READING SKILLS PHENOMENON OF INDONESIAN STUDENTS

READING SKILLS PHENOMENON OF INDONESIAN STUDENTS

Based on the research, Indonesian students rank among the  lowest  in  basic  reading  skills  compared  to  their  peers  in  other  countries. Indonesia is in 51st position among 57 countries on five continents.

 

PISA is an internationally standardized assessment that was jointly developed by participating countries and administered to 15-year-old students in schools. PISA administers tests and background questionnaires to between 4,500 and 10,000 students in each participating country to assess three forms of literacy:  reading, mathematical and scientific. The assessments focus on how well students apply knowledge and skills to tasks that are relevant to their future life, rather than on the memorization of subject matter knowledge.

 

In reading, well over 50 percent of students surveyed in Indonesia performed at level 1 - the lowest out of five - or below. Level 1 represents those students who have serious  difficulties  in  using  reading  as a tool  to  advance  and  extend  their knowledge  and skills in other areas. Level 5 indicates those students who are able to manage information that is presented in unfamiliar texts, show detailed understanding of complex texts and infer which information is relevant to the task, and critically evaluate and build hypotheses with the capacity to draw on specialized knowledge and concepts that may be contrary to expectations.  The lowest results were scored in Albania, Indonesia and Peru.

PISA  2000  and  PISA  2003  also  consistently  stated  that  Indonesian  students surveyed had serious difficulty in using reading as a tool to advance and extend their knowledge and skills in other areas, such as daily problem solving. They couldn't comprehend information when it was presented in an unfamiliar format and showed a difficulty in understanding texts at the highest level of literacy.

Are Indonesian students really weak in all the basic skills of reading? Another survey on reading ability of primary students conducted by International Educational Achievement (IEA) in 2000 placed Indonesia in 38th position out of 39 countries, the lowest position among ASEAN countries.

These positions lead us to the question: “what’s wrong with our reading classroom?” Many   factors   influence   this   situation   ranging   from   ineffective   governmental regulation on educational system at macro level and low engagement of student in the classroom due to dull learning process at micro level.  The supplementary material has an effort to take part in resolving the problem through increasing seeing teachers’ awareness on teaching reading comprehensively.

Actually, new and exciting reading materials keep appearing on the market almost daily. Many universities and teacher training institutions have developed courses to deal with the teaching of reading comprehension. Yet, when it comes down to it, the classroom teacher is left with the enormous task of adapting all these materials and ideas to his/her particular class. This supplement material in Reading skills especially is also intended to help the teacher in the daily decision-making process within the reading comprehension lesson and across national standard.