7
meaning for themselves as they think of the writer’s text.
4
In addition, Alderson emphasizes that knowing the process of reading means knowing the
main characteristic of reading.
5
Thus, reading is a bit complex process than people had thought previously.
Based on the point of views above, reading is a process to get an information from a text, to make an explanation, and to make a conclusion of
that information which it needs understanding to rebuild the meaning of the text continually as the reader read the text.
2. The Kinds of Reading
Students will need to experience variety of reading tasks to the kinds of reading they plan in the target language in order to be independent
language users. Mostly, teachers want their students to develop reading ability by reading short texts. Besides, students also need to develop their
reading abilty by reading longer texts. Nuttal describes this case as intensive reading and extensive reading.
Intensive reading includes the text used under the close advice of the teacher or under the advice of a duty which power students to pay huge
attention to the text. The goal of intensive reading is to reach detailed understandng of the text, not only what it means, but also how the meaning is
produced. Meanwhile, extensive reading is in order to understand the whole book, students must be able to understand the components of text such as the
sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. Teachers do not have to pay little attention for longer texts which are used in the classroom. Skimming and
scanning can train the practice on reading longer texts.
6
Besides intensive reading and extensive reading, there are also skimming and scanning. Skimming is the ability to find main idea from a
4
Ibid., p. 38.
5
J. Charles Alderson, Assessing Reading, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 3.
6
Nuttall, op. cit., p. 23.
8
passage, meanwhile, scanning is the ability to search particular information.
7
When skimming, readers read the passage quickly to get something important of it or to get the writer’s notion of it. As Mather and McCarthy state that
readers will jump some sentences or paragraphs because the goal of skimming is to get a short description quickly in order to recognize the main
ideas.
8
It means that skimming is to underline the important points from a passage. When scanning, readers only search particular information of the
passage as quickly as possible until they get what they are looking for. According to Pavlik, “Scanning is a technique for finding facts. It finds
simple answers to questions such as: Which? What kind? How many? Where?”
9
It means that scanning is to mark what readers need in the passage. The writer concludes that intensive reading and extensive reading are
compliment each other. Teachers have to pay much attention to extensive reading as well as intensive reading. Teachers can not ignore the extensive
reading if they want their students be skilled readers.
3. The Strategies of Reading
Before reading a text, students need to take some strategies to be a smart reader in order to understand it easily. Sometimes, students have lack of
preparation to read a text and it makes them get confused. Lewin has proposed some strategies to make reading easier to be both understood and
comprehended. Those strategies are: a.
Focus strategies: selectively attend to significant information. b.
Information-gathering strategies: acquire needed new information. c.
Self-regulating strategies: monitor one’s own construction of meaning metacognition.
d. Generating strategies: produce new information, meanings, ideas, and
summaries.
7
Team of Five, Improving Reading Skill in English for University Students, Jakarta: Kencana, 2006, p. 40.
8
Peter Mather and Rita McCarthy, Reading and All That Jazz, Tuning Up Your Reading, Thinking, and Study Skills, New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 2007, p. 531.
9
Cheryl Pavlik, Read Smart 3, New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 2004, p. 2.
