Reading Comprehension THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
g. Reading for general comprehension From all purposes mentioned by Grabe and Stoller, reading for general
comprehension is the most basic one. It is the most complex process. To comprehend the text requires reading skill, reading strategies, and background
knowledge of the reader. Thus, Grabe and Stoller classified the purposes for reading into seven points
specifically. Every person may has different purpose in reading depends on their needs. Some readers often make their decision to read very quickly or even
unconsciously. They also may have more than one purpose in one reading. For instance, when they pick up a newspaper, they may usually read the front page
first to search whether there is any information they expect to read. After they find the headline which cues it, they may skim quickly for the length of paragraph and
then read some paragraphs for comprehension. However in academic or professional ones, the readers may set their purposes before reading in order to
read effectively because they usually need several reading sources. Harmer categorized the reasons of reading into two broad categories.
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a. Instrumental reason, it means people do reading because they have some specific reason in their mind and it would give some usefulness. For instance,
people read a map to know the direction, people read the guideline book of a smart phone to know how to operate it, etc.
b. Pleasurable reason, it means people read some reading text in order to get their own pleasure. For instance, people read magazines, novels, or comics because
they like to do that, even as a hobby or they want to spend their boring day with reading.
Therefore, it can be concluded that there are two reasons in making decision to read some kinds of written text, which are to get some instrumental information
or to get some pleasure. In reading for the instrumental reason, the readers usually have specific reason to read something that would give some benefits to them.
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Jeremy Harmer, The Practice of English Language Teaching 3
rd
edition, New York: Longman, 2001, p. 200.