The use of Double Brain Power Method to
Improving the Students’ Reading Comprehension
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A.
Background
English is an
international language and used for communication in most activities and in
many areas of everyday life. In Indonesia, English is taught to the students of
elementary school, junior, and senior high schools, and even to university
students as one of their subject. Chaudron (2004) states that English
instruction at the university level is usually the intensive procedure, which
implies close study of short passages, including syntactic, semantic, and lexical
analysis and translation into the linguistics to study meaning. It is realized
that studying English is not easy for Indonesian students because the fact that
English and Indonesian languages are very different in term of spelling,
pronunciations, vocabulary or lexical meaning and grammar. English like many
other languages consist of four skills, listening, speaking, reading, and
writing. Among the four skills, reading is one of the most important.
Reading is the ability
which may often be used and retained the longest. It is an essential foundation
of learning and seeking any information and knowledge. Someone can increase
their knowledge by reading many books, newspaper, encyclopedias and so on.
When comprehending
reading material, among the reasons for the students’ failure in tertiary
education is the inability to reach the required reading performance on the
allocated time. The failure is because reading is a complex task requiring
different abilities in a single performance. It is require a complete command
of written symbols, and understanding of words, phrases, and structural or
grammatical points. In addition, the previous experiences and
