Developing Student’s Reading Skill Through Individualized Instruction
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Rosmania Rima
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INTRODUCTION
We must realize that reading has an important social role in our life, because reading is one of means in our society to gain information as well as to improve our knowledge and perception. Henderson (1970, p.52) analogize that people who are not able to read in their life seem to be closed door without a handle. They will never get any written information nor will they share their information to the world; they are trapped in their own life. Nowadays, illiteracy is still a problem in many areas of the world, Indonesia especially, in which the number of illiterate children and adult is much significant. However, compulsory education laws have assured that most citizens of this nation can read.
Facility in reading is an essential factor in educational progress, and instruction in this basic skill is a primary purpose of elementary and secondary education. The teaching of reading has becoming more important for at least four reasons. First, being able to read English text can be useful for study purposes. Second, it is exposing language itself for students. It is always good thing for language learner to be exposed to the language, because it is a part of language acquisition where they can acquire language more easily. Third, it also provides good models for English writing. Before teaching writing, it will be helpful to give students a model to read in order they can be encouraged to write. Finally, it will give opportunities to study language such as vocabulary, grammar, punctuation, and the way that we construct sentences, paragraph and text (Harmer, 1998, p.68).
For decades, a debate has simmered in the educational community over the best way to teach how to read. There has been considerable difference of opinion about the best method of teaching reading. Humanistic approach, which include the four method (Community Language Learning, The Silent Way, Suggestopedia and Total Physical Response) developed in the 1970s and 1980s had a significant impact upon language teaching even if they rarely used (Harmer, 2001, p.88-90). As a number of methods have been proposed in order to get easy way to teach reading, yet there is still no one best method. Therefore, one that recently discussed alternatively is individualized instruction that seems to be appropriate in developing students reading skill, because it fits every individual skill level, needs and interests.
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STUDENTS’ INDIVIDUAL SKILL, NEED AND INTEREST
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Common classroom usually consist of students who have different skill level, need, and interest as the consequence of their different goals and purposes. The learners goal is to become a skilled reader directly in the second language, that is one who understand the meaning of a text read at normal speed and relates to his or her intentional thinking as the language is processed (Lado, 1988, p.172).
According to Byrnes (1998 ) there are many purpose of reading: (1) to gain information or verify existing knowledge, (2) to comment on a writer’s ideas or writing style, (3) to have enjoyment, and (4) to enhance knowledge of the language being read. In addition, Williams (1984 in McDonough and Saw, 1993, p.102) usefully classifies reading into: (1) getting general information from the text, (2) getting specific information from a text, and (3) for pleasure or for interest.
Moreover, Rivers and Temperley (1978 in McDonough and Saw, 1993, p.102) also list the following examples of some reasons that second language students may need or want to read: (1) to obtain information for some purpose or because we are curious about some topic, (2) to obtain instructions on how to perform some task for our work or daily life, (3) to keep in touch with friends by correspondence or to understand business letters, (4) to know when or where something will take place or what is available, (5) to know what is happening or has happened, and (6) for enjoyment or excitement.
Analyses have been done to identify and clarify fluent reading, and put it forward into a set of component skills in reading. There are at least six general component skills and knowledge areas: (1) automatic recognition skill, (2) vocabulary and structural knowledge, (3) formal discourse structure knowledge, (4) content background knowledge, (5) synthesis and evaluation skill monitoring, (6) metacognitive knowledge and monitoring (Grabe, 1991, p.379). Once a method is used, it might diversely affect the students.
Concerning the difference of students need and interest, there is various definition of what is so called need. Lawson defines need as something that is recognized but is not in any sense discovered, and its existence derives from whatever criteria are thought to be relevant in making the diagnoses (1979, p.37). In addition, Hutchinson and Waters make distinction between “target needs” and “learning needs”. The target needs refers to what the learner needs to do in the target situation and the learning need refers to what the learner needs to do in order to learn (1987, p.54).
By referring to the purpose of learning the language and individual differences or social roles of language in broader context, we may differentiate types of needs. According to Alderson (1980), there are four types of need: (1) formal needs that refer to the need to meet the institution requirements such as to pas an exam, (2) actual or obligation need that refers to what a student has to do with the language once he has learned it, (3) hypothetical future need that refers to the need to become a better professional in the future, and (4) want that refers to what student feels want to do or to learn.
Individual differences can be a considerable aspect to define learner needs in the context of learner based teaching. According to Altman (1980, p .9) learners should be placed properly based on their age, level of language proficiency, maturity and time available. Consequently, institutions are required to make flexible arrangements to enable learners to access their own learning that appropriate with their needs.
It is useful for teacher to provide students with a purpose for reading with material which stimulates their interest and which do not have over-familiar content. Of all the language skills, reading is the most private, and there is a problem ion getting feedback on private process. The notion of privacy in reading can sometimes be related to learners need; a learner may need material of a different level and topic to others learners in the group which may involve the teacher in the provision of some individualized reading program.
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INDIVIDUALIZED READING
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The effectiveness of any instructional applied may depend on the skill level of the student. Instructional strategies that help one student may be ineffective when applied to another student with different skills. Then, teacher should more specifically decide the reading skill level of each student and then find a way to create the curriculum to each student’s individual needs as Connor (2007) states that “Instead of viewing the class as an organism, we’re trying to get teachers to view the students as individuals.”
The term individual learners, which in this purpose might be identical with self-directed learners, are those who have following features: (1) know their needs and work productively with the teacher towards the achievement of their objectives, (2)learn both inside and outside classroom, (3) can take classroom-based material and can build on it, (4) know how to use resources independently, (5) learn with active thinking, (6) adjust their learning strategies when necessary to improve learning, (7) manage and divide the time in learning properly, and (8 ) do not think the teacher is a god who can give them ability to master the language ( Hedge, 2000, p.76).
Many practitioners believe that all learners can make satisfactory progresss in learning foreign language if they are given sufficient time, plus the possibility of developing their preferred learning styles and habits (McDonough and Saw, 1993, p.242). Moreover, to promote successful learning, it is necessary to determine set of goals for reading component which should include: (1) to be able to read a range of texts in English, (2) to adapt reading style according to range of purposes and apply different strategies, (3) to build a knowledge of language which will facilitate development of greater reading ability, (4) to build schematic knowledge in order to interpret text meaningfully, (5) to develop awareness of the structure of written texts in English and to be able to make use of, (6) to take critical stance to the content of texts ( Hedge, 2000, p.205).
Individualized instruction is the situation in which the teacher provides materials and activities with which students can work independently, thus releasing the teacher to minister to individual needs (Logan, 1973, p.15). He further said that in an individualized program, the whole thrust of instruction is in this direction; classroom structure is designed to allow this type of independent activity to have priority in importance and time over the synchronized activity that traditionally has dominated the classroom scene.
To make clear distinction of individualized instruction among other methods in language classroom, there are some essential characteristics of individualized instruction: (1) each student is allowed to progress through his curriculum materials at his own pace, (2) each student is tested only when he is prepared to be tested, (3) when a student need help, he works individually with teacher or with some other resource person in the classroom in a tutorial manner, and (4) each student is aware of the nature of his learning tasks and know that he must demonstrate and with what degree of accuracy he must demonstrate it to receive credit for his work and to be able to move ahead in his material (Altman, 1971, p.89).
Brumfit and Roberts (1983 in McDonough and Saw, 1993, p.243) argue that individualization involves; the organization of learning and teaching in such a way as to allow the abilities, interest and needs of the individual learner to be enhanced as effectively as possible , with the consequence that the traditional notion of the ‘average student’ and ‘aiming for the middle’ in teaching is abandoned.
As Dickinsons (1989 in McDonough and Saw, 1993, p.243) suggest even though these practical reasons are important, individualization is also important for educational reasons: (1) at its broadest, to help people to develop in to independent individuals, able to think for themselves, (2) more narrowly, to prepare people to learn. Thus, at the end of a successful educational process, the students should be capable of designing and managing his or her own learning projects.
This method applied by giving opportunity to students to learn based on their level and need by initial classification. The material should be authentic and contextual, so that students feel it is necessary to read. It also may motivate them to read more and more material in order to practice and improve their reading skill, and meet the four communicative competences in reading such as grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence and strategic competence (Duran, 1988, p.109). Successful efforts to improve reading achievement emphasize and implementation of evidence-based practices that educators can use to promote reading success among students with diverse needs and interests. Thus, individualized instruction will seem meet the need and interest of the students.
McDonough and Saw (1993, p. 245) report that it is quite common to hear teacher complain about the many reasons why they feel that they cannot individualized their classrooms. These arguments sometimes relates to the fact that they are non-native speakers; that they are under resourced in general; that the syllabus is strictly controlled; that the class size is too large; that materials are fixed; furniture is screwed to the floor thereby restricting movement of learners.
Walker (1987 in McDonough and Saw 1993, p.248 ) gives an account of how she individualized reading program by getting the students themselves to bring along self-selected reading materials and making use of a standard reading exercise that she adapted from elsewhere. In order to become part of individualized language learning program, self-aces materials should be enable the learners to: (1) decide what work they want to do, (2) find the material and work through it, (3) correct or asses answers when necessary, and (4) have work evaluated when desires.
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CONCLUSION
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Implementing individualized instruction will offer learners a wide choice of material and the possibility of becoming much more self-reliant and less teacher dependent. Hopefully learners will begin to understand more about their needs and how they prefer to learn. On the other hand, it has to be stressed that setting up an individualized instruction will involve a lot of time and work. However, if it is all possible, the end result is worthwhile.
REFERENCES
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