2. Reading Comprehension
Wooley stating on his journal that reading comprehension is a process to make a meaning of a text but its goal is to understand the meaning of a whole text
not for each word or sentence.
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While Dutcher in Ulmer et al stating that reading comprehension is a process which the reader background knowledge, the
information on the text and the situation when reading are interacted with each other.
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From those points of view, the researcher concludes that a reading comprehension is the complex process to understand what it is about by using our
prior knowledge and connecting with the information on the text. Reading comprehension skill for EFLESL students is a little bit hard to
obtain. It could be because of the lack of memorizing the vocabulary, their method of learning, their motivations or even the interventions from another subject that
can be considered more important than English.
a. Major Components of Reading Comprehension Process
1 Decoding Knowledge Decoding knowledge is the knowledge used to determine a word with the
same meaning in the text. Decoding knowledge may be useful for reading comprehension but it may not necessary too. It is useful when the reader identify
the meaning of word. Many readers know the spoken language form of words but they do not know the written form. By using decoding knowledge, reader could
understand most of oral language in their written form. Decoding knowledge may not be necessary if the words were scientific but, we could use the context clues in
order to understand the sentence.
4
Gary Woolley, Reading Comprehension: Assisting Children with Learning Difficulties, Retrieved from
http:www.springer.comusbook9789400711730 , p. 15.
5
Constance Ulmer et al, Creating Games as Reader Response and Comprehension Assessment,
http:www.americanreadingforum.orgYearbooks02_yearbookhtml16_Ulmer etal revised.htm
, 2002.
2 Vocabulary Knowledge The ability to determine word meaning from context and determine oral
equivalent of words with their meaning are aspects of vocabulary knowledge. It is vital for teacher to help their students improving the vocabulary knowledge, as
students will explore more unfamiliar subjects later in their lives. In the vocabulary knowledge process, using context clues is handy, when students are
about to find the word meaning, they can look for it in the sentence after or before the word.
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3 Syntactic Knowledge In comprehension process, the knowledge of sentence syntax or word order is
important. It includes grammatical rules in a sentence and is useful to determine meaning and pronunciations of words. Syntactic knowledge is learned by the
students from their early years with the help from their oral language ability.
4 Discourse Knowledge Discourse knowledge includes the knowledge of structural organization of
many types of writing, for example, an argumentative essay will begin by thesis statement and so on. It is useful for reading comprehension process, it fasten the
students ability to understand the story.
5 Readiness Aspects Reading Readiness is the skill of students when they are about to read, it
means the benefits in comprehending text before reading a specific material. Readiness includes knowledge of letter-names, left to right sequence of writing,
the ability to see similarities and differences in shapes, oral language proficiency, ability to hear similarities and differences in sounds, ability to work cooperatively
in small groups and the ability to sustain independent works. Readiness consist of pre reading activity such as developing background knowledge, learning new
vocabulary words, and so on.
6
J. Leu and Kinzer op. cit. p. 31.
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