to keep in touch with friends by correspondence or to understand business letters
to know when or where something will take place or what is available
to know what is happening or has happened as reported in newspapers, magazines or reports
to have enjoyment and excitement
43
Additionally, William Grabe Fredricka L. Stoller claimed and concluded reading aims into seven, they are for finding simple information,
skimming information quickly, learning from texts, integrating information, writing or finding information needed for writing, criticizing texts and
getting general comprehension.
44
From those statements above, it can be overgeneralized that the main or primarily aims of reading is to get information whether they read for
pleasure or not. Information is a crucial aspect that people want for fulfilling their need when they are reading, it is for getting comprehension or meaning
of the material content.
3. Reading Comprehension
Comprehension is the reason of people to read. They will find lots of texts in daily life for being comprehended. Then, in comprehending a topic
or main idea, people definitely interact with the text relating pre-questioning of the text to prior experiences of construct meaning which can be found in
the text. Hence, it is necessary for people especially students in Senior High School to master reading comprehension in order to they can understand
every texts they will be read along learning English. Edward David Allen and Rebecca M. Valette stated in their book,
“Reading is more than just assigning foreign language sounds to written
43
Jo Mc Donough Christopher Shaw, Materials Method in ELT, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1993, p. 90.
44
William Grabe and Fredricka L. Stoller, op.cit., p. 13.
words; it requires the comprehension of what is written. Students differ in their ability to read their native language and these same differences
reappear in their ability to read a second language.”
45
According to William Grabe and Fredricka L. Stoller, “Reading
comprehension is an extraordinary feat of balancing and coordinating many abilities in a very complex and rapid set of routines that makes
comprehension a seemingly effortless and enjoyable activity for fluent readers.”
46
Meanwhile, reading comprehension based on Developing Reading Skills A practical guide to reading comprehension exercises,
“Understanding a written text means extracting the required information from it as efficiently as possible.”
47
Moreover, Susan E. Israel and Gerald G. Duffy asserted that, “Reading comprehension is only a subset of an ill-defined larger set of
knowledge that reflects the communicative interactions among the intentions of the authorspeaker, the content of the textmessage, the abilities
and purposes of the readerlistener, and the contextsituation of the interaction”.
48
Pang stated, “Reading is about understanding written text.”
49
It is a complex activity that involves both perception and thought. Reading
consists of two related processes such as word recognition and
comprehension. Word recognition refers to the process of perceiving how
written symbols correspond to one’s spoken language. Comprehension
refers to the understanding what is being said or read. When it comes to reading, it is an active process that should be developed if a learner
to become a proficient reader.
45
Edward David Allen and Rebecca M. Valette, op. cit., p. 249.
46
William Grabe and Fredricka L. Stoller, op.cit., p. 29
47
Francoise Grellet, Developing Reading Skills: A practical guide to reading comprehension exercise, London: Cambridge University Press, 1986, p. 3.
48
Susan E. Israel and Gerald G. Duffy, Handbook of Research on Reading Comprehension, New York: Routledge, 2009, p. 32.
49
Elizabeth Pang in Zainal Abidin Naning and Rita Hayati, The Correlation between Learning Style and Listening Achievement of English Education Study Program Students of
Sriwijaya University, Jurnal Holistics, vol 3 no. 5, 2011, p. 3.
Based on definition above, it can be said that reading and comprehension are two elements that cannot be separated each other. As the
result, reading comprehension is activities to understand writer ideas through interpretation of meaning and interaction with existing knowledge.
Meanwhile, asserted by Cathy Collins Block, Lori L. Rodgers and Rebecca B. Johnson, reading comprehension is an active process connected
to the thinking process, textual content and knowledge, expectations and purpose of reading.
50
In addition, Dorothy Piercey states that t he students’ ability to
comprehend the written language depends on their ability to understand what the writer says. Reading activities in contents areas about
comprehension depends on one’s ability: a To evaluate and make a judgment
b To distinguish between what an author offers as fact and the author’s opinion about those facts.
c To recognize the difference between what is fact and what is assumed to be fact.
d To compare e To categorize
f To grasp the explanation of a process g
To identify an author’s theme h To know characters
i To recognize a main idea and the data that support it j To distinguish between cause and effect
Comprehending requires the reader a To interpret
b To solve problem c To visualize
d To hypothesis e To observe and report
f To gather and organize data g To follow directions
h To draw conclusion i To predict outcomes.
51
50
Cathy Collins Block, Lori L. Rodgers and Rebecca B. Johnson, Comprehension Process Instruction: Creating Reading Success in Grades K-3, New York: Guilford Press, 2004, p. 3.
