Kinds of reading activities

23 supposedly reduced by a focus on what one has understood Alderson, 2000, pp. 4-5.

b. Kinds of reading activities

Based on Sonka 1979, p.3, there are three kinds of reading activities. They are as follows. 1 Intensive reading Intensive reading is a reading activity that uses short reading text. Intensive reading is done in class and it requires the students’ detail understanding. Intensive reading lessons are whole-class activities during which teacher leads the students to apply to a common text those reading skills which they have already learned Mikulecky, 1990, p. 32. In intensive reading lesson, the right passage is crucial to its success. A teacher should take into account the interest, abilities, and goals of the students. 2 Extensive reading Urquhart and Weir 1998, p. 215 argue that extensive reading refers to either silent reading in the classroom or reading, which is done unsupervised in the library or at home, the aim being pleasure or practice, or both. Nuttal 1996, p. 127 as cited by Urquhart describes reading as the private world of the reader’s own interest and offers some valuable suggestions for organizing such activities. She argues that reading extensively is the easiest and the most effective way to improve reading and it is easier to teach in a climate where people enjoy the activity as well as value it for pragmatic reasons. Furthermore, Williams 1984, p.10 says that extensive reading is described as the relatively rapid reading of 24 long texts and emphasizes that it should normally be at the level of the students’ reading or below it. 3 Comprehension reading Comprehensive reading refers to the kind of activity, which involves the students’ previous background knowledge and put it together with the new passage or the new information. Barnitz 1985, p. 14 argues that a major factor in reading comprehension is the background knowledge or schemata of the reader. Background knowledge can influence the interpretation of the text by providing an overall context for the information being encoded, comprehended, and recalled. Smith 1975 in Content Area Reading states that the only effective and meaningful way in which anyone can learn is by attempting to relate new experiences to what he knows or believes already. In comprehensive reading, the readers are expected to comprehend the content of the passages or texts they read by connecting the background knowledge presumed by the author.

c. Reading skills