4. Theory of Teaching Reading
a. Reading
Goodman 1976 and Smith 1878 as citied by Vacca 1981: 12 define reading as an active process of deriving meaning. A reader interacts with print in
an effort to understand the author’s message and makes sense out of what she or he reads, reading is not simply a passive process. It is more than seeing words
clearly, more than pronouncing printed words correctly, more than recognizing the meaning of isolated words. Reading requires thinking, feeling and
imagination.
b. Teaching Reading Comprehension
Previously, teaching reading simply emphasized accurate and fluent pronunciation. Today, a dominant goal of reading is comprehension. This means
the ability to find meaning in what is read Mc Neil, et al., 1980: 129. The idea of gaining understanding, meaning, or knowledge from reading is emphasized.
Pearson and Johnson 1978: 227 states that “Reading comprehension is at once a unitary process and a set of discrete processes.” In addition, Adoniou
2007 states that “Reading comprehension is heavily dependent on skilled word recognition and decoding, oral reading fluency, a well-developed vocabulary and
active engagement with the text.”
1 Comprehension
As we understand that in reading activity, one important point that the readers must have is comprehension of the text. Comprehension plays an
important role in reading activity. It means that when students are doing reading activity, they should understand what they read. Although comprehension is a
complex activity that involves combining reading with thinking and reasoning, the students need to achieve it to get the advantages when doing reading activity.
2 Units of Comprehension
Burns C. 1984: 151 explains that the basic comprehension units in reading are words, sentences, paragraphs and the whole selections. These units
combine to form all written materials the learners encounter.
a Words
The students’s sight vocabularies should be built from words they already comprehend. Words that are a part of their meaning vocabularies. This is
concerned with the development of extensive meaning vocabularies and the difficulties that certain types of words may present to youngsters.
The growth of vocabulary is essentially the development of labels for the child’s schemata. Because students must call upon their existing schemata to
comprehend, vocabulary development is an important component of comprehension skill.
Vocabulary building is a complex process involving many kinds of words. Students need to improve their vocabulary to produce good result. Here are the
four of the most common methods for students to discover the meanings of unfamiliar words:
1 Context Clues The use of context clues to help recognize words that are familiar in
speech but not in print. Context clues also key the meaning of an unfamiliar word by directly defining the word, providing an appositive, or
comparing or contrasting the word with a known word. 2 Structure Clues
Structural analysis as a word recognizing skill, can also be used as an aid in discovering meanings of unknown words. Knowing meanings of
common affixes and combining them with meanings of familiar root words can help the learners determine the meanings of many new words.
3 Analogies and Word Lines Analogies compare two similar relationships and thereby bolster word
knowledge. Educators may teach analogies by displaying examples of categories, relationships, and analogies, asking and guiding questions
about the examples, allowing students to discuss the questions and applying the ideas that emerge.
Whereas, the use of word lines is to show the relationships among words, just as they use number lines for numbers.
4 Dictionary Use The dictionary is an excellent source to use in discovering meanings of
unfamiliar words, particulary for determining the appropriate meanings of words that have multiple definitions or specific, technical definitions.
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