Most
linguist has made definition of reading based on their points of view. The some
of them are presented as follow:
Brenda argues that reading is
communication process between the writer and the reader, utilizing written language.[1]
Hornby concludes that reading is the way
in which something is interpreted or understood, so by reading we can
understand what the writer intends in her or his book.[2]
According to oxford advance learners
dictionary of current English states some definition of reading, they are:
a) The
action of person who reads.
b) An mount
indicates or registered by a measuring instrument.
c) A way in
which something is interpreted words
through the eyes and mind.
d) An
entertaiment at which is read to an audience.
e) Each of
the stage of debate through which a bill passed before it can become law.[3]
Reading is the meaningful interpretation
of printed or written verbal symbol. Reading (comprehension) is a result of the
interaction between the perception of graphic symbol that represent language
and the readers language skills and knowledge of the world.[4]
Three basic definitions of reading have
driven literacy programs in the United States. According to the first
definition, learning to read means learning to identify words and get their
meaning. According to the third definition, learning to read means learning to
bring meaning to a text in order to get meaning from it.[5]
Futher, Gates in Thompson and Rubin
define that reading is a complex process between the writer and the reader
which point and monitor comprehension to estalish the meaning.[6]
Based on some the explanation above the
researcher concluded that the reading is the way in which something is
interpreted or understood and reading is activity in which the reader try to
understood the writer’s idea presented.
1)
Definition
of Reading Comprehension
While comprehension is the mind’s power
of understanding what has been read Kustwryo. Reading comprehension understand
of what has been read. It is an active thinking process that depens not only on
comprehension skill but olso the students experience and prior knowledge.[7]
According to Webster’s dictionary,
comprehension is “the capacity for understanding fully; the act or action of
grasping with the intellect.” Webster also tells us that reading is “to receive
or take in the sense of (as letters or symbols) by scanning; to undrstand the
meaning of written or printed matter; to learn from what one has seen or found
in writing or printing of accurate word recognition. [8]
Wilso and Hall also describe comprehension
as involving three levels of thinking. They labeled these as: 1) literal
understanding, 2) interpretation, 3) problem solving.
Good in Ciawati describes that reading
comprehension as the act of
understanding the meaning of printed language[9].
It must be achieved because understanding is the main aspect in reading
comprehension. Successful reading comprehension involves he reader to cover the
meaning needed to achieve the particular piece purpose system. It may be
finding a particular piece of information, solving a problem through reading,
or working to understand an idea from the printed language.
Anderson and pearson in Burns stated that reading comprehension depends on
many factors namely:
a) The
readers’ ability to attend to printed ideas.
b) The
readers’ backround knowledge to which new information
c) The
quality of the writing itself
d) The
readers’ purpose in reading the materials[10]
Based on the theoretical describtions
above, the writer concludes that reading comprehension is an ability or
capacity for comprehending and understanding reading materials to get
information from them.
a)
Kinds of Reading Comprehension
Richard states that different types of
reading comprehension are distinguished according to the readers purposes and
the types of reading that they use.
The
following are commonly referred to:
1) Literal
comprehension : Reading in order to understand, remember, or recall the
information explicit contained in a passage. The literal comprehension is the
most fundamental in reading comprehension kinds because the readers must first
understand what the author express before drawing an inference, making an
evaluation, or gaining an appreciation.
2) Inferential
Comrehension: Reading in order to find information which is not explicitly
stated in the passage. To make a complete inference, the readers must read the
passage carefully, put ideas and facts together to draw a concluasion, then
inference it by using their experience and intuition.
3) Critical
or evaluative comprehension : Reading in order to compare information in a
passage with the reader own knowledge and values. It requires them to be active
in criticizing and evaluating whether or not the information expressed by the author
is worth enough to be absorbed.
4) Appreciative
comprehension : Reading in order to gai emotional or other kinds of valued
responses from a passage.[11]
b)
Reading
Comprehension Skill
Anderson
describes “there are six of reading comprehension”. Namely:
1) Listening to, speaking, reading and writing
about subject matter information.
2) Selecting, connecting, and explaining
information.
3) Analyzing, synthesizing, and inferring from
information.
4) Hypothesizing and predicting.
5) Formulating and asking questions.
6) Understanding and producing technical
vocabulary and text features according to content areas. [12]
An additional area for consideration
related to reading comprehension skills is the relationship between intensive
reading and extensive readings. Intensive reading can be defined as using a
text for maximal development of comprehension skills. All activities are
designed explicitly to teach reader the comprehension skills neccessary for
them to transfer the strategies and skills to their own reading when they are
not in the classroom.
Extensive reading can be defined as
reading large amount o text for general comprehension. Typically, extensive
reading is combined with other activities so that reading is only a portion of what the
learners expected to do. For example, readers may read large amount of text and
then prepare a paper comparing and contrasting various view point on the topic.
2) Kinds of Reading
In
general there are three kinds of reading, they are as the following:
a) Reading aloud
It
is a kind of reading that expressed orally ever word in the text. It aims to
improve the students’ ability in pronouncing the word, stressing the word, and
having a good intonation about every sentence in the passage. Through reading aloud, the teacher can
evaluate the students’ ability in pronunciation, words stress, and sentence
intonation.
b)
Silent reading
Silent
reading means that reading by heart, where there is no voice is expressed. it
is frequently practiced by a reader who wants to comprehend the text in reading
comprehension process. This type of reading aims to find out the meaning of the
passages. Reading silently needs a reader with deep attention to what he is
reading. To gain the meaning given in the text, a reader should have a full
concentration. In silent reading, a reader tries to find out the main ideas, or
ideas that stated explicitly. That’s why, during the teaching process, teacher
usually control the class while the students are reading to give some helps if
it is necessary or needed. Silent reading is belonging to reading
comprehension.
c)
Speed reading
Speed
reading is reading faster to get the ideas in answering some specific
questions. Speed reading needs fast eye movement (eye speed) that helps to find
out the ideas of the writer quickly. If someone’s eye speed is normal, it will
give some help in doing speed reading. In this kind of reading, the teacher
usually evaluates the students about how far they are and how quickly they are
in finding out some certain ideas regarded to the given questions in a short
time. In this case, teacher will know about his students’ competence in reading
comprehension langan 339 in Hasnawati.[13]
It is closely connected to speed learning.
3) Components of reading
The national reading panel released a
report that examined the five components of reading they are as follows:
[14]
1. Phonemic
awareness is the ability to notice think about and manipulated the individual
sound in spoken words.
2. Phonics
is instruction that teaches the relationship between letter and graphemes and
phonemes.
3. Fluency
is the ability to read a text accurate, smoothly and rapidly with proper
expression. Fluency is patent neglected in the classroom and that guided,
repeated oral reading with feedback is effective.
4. Vocabulary
is knowledge of words and is required to communicate effectively and understand
a text.
5. Comprehension
is the understanding of what is being read and it is the ultimate goal of
reading. The National Reading Panel identified seven strategies to enhance
reading comprehension, namely comprehension monitoring, cooperative learning,
list of graphic and semantic organizers, question generation, generation
answering, story structure, summarizing.
4)
Strategy
in Reading
We have already seen the importance of
reading but know we read to help the students to develop good reading
stratgies. This may seen to be strange. If the students are good readers, what
is the problem? The problem is that students read everything in the book from
beginning to finish when read, and you want your learners to be able to skim
read on chapter in order to identify and learn one or two key issues.
1. Scanning
Reader does not read the entire text.
They approach the text looking for specific information and utilize cues to
direct them t the data of concem example:
1) Finding
a specific advertisement
2) Reading
menus
3) Reading
newspaper headline or table of content
2. Skimming
Unlike scanning these involves reading
but at a fast speed. Readers tend to rarely on headings titles, pictures, first
and last sentences of paragraph, etc. Rather than examining even world,
example:
1) Drawing
inferences about the writers attitude to situation or topic.
2) Comparing
to situation or topic.
3) Findings
or comparingevents.
3. Intensive
reading or responsive reading
Readers make maximum use of the text and
are above to make judgment about the text example:
1) Reading
for the purpose of making a summary
2) Reading
to be able to take sides
3) Differentiating
fact from opinion.
4. Extensive
reading or research reading
Extensive reading is usually done when
long reading passages or books. Reader
do not examine every detail of the printed page. They neither skim nor scan.
However they are able to summarizes the writer’s ideas but have not yet made a
critical evaluation of ideas presented in the text. Example:
1) Reading
for the sake of keeping records
2) Reading
for the purpose of making a summary
Other strategies that can help students
read more quicly and effectively that given by Herlin Sukandani namely:
Previewing is reviewing titles, section
headings and photo captions to get a sense of the structure and content of a
reading selection.[15]
5)
Factors
Affecting Reading
Anderson describes the factors
affecting reading comprehension in his opinion does not reside on the text it self. Meaning is reached when the
reader integrates personal background knowledge, purpose for reading, reading
strategies, and the text to get meaning.[16]
The
description aboveimplies that to get a perfect comprehension in the reading
process, there are some factors either internal or xternal factors into five
categories, namely:
1) Background experience
It refers to the previous experince that
the readrs have already known before and it relates to the reading materials
that they read.
2) Language
ability
It refers to read’s ability in ability
in mastering some elements of language, for example: vocabulary, transition
words, grammar, etc.
3) Thinking
ability
It refers to the reader’s abiity to
analyze the reading material that they read by considering some comprehension
aids to support their achievement in comprhension.
4) Affection
It refers to some psychologicalfactors
that can affect the reader’s comprehension. The readers have interest,
motivation, attitudes, beliefs, and feeling.
5) Reading
purpose
It
refers to the reader’s purpose why they read the reading materials. It is
usually done by making some questions by reading process.[17]
6)
Technique
of Improving Comprehension
According to Martin reading
comprehension requires motivation, mental frameworks for holding ideas,
concentration and good study techniques.
There are some suggestions
a) Develop
a broad background
Broad
your backround knowledge by reading newspapers, magazines, and books, become
interested in words events.
b) Know
the structure of paragraph
Good
writers construct paragraph that have a beginning, middle, and end. Often, the
first sentence will give an overview that helps provide a framework for adding
details. Also, look for transitional words. Phases or paragraphs that change
the topic.
c) Identify
the type of reasoning
Does
the authoruse cause and effect reasoning, hypothesis, model building, induction
or deducation, systems thinking?
d) Really
smart readers try to anticipate the author and predict future ideas and
questions. If you’re right, this reinforces your understanding. If you’re
wrong, you make adjustments quicker.
e) Look
for the method of organization
Is
the material organized chronologically, serially, logically, functionally,
spatially or hierarchical?
f) Create
motivation and interest
Previewmaterial,
ask questions,. And discuss ideas with classmates, the stronger your interest,
the greater your comprehension.
g) Pay
attention to supporting cues.
Study
pictures, graphs and headings. Read the first and last paragraph in a chapter,
or the first sentences in each section.
h) Highlight,
summarize and review
Just
reading a book is not enough, to develop a deeper understanding, you have to
highlight, summarize and review important ideas.
i) Building a good vocabulary
For
most educated people, this is a left time project. The best way to improve you
vocabulary is to use a dictionary regulary. You may carry around pocket dictionary
and use if to look up new words, or you can keep a list of word to look up at
the end of the day. Concentrate on roots, prefixes and endings.
j) Monitor effectiveness
Good
reders monitor their attention, concentration, and effectiveness. They quickly recognize
if they’ve missed an idea and back up to read it.[18]
[1]Alexander,
J. E, ET all, Teacing Reading,
General Editor. Little, Brown and Company Buston Toronto, 1979, p.107
[2]Hornby, A.S. Oxford Advanced Learners of Current English. (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1974) p. 699
[4]Harris,
A.J. 7& Sipay, E.R. How to Increase
Reading Ability, New york: longman Inc. 1975, p. 8
[5]Foertsch.
Definition of Reading. http://www.ncrel.org/1998 . Journal Online.
Accessed on sunday, 2013-02-17
[8] Hay & Roberts in CUESTA College. Reading Comprehension. http://Academic.Cuesta.Edu/Acasupp/As/301. Journal online. 2003. Accessed on Saturday,
2013-02-23
[9] Sribilah et.
All. Technique in The Teaching of Reading
Skill. Lembaga Bahasa LIA-TTTE. 2000. P. 172
[11]
Brown Douglas H, Teaching By Priciples an
Interactive Approach To Language Pedagogy. State University p. 55
[13] Langan in
Hasnawati, The Difficulties Encountered
by The Second Year Students of SLTP
Negeri 2 Takalar in Reading Comprehension. (Unpublished Skripsi State University
of Makassar, 2000) p. 13
[14]Baker, T. English Teaching Forum, the National Reading Panel. (Washington.
Volume 46, number 1, 2008) p. 24
[15]
Herlin Sukandani, The Interest of
Students in Reading at SMK DDI Parepare Through Illustrated English Book Story.
(Skripsi PBI STAIN Parepare. 2008) p. 15
