ENHANCING STUDENTS’ CRITICAL RESPONSES BY REPRESENTING SYLLABUS IN CRITICAL READING CLASSES

Abstract

A syllabus guides the course of study and outlines expectations for the quarter. It consists of assignment agendas, essential documents, rules, regulations, and course policies. A syllabus can inform nearly everything we need to understand about how a course will be conducted and what will be watched for. Critical Reading is one subject that is taught by the third semester in English Literature students. This subject asks students to be active in reading any text types categorized into critical genres. Students are introduced to steps of critical reading which include pre-, during, and after reading. This research aimed to show the syllabus in Critical Reading. The subjects were the third students of English Literature Universitas Negeri Semarang. The research used qualitative. Before breaking down some parts of the syllabus, the researchers evaluated this course by seeing the graduate learning outcome (CPL), course learning outcome (CPMK), and description of the course that is divided into seven units. Those units include what critical reading in reader response approach, how to analyze a text during pre-reading and reading process, doing an annotation and outline when we analyzed a text, how to review a text how to summarize a text effectively. The researchers saw there was an importance thing in learning Critical Reading among third-semester students of English Literature because this subject showed the awareness of critical reading skills and strategies which include identifying texts’ structure; annotating, outlining, summarizing, and reviewing texts; distinguishing main and supporting ideas as well as facts and opinions in the texts; analyzing writer’s purpose and point of view as well as tone and attitude in the texts; and conducting rhetorical analysis of the texts. All of those steps are intended to help students uncover the hidden messages of any type of critical genre. The researchers gained knowledge about the reader response approach among students by lecturing and answering some questions. The result showed to overcome the SLO and CPMK, I redesigned the syllabus. In the new design, I included a reader-response approach to improve students' understanding. The reader response approach is an approach that focuses more on how communication between the reader and the text occurs. In this theory, the relationship between the reader and the text is very important - because the text without the reader will be meaningless or in other words, the text does not exist without the reader. A text will not live without readers.