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CHAPTER II THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
A. READING COMPREHENSION
1. The Understanding of Reading
Reading is one of the basic skills in learning a language. The term reading has many interpretations. As people have different purposes in reading, different
point of view about reading, different background knowledge about reading, so there are many definitions about it. For those reasons, reading can be defined in
various ways. According to Francoise Grellet in his book entitled Developing Reading Skills,
“Reading is a constant process of guessing, and what one brings to the text is often more important than what one finds in it.”
1
Based on the statement from Grellet, reading activity requires the readers to guess and predict
about the text is going to be about and the background knowledge had by the
reader about mutual thing contained in a text is also important.
Furthermore, Harmer through his book The Practice of English Language Teaching stated that,
Reading is an exercise dominated by the eyes and the brains. The eyes receive message and the brain then has to work out the significance of
these message. Unlike a listening text, a reading text moves at the speed of the reader except where the reader is trying to read an advertisement
that flashes past a train window. In other word, it is up to the reader to decide how fast he or she wants to or can read a text, whereas listeners
often have to do their best with a text whose speed is chosen by the speaker.
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Sandra Silberstein on her book Techniques and Resources in Teaching Reading
defined reading as complex processing skill, “Reading is a complex processing skill in which the reader interacts with text in order to recreate a
1
Francoise Grellet, Developing Reading Skills, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981, p. 7.
2
Jeremy Harmer, The Practice of English Language Teaching, New York: Longman, 1989, p. 190.
meaningful discourse.”
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Richard Allington and Michael Strange also defined, “Reading as decoding process with the reader processing each letter in turn,
producing the appropriate sounds, and forming words”
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Another experts, Savage and Mooney defined,
“Reading is a process of moving through printed language to meaning.
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According to Penny Ur, “Reading means reading and understanding A foreign language learner who says, I can read the words but I dont know what
they mean is not, therefore, reading, in this sense. He or she is merely decoding
– translating written symbols into corresponding sounds
”.
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Based on the definitions about reading above, reading can be defined as a process that requires people to read and to understand what they read. Reading is
also a complex skill that the people should do an interaction with text in order to
recreate or create a meaningful discourse.
2. The Kinds of Reading
Kategori