a. Definition of reading
Reading is one of
the important skills in learning the English language besides listening,
speaking and writing skills. The fundamental objective of reading activity is
to find specified and detailed information to understand and to comprehend a
passage, before coming to the aspects related to reading especially reading
comprehension it is useful and necessary to present the definition of reading.
Although” no
singular, acceptable definition of reading is currently available to help
students plan for reading instruction, there are some basic aspects of reading
with most authorities in the academic field agree on.
1.
Reading is interacting with language that has
been coded into print.
2.
The result of interacting with the printed
language should be comprehension.
3.
Reading ability is closely related to oral
language ability.
4.
Reading is an active and on going process that
is affected directly by an individual’s instraction with his environment (17).
There are some definitions of reading given by some
authors. They are as follows:
1)
Haris and Sipay (1980) explained that reading is
the meaningful interpretation of written verbal symbol. Reading is a result of
interaction between the perception of the graphic symbols that represent
language and the reader’s language skill language and his knowledge of the
world.
2)
Kustaryo (1988: 273) says that, reading is a
complex process in which recognition and comprehension of written symbols are
influenced by the reader’s language background, mind sets, and reasoning
abilities, and he anticipates meaning based on what has been read.
3)
Richards (2002: 273) says that reading is a
skill that is highly valued by students and teachers alike. Reading
comprehension is a complex process in which the reader uses his mental ability
to obtain information. It means that the reader must be able to recognize the
meaning of printed words.
4)
Chambers and Lowry (in Megawati 1997:7) state
that reading is more than morally recognizing the words for which certain
combination of thinking responses. Those thinking responses are feeling and defining
and some need, identifying a selection for meeting the need, selecting from
alternative means experimenting with choices, rejecting or reining the chosen
route, and devising some means of evaluating the result.
Based on the definitions of reading above, the
researcher assumes that reading is the process or activity to get meaning of
materials, whether printed or written and verbal symbol. Reading skills is the
ability of process the written or printed material from what was been read and
improve a construct of ideas depend on the experience or prior knowledge of the
reader.
b. Kinds of Reading
There are many
different kind of reading, each requiring different approaches, techniques and
level of concentration. Some of the different types of reading may use are
listed below.
1.
Silent reading
These kinds of
reading lead the reader to better comprehension. Silent reading is a skill to
criticize what is written to discuss. Something written means to draw
inferences and as well as to express a new idea on the basic of what is read.
2.
Speed reading
These kinds reading
is use to improve speed and comprehension in reading. This skill very important
for students. The skill of speed reading must run side with the main purpose of
reading that is comprehension. The rate of reading speed, however, depends on
the kinds of reading material. The rate of speed of reading a story of
narration will be different from the reading scientific materials.
3.
Critical reading
Other kind of
reading is critical reading. In critical reading, the reader may find a certain
article that tends to stir him/her to action. Many periodical articles, book,
and advertising material are leaded with carefully worded propaganda device.
4.
Oral reading
In other reading,
the reader will get experience in producing the sound which should be practice
as time possible. It is help teachers to find out who among his students has
difficulty in reading.
c. Principle of Reading
According to Heilmen, W Arthur, et.al, (1981:7) here
some guidelines or principles of reading:
1.
Reading is a language process. Student being
taught to read must understand the relationship between their and their
language.
2.
Instruction should lead students to understand
that reading must result in meaning.
3.
During every reading instruction period,
students should read or be read something that grabs their minds.
4.
Pupil differences must be a primary
consideration in reading instruction.
5.
Proper reading instruction depends on the
ongoing diagnosis of each student’s reading strengths, weakness, and needs.
6.
The best diagnosis is useless unless it is use
as blueprint for instruction.
7.
Any given technique, practice or procedures
likely to work better with some student than with others.
8.
Early in the learning process the students must
acquire ways of gaining independence in identifying words whose meaning re
known to him but which are unknown to him as sight words.
9.
Learning to read is a long term developmental
process extending over a period of years.
10. The
concept of readiness should be extended upward to all grades.
11. Emphasis
should be on prevention rather than cure. Reading problems should be detected
early and corrected before they deteriorate into failure, frustration, and
reaction cases.
12. No
student should be expected or forced to attempt to read material that he is
incapable of reading.
13. Provisions
for the needs of exceptional student must be incorporated into regular
classroom reading instruction.
14. Learning
to read is a complicated process, one sensitive to a variety of pressures.
15. Culturally
and linguistically different students should be accommodated in the reading program
rather than forced to meet the demands of the curriculum.
16. Reading
instruction should be thought of as an organized, systematic, growth, and producing
activity.
17. The
adoption of certain instructional materials inevitably has an impact and
influence on a school’s instructional philosophy.
18. The
key to successful reading instruction is the teacher.
d. Types of Reading
1.
According Brown, H. Douglas (2004 : 289) here
some types of reading: Perspective. Perspective reading tasks involve attending
to the components of large stretches of discourse: letters, words, punctuation,
and other graphemic. symbols.
2.
Selective. This category is largely an artifact
of assessment formats. In order to ascertain one’s reading cognition of
lexical, grammatical or discourse features, of language within a very short
stretch of language, certain typical tasks are used picture-cued tasks,
matching, true/ false, multiple, choice, etc.
3.
Interactive. Included among interactive reading
types are stretches of Language if several paragraphs to one page or more in
which the reader must, in psycholinguistic sense, interact with the text. That
is reading is process of negotiating meaning; the reader brings to the text a
set of schemata for understanding it, and in take is the product of that
interaction. Typical genres that lend themselves to active reading are
anecdotes short narratives and description, excerpt, from longer texts, questioners,
memos, announcements, direction, recipes and the like.
4.
Extensive. Applies to text of more than a page,
up to and including professional articles, essay, technical reports, short
stories, and books.
2. Reading Comprehension
a. Definition of Reading Comprehension
(Sheldon H. Horowitz in www.education.comlreference/article/reading-comprehension-for-meaning)
say that reading comprehension is a complex cognitive process that depends upon
a number of ingredients all working together in a synchronous, even automatic
way. Vocabulary clearly plays a critical role in understanding what has been
read. The reader must also be intentional and thoughtful while reading,
monitoring the words and their meaning as reading progresses. And the reader
must apply reading comprehension strategies ac ways to be sure that what is
being read matches their expectations and builds on their growing body of
knowledge that is being stored for immediate or future reference.
Reading comprehension is a dialogue author and reader.
The activity needs ability to communicate with an author. While reading
silently rather than orally (Smith and Thonson in Hendra 2009: 16) it is a
complex process in which the readers use his mental content to obtain from
written material.
b. Strategy of Reading Comprehension
Following are ten such strategies Brown, H Douglas
(2001 : 306-310) each of which can be practically applied to our classroom
techniques.
1.
Identify purpose of reading.
Efficient reading consists of clearly identifying the
purpose in reading something. By doing so, students know what they are looking
for and can weed out potential distracting information. Whenever you are
teaching a reading technique, make sure students know their purpose in reading
something.
2.
Use graphemic rules and patterns to aid in
bottom-up decoding (especially for beginning level learners).
At the beginning levels of learning English, one of
difficulties students encounter in learning to read is making the
correspondences between spoken and written English.
3.
Use efficient silent reading techniques for
relatively rapid comprehension (for intermediate to advance to advance levels)
If the teacher teaching beginning level students, this
particular strategy will not apply because the students still struggling with
the control of a limited vocabulary and grammatical patterns.
4.
Skimming the text for main ideas
Skimming gives readers the advantage of being able to
predict the purpose of the passage. the main topic or massage, and possibly
some of developing or supporting idea. This gives students a head start as they
embark on more focused reading.
5.
Scan the text for specific information
The second in the most valuable category is scanning
or quickly searching for some particular piece of information in a text.
Scanning exercise may ask student to look for names, or dates, to find a
definition of a key concept, or to list a certain number of supporting the
details. The purpose of scanning is to extract specific information without
reading through the whole the text.
6.
Use semantic mapping or clustering
Readers can easily be overwhelmed by a long string of
ideas or events. The strategy of semantic mapping or grouping ideas into
meaningful clusters helps the reader to provide some order to the chaos. Making
such semantic maps can be done individually, but they make for a productivity
group ,work technique as students collectively induce order and hierarchy to a
passage. Early drafts of these maps can be quite messy which is perfectly
acceptable.
7.
Guess when teacher aren’t certain
This is an extremely broad category. Learns can be use
guessing to their advantage to:
a.
Guess the meaning of a word
b.
Guess a grammatical relationship
c.
Guess a discourse relationship
d.
Infer implied meaning (between the lines)
e.
Guess about a cultural reference
f.
Guess content massage
8.
Analyze vocabulary
One way for learners to make guessing pay off when
they don’t immediately recognize a word is to analyze it in terms of what they
know about it. Several techniques are useful here:
a.
Looking for prefixes (co-, inter-, un-, etc.)
that ay gives clues
b.
Looking for suffixes (-tion, -tive, -ally, etc.)
that may indicate what part of speech it is.
c.
Look for roots that are familiar (e.g.,
intervening may be a word a student doesn’t know, but recognizing that the root
van comes from Latin to come would yield the meaning to come in between)
d.
Look for grammatical context that may signal
information.
e.
Look at the semantic context (topic) clues.
9.
Distinguish between literal and implied
meanings.
This requires the application of sophisticated
top-down processing skills. The fact that not all language can be interpreted
appropriately by attending to its literal, syntactic surface structure makes
special demands on readers.
10. Capitalize
on discourse markers to process relationships
Many relationship among ideas as expressed through
phrases, clause, and sentences. A clear comprehension of such markers can greatly
enhance learners’ reading efficiency.
c. Levels of Reading Comprehension
According Heilment, W Arthur, et.al, (1981:) here some
levels of reading comprehension, as follow:
1.
Literal comprehension. Understanding the ideas
and information explicitly stated iii the passage.
Abilities:
Knowledge of word meanings
Recall of the tails directly stated or paraphrased in own words
Understanding of grammatical clues-subject, verbs, pronouns,
conjunctions, and so forth.
Really of main idea explicitly stated.
Knowledge of sequence of information presented in passage.
2.
Interpretative comprehension. Understanding of
ideas and information not explicitly stated in the passage.
Abilities:
Reason with information presented to understand the author’s tone,
purpose, and attitude.
Infer factual information, main ideas, comparisons, cause-effect
relationship not explicitly stated in the passage.
Summarization of story content.
3.
Critically comprehension. Analyzing, evaluating,
and personally reacting to information presented in a passage.
Abilities:
Personally reacting to information in a passage indicating its meaning to
the reader.
Analyzing and evaluating the quality of written information in terms of
some standards.
d. Principle Strategies For Reading
Comprehension
According Brown, H Douglas (2004: 188-189) there some
principle strategies for reading comprehension, as follow:
1.
Identify purpose in a reading a text.
2.
Apply spelling rules and conventions for
bottom-up deciding.
3.
Use lexical analyze (prefix, roots, suffix, etc)
to determining meaning
4.
Guess at meaning (of words, idioms, etc)
5.
Skim the text for the gist and for main ideas.
6.
Scan the text for specific information (names,
dates, key words)
7.
Use silent reading techniques for rapid
processing.
8.
Use marginal notes, outline, charts, or
semantics maps for understanding and retaining information.
9.
Distinguish between literal and implied
meanings.
10. Capitalize
on discourse markers to process relationship.
e. Developing Reading Comprehension
There some methods for improving comprehension
according to the language experts. Smith (1980: 138-166) points out that three
eight comprehension skills students need to learn to become good readers. They
are:
1.
Student must learn to read sentences with
appropriate intonation pattern. Oral reading is probably the only way to teach
students to read with appropriate intonation patterns but is also should always
be followed by silent reading for specific purpose.
2.
Students mist learn to form mental pictures of
situations or condition that are described in a sentence or large passage.
Forming mental images as one reads is important because many written materials
requires visualization on order to be comprehended.
3.
Student must learn to answer questions about the
facts or details presented in a sentence or a large passage. Students are hoped
gain not only a general impression from the material and for certain reading
process, but also factual information and many details are important for a good
understanding for the subject matter.
4.
Students must learn to recall with a minimum of
prompting the pacts and details in a sentences or a longer passage. Post
reading discussion in which students are asked to recount the selection in as
much detail as they can remember are helpful in developing students’ recall
power.
5.
Students must learn to paraphrase the central
thought or main ideas passage. The best manifestation of true understanding of
the main ideas in the passage is the ability to put the passage aside and
express the essence of the massage, using one’s personal vocabulary and
personal manner of expression.
6.
Students must learn to identify case-effect,
comparison-contrast sequential happening, and other relationships between and
among ideas. Perhaps direct questioning is the best way to teach students to
find relationship between and among ideas.
7.
Student must learn to summarize the content of a
passage. Probably the ability of a student to summarize a passage is the best
indication of a students’ comprehension.
8.
Students must learn to test the information
given or the assertions made by other authors. The teaching of this skill can
be begin in early in a child’s reading development’s.
