of reading. ETR (Experience Text Relationship)
provide teachers guide the students through the reading process, monitor the
students’ comprehension, and guide the students. ETR (Experience Text
Relationship) method provides discussion between a teacher and students
expressing their background knowledge in relation to the text they are about to
read in order to draw meaning for comprehension. The advantage of using ETR
(Experience Text Relationship) method in reading is admitted, since it helps
students in schema activation to enhance reading comprehension. Several other
benefits can be gained through the implementation of ETR (Experience Text
Relationship) method. One of which, the ETR (Experience Text Relationship)
method provides opportunities for students to explore many dimensions of the
story and to integrate features of it with their existing store of knowledge (Au,
1979). Au in Edwards (2003) also adds that ETR method will help to stimulate the
student’s interest in reading and help to develop their comprehension.
Additionally, since ETR method is a discussion-based activity, it encourages
students to think critically and to develop their way of thinking. It also engages
the entire class to interact and share their experiences. Based on Pramanik (2015),
she found that there was improvement in the students’ reading comprehension
after the experience-text-relationship method was implemented in the teaching
and learning process. It was indicated by the increasing mean scores of the
students’ pre-test and post-test results (66,52 to 77,41). It means that students’
experience contributed to reading achievement when the school used a text
containing stories directly related to the students’ own world.

Based on the above explanation, the difficulties of English reading in the

teaching and learning process, the writer conducted a study entitles “Using ETR(
Experience Text Relationship) Method to improve tenth grade students’ reading
comprehension of narrative text at MAN 2 Palembang”.