Limitation and Formulation of The Problem Objective of the Study
meaning. Accessing meaning is the rationale for reading. The simple view of reading is that reading is the product of decoding and comprehension.
1
So, while the reader was doing reading, their brain has worked directly. Then from the brain’s work, they can find the information gap of the
passage. According to S. Pang, reading process is assumed as follow:
Reading consists of two related processes: word recognition and comprehension. Word recognition refers to the process of
perceiving how written symbols correspond to one’s spoken language. Comprehension is the process of making sense of words,
sentences, and connecting text. Readers typically make use of the background knowledge, vocabulary, grammatical knowledge,
experience with the text and other strategies to help them understand written text.
2
Based on the explanation above, the writer identified that the reader need many aspect to understand what they are reading. The aspect reading
which support are background knowledge; they will understand of passage’s meaning if they have more knowledge about the topic.
Vocabulary and grammatical knowledge; without two its aspect, the reader don’t know of passage meaning. Next aspect is experience; if the readers
don’t have experience about the topic, so they don’t more understand of
passage meaning. Another resource said that reading is an exercise dominated by the
eyes and the brain. The eyes receive the messages and the brain then has to work out the significance of these messages.
3
It is indicated that when
1
Naomi Flynn and Rhona Stainthorp, The Learning and Teaching of Reading and Writing, England: Whurr Publisher Limited, 2006, p.42.
2
Elizabeth S. Pang et al, Teaching Reading, Switzerland: International Academy of Education, 2003, p. 6.
3
Jeremy harmer, The Practice of English language Teaching, New York: Longman, 1991, p. 191 .
someone have read, their brain work together to comprehend the content of the passage.
However, in reading comprehension the readers also need to combine the information from the text with their background knowledge to
comprehend the text. Larry Lewin considered this as “prior knowledge”. He stated that:
“prior knowledge is regarded as what the readers know toward incoming topic concerning their past knowledge which is stored in
the brain then occurring the integration of newly information to evoke retrieving the existing information to save them into their
memories in categories called schemata or it widely known as
„schema theory’.
4
Based on the statement above, the writer conclude that to grasp the meaning or get information of the passage, a reader is sought to gain the
ability to interpreting the passage meaningfully where he or she needs prior knowledge to assist him or her in making sense of the author’s
message.