Concept of Reading Comprehension

Sunday, April 1, 2018

Kang Ogud - My Friends kang ogud lovers in this time we will review about Concept of Reading Comprehension

Reading involves the activity either visually or kinesthetically. When we are reading, we are clearly engaged in a great deal of mental activity, some of it automatic, some of it concious.6 In literate sociaties, most “normal” children learn to read in five or six years old, and some even earlier. With the exeption of a small number of people with learning disabilities, reading is a skill that is taken by special way.

In foreign language learning, reading is likewise a skill that teacher simply expect learners require. Reading arguably the most essential skill for success in all educational contexts, remains a skill of paramount importance as we create assessments of general language ability.1 The statement above means reading is the key to gain the whole of knowledge field.

Broughton said that the word reading of course has a number of common interpretations. It may mean reading aloud or silent reading. It must be recognized that reading aloud is primarily an oral matter. For those who teach foreign languages it is closer to „pronunciation‟ than it is to comprehension‟. It must also be admitted that the usefulness of the skill of reading aloud is limited. Reading may also mean „silent reading‟. Then, silent reading is nearest approach to reach the essence of reading. The functions silent reading are (i) to survey material which is to be studied, to look through indexes, chapter headings and outlines, (ii) to skim particularly when one item of information is being sought in a mass of other printed information, (iii) to gain superficial comprehension, as when reading for pleasure or preparing to read aloud, (iv) to study the content of what is read in some detail, (v) to study the language in which material is written this may involve textual study in the literary sense or in may involve the kind of language study that a foreigner may need to do.2 Both of reading styles above have its problem. People may get pronunciation problem when they are reading aloud. And by silent reading people also probably has problem in the depth of understanding the passage. 

Reading also has some techniques, which are: 

a. Scanning ;Scanning is a strategy used by all readers to find relevant information in a text. The main function of scanning strategy is to find a specific piece of information such as a number or the answer to a question. 

b. Skimming ; Skimming is the process of rapid coverage of reading matter to determine its gist or main idea. It is a prediction strategy used to give the reader a sense of the topic and purpose of the text, the organization of the text, the perspective or point of view of the writer, its ease or difficulty, and/or its usefulness to the reader. Of course skimming can apply to text of less than one page, so it would be wise not to confine this type of task just to extensive texts.3

Skimming is valuable procedure. Skimming through a passage involves very fast in order to recognize main ideas and supporting details while skipping (not reading) parts that are not relevant to your reading purposes.4

Reading has some types that are: 

a. Perceptive 

In keeping with the set of categories specified for listening comprehension, similar specification are offered here, expect with some differing terminology to capture the uniqueness of reading. Perceptive reading task involve attending to the components of larger stretcher of discourse: letters, words, punctuation and other graph emic symbols. 

b. Selective 

The category is largely an artifact of assessment formats. In order to ascertain one‟s reading recognition of lexical, grammatical or features of language within a very short scratch of language, certain typical task are used: pictured-cued, matching, true or false, multiple choice etc. 

c. Interactive 

Include among interactive reading types are stretches of language of several paragraphs to one page or more, in which the reader must, in a psycholinguistics sense, interact with the text. That is, reading is process of negotiating meaning. The reader brings to the text a set of schemata to understanding it, and intake is a product of interaction. Typical genres that lend themselves into interactive reading are anecdotes, short narratives and descriptions, excerpts from longer texts, questionnaires, memos, announcements, directions, recipes and the like. The focus of an interactive task is to identify relevant features within text is moderately short length with the objective of retaining the information that is processed. 

d. Extensive 

Extensive reading applies to texts of more than a page up to and including professional articles, essays, technical reports, short stories and books (it should be noted that reading research commonly refers to “extensive reading” as longer stretches of discourse such as long articles and books that are usually read outside a classroom hour. 

Reading comprehension is very complex process. The common reason why reading with comprehension was complex is vocabulary knowledge. But having vocabulary knowledge is not determining the success of reading comprehension.5 According to Richard, comprehension is the process how a person understands the meaning of written or spoken language.6 In order to comprehend the text, the readers should have strategy. Strategy is means, the way to reach comprehension. 

There are five thinking strategies of good readers that are: predict, picture, relate, monitor, correct, and grasp in understanding. Predict means to make educated guesses. The readers make predictions about thoughts, events, outcomes, and conclusions. By prediction, the reader become involved with the author‟s thinking and helps them to learn. The second ispicture, picture will increase reading understanding by the obvious form. The third is relate that means to draw connection between the readers‟ existing knowledge or experience with the new information in the text to help understanding the material. The fourth is monitor to check understanding. Monitor your ongoing comprehension to test your understanding of the material. The last is correct gapsin understanding. This strategy means seek solution when they are facing the problem of reading comprehension such as: rereading a sentence or looking back at previous page.7 Some thinking strategies above can help the readers to overcome some problems when they are reading. Although everybody has different way to reach comprehension.

REFERENCE

1. J. Charles Alderson, Assessing Reading, (Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 2000), p.13
2. H. Douglas Brown, Language Assessment: Priciples and Classroom Practices, (San Francisco: Pearson Education), p. 13 
3. Geoffery Broughton et,al, Teaching English as a Foreign Language, (New York: Taylor and Francis E-Library, 2003) p.89-90
4. H. Douglas Brown, Language Assessment: Priciples and Classroom Practice)…, p. 13
5. Wallie Hammond et.al, Peterson’s Master Toefl Reading skill, (US: Peterson‟s Nelnet Company, 2007) p.37
6. LulutWidyaningrum, Mapping Readability of the texts and Reading Abilities of the User, (LP2M, UIN Walisongo Semarang, 2014) p.24
7. Jack Richard et.al, Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics, (England: Longman Group UK Limited, 1990), p. 54-55

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