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Reading and Comprehension

Penulis: Tim Editor | Kategori: English Education | Tanggal Terbit: | Dilihat: 4045 kali

Reading

Understanding text is determined by the purposes for reading, the context, the nature of the text, and the readers’ strategies and knowledge. According to McWhorter (2001), reading at first may appear to be a routine activity in which individual words are combined to produce meaning. In the opposites, according to Alderson (2000) reading is the interaction between the reader and the text. During that process, many things happen, not only is the reader looking at print, but also deciphering in some sense the marks on the page, deciding what they mean and how they relate to each other.

Based on definition, the researcher concludes that reading is a process of constructing meaning from written text through some interactions like the reader’s knowledge, the reader’s interpretation and the situation. Reading is also the meaningful interpretation, the act of responding with appropriate meaning to print or written verbal symbols, and reading is complex and active cognitive process of interacting with printed and monitoring comprehension to establish.

Definition of Reading Comprehension

Reading comprehension is the process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning. According to Dalmann, et all (2002: 25) state “reading without understanding should not be called reading, for reading necessarily involves comprehending”. It means that reading is always connected with comprehension. Therefore, it should not be called reading if no there is comprehension process.
Comprehension is the process in gaining the goal of reading. Krashen and Terrel (2009) describe that the aim and the text could create reading comprehension which is also able to form the language acquisition. In reading second language or foreign language, the readers will develop their language acquisition. However, the most important in the process of reading is comprehension that can lead the reader to get the goal of reading.
Reading comprehension is very important for everyone who wants to enlarge their knowledge and information. Sometimes some learners feel difficult to comprehend the text that they have read. So the teachers have to be more concern about the problem. According to Snow (2002), reading comprehension is the process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with written language. Relating to the definitions above, the reader who has to have the balanced knowledge and experience must be able to adjust the source of information into adaptable context.
Reading comprehension is the process of making meaning from text. Therefore, is to gain an overall understanding of what is described in the text rather than to obtain meaning from isolated words or sentences. (Woolley: 2011:15). Reading comprehension is a process of making sense of a written text. However, it is not a passive one way decoding process. Instead, it is an active two way process in which the reader and the text interact.
Based on the explanation of reading comprehension above, it can be concluded that reading comprehension is not just reading with aloud voice but reading is established to understand the meaning of words, sentences, and paragraph as well as sense relationship among the ideas. Whenever a student just reads loudly but cannot understand the content of the text, it means that he fails in comprehending the text.

The Components of Reading Comprehension

There are many components in reading comprehension. Comprehension in treading may seem complicated to be defined because this skill can be inferred as the particular understanding of reading. However, this can be implied with some elements which bring to detail understanding of comprehension in the reading. According to Davis (2002), he suggested as the components of comprehension process are (a) knowledge of word meaning, (b) reasoning in the reading, (c) concentration on literal sense meaning, (d) following the structure of a passage, and (e) recognizing the mood and literary techniques of a writer.

From the explanation above the researcher concludes that here are some components of reading comprehension. These components should be implemented within a gradual release of responsibility model, incrementally turning over responsibility for meaning-making practices from teacher to student, then cycling back through this release with increasingly complex texts, while simultaneously employing instructional approaches that include several essential elements of effective comprehension instruction.

Factors Influence Reading Comprehension

Many factors affect toward reading comprehension. Generally, the reading is directed by someone on reading comprehensions. According to Rosnariyanti (2010), the factor those affecting student reading comprehensions are:

  1. Level of intelligence: Reading itself is essentially a process of thinking and solving problems. Two different IQ is definitely different results and the ability reads.
  2. Language’s Ability: When a person faces readings whose language is never heard it may be difficult to understand the reading text. The cause is not another Because of its limited vocabulary.
  3. Attitudes and Interests: The attitude is usually indicated by a sense of fun and pleasure. Attitudes are generally latent or old. While interest is a state in the one who encouraged her to do something. Interest is more instantaneous.
  4. The state of Reading: Pared difficulty levels, aspects typographical arrangement, or design pages, the size of the letters and the like can also affect the reading process.
  5. Reading Habits: Habits question is whether the person has the tradition of reading or not. The meaning of this tradition is determined by a lot of time or opportunity that is provided by a person as a necessity.
  6. Knowledge about How to Read: One's knowledge about, for example, finding the main idea quickly, is capturing the key words quickly, and so on.
  7. Social, Economic and Cultural background: Someone will have difficulty in grasping the content of reading if they read a background reading culture.
  8. Emotion: Emotional state that change will affect one's reading (i) Knowledge and Experience Previous Owned: The process of reading the daily accumulation of capital is essentially the knowledge to read next.

Based on the factors of reading comprehension above, the researcher concludes that these factors are complex activity that involves both perception and thought. Reading comprehension consists of two related process, word recognition and comprehension. Word recognition refers to the process of perceiving how written symbol correspondent to one spoken language. Comprehension is the process of making sense of words, sentences and connected text.

Difficulties in Reading Comprehension

In teaching learning especially in reading comprehension, there are some difficulties that found in teaching learning process such as find information in the text, find main idea and identify the structure of the text. According to Martini in Azmi, (2013) there are some difficulties in reading comprehension is the students finding difficult in reading comprehension of English. Student still foreign with the strategy, and they has not owned the reading skill. As a result the student find difficult in interpreting words meaning, comprehending good sentence content paragraph and also discourse, and conclusion in making conclusion.

Based on difficulties in reading comprehension, the students found the difficult in reading like interpreting words meaning, comprehending the sentence that causing them difficult to read.

Reading Comprehension Skill

According to Mikulecky and Jeffries (2007) there are some of reading skill in reading comprehension.

  1. Previewing
    Previewing is a rapid kind of reading that allows to get a general sense of what a passage, article, or book is about and how it is organized. Students’ eyes scan quickly over the page looking for answers to general questions about the material. Previewing is especially important in textbooks. Students should always read the table of contents and the outline of a chapter to find out what they contain. Students. The guidelines for previewing a textbook as follows:
    1. Read the main heading.
    2. Check to see if the passage is divided into parts.
    3. Read the first few sentences.
    4. Read the first sentence of each paragraph after that.
    5. Read the final sentences of the passage.
  2. Making Inferences
    Good readers make inferences as they read. In addition to read the words, they use their imagination and their knowledge about the world to fill in facts and ideas that are not stated in the text. This is sometimes called "reading between the lines." It is often necessary to read between the lines because a writer cannot include all the possible information about a topic or situation. Writers leave out information that they think readers will know already or will be able to guess.
  3. Understanding Paragraphs
    Mikulecky and Jeffries (2007: 94-110) state there are some activites that able to do to understand the paragraphs as belows:
    1. Identifying the Topic of a Paragraph
      The topic is the word or phrase that best describes what all of the sentences in the paragraph are about. Words relating to the topic are usually repeated several times in a paragraph. Looking for these words can help you focus on the topic.
    2. Topic Sentences
      Paragraphs in English usually contain a topic sentence that lets the reader know what the paragraph is about. Although this sentence is usually near the beginning of the paragraph, it can also be found in the middle or at the end.
    3. Topic sentences and main ideas
      In addition to stating the topic, most topic sentences also tell the writer's main idea, or inother words, the idea that the writer wants to express about the topic. To explain the idea, the writer includes several supporting details in the paragraph and these details are morespecific than the main idea.
    4. Connecting Ideas in Paragraphs
      Understanding a paragraph—or a longer passage—often involves more than justidentifying the topic and main idea. It is also necessary to understand the way writers inEnglish guide the reader through the logic of their ideas or show the connections betweenideas.
  4. Patterns of Organization
    Recognizing the pattern of organization is an important part of reading comprehension, since writers, too, use patterns to present their ideas in a way that makes sense. Once students recognize the pattern, students will understand and follow their ideas more efficiently.
  5. Reading Longer Passages Effectively
    Like a paragraph, a longer passage focuses on a single topic, expresses a general idea about that topic, follows a pattern of organization, and uses signal words and phrases to indicate supporting ideas.The topic of a longer passage is usually repeated many times to focus the reader's attention and to reinforce connections between the topic and the supporting ideas. In a longer text, the writer's idea about the topic is stated in a sentence called the thesisstatement. Like the main idea in a paragraph, the thesis statement tells the writer's overallidea about the topic. Recognizing and understanding the writer's thesis statement is thekey to understanding the ideas in a text.
  6. Skimming
    Skimming is a form of rapid reading for finding the general idea—or gist—of a passage or a book. In your daily and academic life, you probably skim many things: movie reviews, newspaper articles, and passages and websites that might be useful for a research paper.
  7. Summarizing
    Another key strategy for learning and remembering the ideas in a text is to summarize what you have read. This means rewriting the important parts in a much shorter form, using some words from the text and some of your own words. Summarizing is especially useful for reviewing and memorizing information in textbooks for exams; and preparing information or ideas from different sources so you can include them in a report or paper.

Reading strategies

According to Mokhtari & Sheorey (2002) there are three kinds of reading strategies. The first is Global Reading strategies, the second Problem Reading Strategies and the third Support Reading Strategies. In their study they used instrument Survey of Reading Strategies (SORS). SORS is presented as a simple, effective for helping teacher and for assisting student in becoming responsive readers.

1. Global Reading Strategies

The first is Global reading strategies (GLOB), global reading strategy are the planned techniques that used by the learners, in carefully to monitor or to manage their reading strategies (Mokhtari and Shoerey 2002). This strategy related to the preparation when the learners read the textbook. Global Reading Strategies can be used for any kind of reading; they tend to involve developing a relationship with the text and reflecting on the information at hand. Global reading strategies had 13 items of statement such us; a having purpose to keep in mind while reading textbook, previewing the text as its length and organization, using typographically aids and table, figure. According to Martinez (2008), global strategies can be defined as generalized or global reading strategies aimed at setting the stage for the reading act: for instance, setting a purpose for reading, previewing the text content, predicting what the text is about.

Mikulecky and Jeffries (2007) stated reviewing is a rapid kind of reading that allows to get a general sense of what a passage, article, or book is about and how it is organized. Students’ eyes scan quickly over the page looking for answers to general questions about the material. Previewing is especially important in textbooks. Students should always read the table of contents and the outline of a chapter to find out what they contain.

It indicated in the statement of the questionnaire the participants' reveal that they have a purpose in their mind when they read as well as they decide what to ignore and what to read closely. They try to guess what the content of text is about when they read and then check to see if their guess about the text is true or wrong. They think about what they know to help their understanding and review the text first by noting its characteristics like length and organization. They use typographical features like bold face and italics to identify key information. All these features show that based on the level of participants, they are advanced enough to read a text professionally by using reading strategies.

2. Problem Solving Strategies

The second is Problem Solving Strategies (PROB), problem solving strategy is the actions and procedures that readers use while working directly in understanding textual information (Mokhtari and Shoerey 2002). This strategy helps the learners to understanding the problem when read the text. It refers to how the readers make the meaning from unknown words. Problem solving strategies had 8 items of statement such us; include adjusting ones speed of reading when the material becomes difficult or easy, guessing the meaning of unknown words, and rereading the text to improve comprehension. It indicated in the statement of the questionnaire the participants' reveal that they read slowly and carefully to make sure they understand what they read. They would adjust their reading speed according what they reading. When text becomes difficulties they will pay attention to what they read. They visualize the information to help them remember what they read. When they read, they are try to guess the meaning of unknown words and phrases.
According to Hugley (2006) we can use context clue which make us guessing how the words are used in the text and examine the words around it. This strategy is to clarify and solve the problem when read the textbook.

3. Support Strategies

The third is Support strategies (SUP), support strategy are the tools that used by student when comprehension the textbook (Mokhtari & Sheorey 2002). Support reading strategies had 9 item of statement. According to Martinez (2008) Support strategies use “the support mechanisms or tools aimed at sustaining responsiveness to reading: for instance, use of reference materials like dictionaries and other support systems.”

This strategy primarily involved use of outside reference materials, and other practical strategies that might be described as functional or support strategies such as they using a dictionary to help them in understanding what they read, they taking a notes while reading, they underlining or highlighting textual information and asking oneself questions. Support strategy is helpful for the readers while reading the textbook and students need to know that there are other support materials available to them. According to Tapakoli (2014) Support Reading Strategies (SUP), which provide the support mechanism aimed at sustaining responses to reading (e.g., underlining or circling information, paraphrasing for better understanding, going back and forth in the text.) Hugley (2006) stated we can keep the track of our learning based on highlighted words. We may use notes to summary what we’ve understood from the text we’ve just read. However the researcher used Mokhari and Sheorey (2002) strategies because this strategy is more general.

Textbook Reading

A textbook is a collection of the knowledge, concepts, and principles of a selected topic or course. Yulianti (2011), stated a textbook is an instructional material which consists of content and material of the subject that is well organized in written form and has a great contribution in the teaching and learning process. According Tomlinson (1998) there are some kind of criteria in textbook.

  1. the materials should help learners to feel at ease,
  2. the materials should help learners to develop confidence,
  3. the materials should expose the learners to language in authentic use,
  4. for the learners must be ready to acquire the points being taught,
  5. the materials should provide the learners with opportunities to use the target language to achieve communicative purposes,
  6. the materials should take into account that learners differ in learning styles,
  7. the materials should maximize learning potential by encouraging intellectual,
  8. the materials should not rely too much on controlled practice, and
  9. Materials should provide opportunities for outcome feedback.

In selecting a textbook it is important, some people adjust follow to the curriculum, and even not suitable with student. Not only suitable with the curriculum but must suitable with the children.
Therefore, the researcher will discuss about the advantages of the textbook and the disadvantages of the textbook. Richard (2001) stated that there are some advantages and disadvantages of textbook there are;

  1. they provide structure and a syllabus for a program.
  2. they help standardize instruction.
  3. they maintain quality.
  4. they provide a variety of learning resources.
  5. they are efficient.
  6. they can provide effective language models and input.
  7. they can train teachers. they are visually appealing.

However the disadvantages are:

  1. they may contain inauthentic language.
  2. They may distort content.
  3. They may not reflect student’s needs.
  4. They can deskill teachers.
  5. They are expensive.