Now,
we will learn about what is exactly reading is, type of reading, problem in
reading skill, and what strategies to teach reading is....
1. Definition of reading
Reading is one of skills to master
English language. Nunan (2003:68) states that reading is fluent process of
readers combining information from a text and their own background knowledge to
build meaning. Therefore, to understand a passage the reader must have
sufficient background knowledge in reading the passage and the goal of the
reading activity.
Whereas Hughes
(2007:1) states that
reading is a complex interaction between the text, the reader and
the purposes for reading, which are shaped by the reader’s prior knowledge and
experiences, the reader’s knowledge about reading and writing language and the
reader’s language community which is culturally and socially situated.
So I can
conclude that reading
is activity which combines information of the text and the background knowledge
possessed by the reader to gain a full understanding in reading text.
2.
Type of
reading
These are four types of reading according to Brown
(2004:189), as follow:
a.
Perceptive
In keeping with the set of categories specified for
listening comprehension, similar specification are offered here, except with
some differing terminology to capture the uniqueness of reading. Perceptive
reading task involves attending to the component of larger stretches of
discourse: letter, words, punctuation, and other graphemic symbols. Bottom-up
processing is implied.
b.
Selective
This category is largely an artifact of assessment
formats. In order to ascertain one’s reading recognition 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. stimuli include sentences, brief paragraph, and simple
charts and graphs. Brief responses are intended as well. A combination of
bottom-up and top-down processing may be used.
c.
Interactive
Included among interactive reading types are stretches
of language of several paragraph to one page or more in which the reader must,
in a psycholinguistic sense, interact with text. That is, reading is a process
of negotiating meaning; the reader brings to the text a set of schemata for
understanding it and intake is the product of that interaction. Top-down
processing is typical of such tasks, although some instances of bottom-up
performance may be necessary.
d.
Extensive
Extensive reading refers to longer stretches of
discourse, such as long articles and books that are usually read outside a
classroom hour. The purposes of assessment usually are to tap into learner’s
global understanding of a text, as opposed to asking test-takers to zoom in on
small details. Top-down processing is assumed for most extensive tasks.
From the explanation above it can be known that reading
can be divided into four types where each type has its own character.
Explanation of the types of reading is expected to be helpful in
differentiating types of reading because for each type of reading has its own
type of assessment.
3.
Problem
in reading comprehension
According Chard and Santoro (2008:2) there is five particular reasons
associated with most reading comprehension problems include:
1. Language
delays and difficulties.
Learning to understand the meaning of what a text
communicates depends a great deal on the reader’s capacity for understanding
spoken language. Written and spoken languages are related forms of
communication; both depend on people using them to understand their meaning,
organization, structure, and intent. Some students enter school with
difficulties understanding spoken language due to disabilities, environmental
challenges that cause delays in their language development, or second language
learning. As a result, they are also likely to face difficulties understanding
written language.
2. Early
reading difficulties leading to fluency problems.
Translating written words to spoken language allows
readers to access the author’s message. For students who experience
difficulties with word recognition, struggle with decoding words, or read very
slowly, the information in the text is often inaccessible. Reading quickly
enough so that it sounds like “natural” language contributes to a student’s
comprehension—the reading flow and focus on comprehension are not disrupted by
decoding.
3. Lack
of knowledge about the world and about words.
Knowing what words mean and how they relate to the world
is critical to understanding print. At the same time, reading is often the
source of new vocabulary knowledge and provides greater understanding of the
world around us. Informational books introduce us to new ideas, and fiction
often elicits emotional responses as we share in the sorrow or joy of a
character. However, if we are unable to understand key words or how a text
relates to our world, the stories or information fail to achieve their goal.
4. Lack
of knowledge of comprehension strategies and lack of skill in applying
strategies appropriately.
Good readers employ
strategies before, during, and after reading that help them comprehend
text. For example, while we read we frequently, and often subconsciously,
summarize facts and details and confirm or challenge our existing
thinking about the subject at hand. This process is strategic, and the
more we read, the more we improve. We use other strategies before reading, such
as clarifying our purpose for reading (e.g., skimming the newspaper for
information about a storm that occurred during the night). During and
after reading, we reflect on how a particular text might impact us or
relate to our understanding of the world. Many readers exhibit challenges in
employing these strategies flexibly and effectively.
5. Difficulties
understanding text structures.
All written text follows some sort of rhetorical
structure, such as the story grammar of narrative text or the organization
structure used in an informational text. For many students, these structures
are not readily clear. When students do not understand text structure patterns,
like knowing all stories have a main character and a sequence of events, they
have difficulty understanding what was read and making inferences.
Those explanations above are some
examples of students' difficulty in mastering reading skills. With knows the
difficulties faced by students is expected to help the teacher to determine the
proper techniques in teaching strategies in reading comprehension.
4. Teaching reading strategies
According to Brown (2001:306) there
are some strategies for reading comprehension, as follow:
a.
Identify
the purpose in reading
Efficient reading consists of clearly identifying the
desired detail information in reading texts. Thus, the reader can know what
they are looking for and can get rid of the potential of distracting
information.
b.
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 the
difficulties students encounter in learning to read is making the
correspondences between spoken and written English. In many cases, learners
have become acquainted with oral language and have some difficulty learning
English spelling conventions. They may need hints and explanation about certain
English orthographic rules and peculiarities.
c.
Use
efficient silent reading techniques for relatively rapid comprehension (for
intermediate to advanced levels).
Silent reading is suitable for advance level. These are
some rules to teach silent reading, such as the reader don’t need to pronounce
each word to themselves, try to visually perceive more than one word at a time,
preferably phrases and unless a word is absolutely crucial to global
understanding, skip over to pronounce each word and try to infer its meaning.
Those are the rules that use in silent reading especially for advanced level.
d.
Skim
the text for main ideas.
Skimming consist of quickly running one’s eyes across a
whole text for its gist. Skimming gives readers the advantage of being able to
predict the purpose of the passage, the main topic, or message and possibly
some of supporting ideas.
e.
Scan
the text for specific information.
Scanning is quickly searching for some particular piece
or pieces of information in a text. The purpose of scanning is to extract
specific information without reading through the whole text.
f.
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
productive group work technique as students collectively induce order and
hierarchy to a passage.
g.
Guess
when you aren’t certain.
In this strategy learner can use guessing to their
advantage to guess the meaning, guess a grammatical relationship, guess a
discourse relationship, infer implied meaning, guess about a cultural reference
and guess content messages.
h.
Analyze
vocabulary.
One way for learners to make guessing pay off when they
do not immediately recognize a word is to analyze it in terms of what they know
about it. Several technique are useful likes look for prefixes that may give
clues, look for suffixes that may indicate what part of speech it is, look for
roots that are familiar, look for grammatical contexts that may signal
information and look at the semantic context for clues.
i.
Distinguish
between literal and implied meanings.
This is 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.
j.
Capitalize
on discourse markers to process relationship.
Many discourse markers in English signal relationships
among ideas as expressed through phrases, clauses and sentences. A clear
comprehension of such markers can greatly enhance learners’ reading efficiency.
