Assessing the Reading Competence Needs of Senior High School Students in National Examination: Teachers' Perspective

Abstract

The focus of this research is to asses the Reading competence needs of senior high school students in English National Examination (ENE) based on teachers’ perspective. The background in conducting this research mainly because of two things. The first one is the importance of curriculum evaluation behind the Needs Analysis itself. The second one is the importance of the certain preparation for strengthening English material to face the incoming English National Examination. Both of these backgrounds are equally important for students and teachers at once. This study is carried out with the objectives to answer the problems, that is to know what do 12 grader senior high school students’ needs in order to have English Reading competence of National Examination based on teachers’ perspective. The next objective is to find out what kinds of effort do teachers make to fulfil those needs. Another objective is to discover what obstacles are faced by teachers in order to fulfill those needs. The next objective is to uncover which of the Reading materials are needed more by senior high student’s in Boyolali to fulfill their Reading competence needs in English National Examination (ENE). The last objective is to detect which of the Reading materials are more overcome by senior high student’s in Boyolali to fulfill their Reading competence needs in English National Examination (ENE). All of these questions are framed within the scope of the teacher's perspective. The data of this research, included some questionnaires. This research already debriefed 7 English teachers who teach in grade 12. They are from MGMP or English Teacher Forum of senior high schools in Boyolali Regency, Central Java. They were involved in filling out the questionnaire where the results were used as the main data in this study. The final findings in this study include the fact that: (1) the basic needs of students in reading competence are mastery of sufficient and adequate vocabulary also understanding reading material well, (2) the teachers then made several programs to meet the needs of the students by intensifying the habit of reading, introducing the method of speed reading, finding new vocabulary and then translating it, (3) the lack of motivation in reading English text and the minimal vocabulary mastery are the main aspect that makes 12th grade students lack sufficient competence to face the National Examination, (4) 12 materials are included to Very Important Reading materials regarding to the English National Examination. They are: Handbook, Printed Dictionary, Internet Article, Narrative Text, Descriptive Text, Recount Text, Advertisement Text, Notice Text, Announcement Text, Discussion Text, News Item Text, and Exposition Text, (5) students in Boyolali are having Very Good mastery only in 2 materials, they are: News Item Text and Exposition Text.