experience of the language and gives him a window onto the normal means of continuing his personal education.
4
Reading is such a pervasive activity that we all know what reading is, yet the term “reading” has not been clearly defined up to date. Reading
usually means dealing with language messages in written or printed form, it involves processing language messages, hence knowledge of language.
Widdow son 1979 defines reading as “the process of getting linguistic
information via print”. By talking about “getting information”, Widdowson appears to imply that this is a fairly one-way process from writer or text to
reader, although Widdowson would not want to appear to be implying this, since he has been an important advocate of the view that the reader interprets
and contributes to incoming messages. The problem is present in an ambiguity i
n Widdowson‟s definition. One would say that “linguistic information” is restricted to information about, say, syntax, morphology and lexis. Actually
the information can be of any kind that is encoded in language. So reading is “the process of receiving and interpreting information encoded in language
form via the medium of print”Urquhart Weir, 1998
5
2. Reading Comprehension
We define reading comprehension as the process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with
written language. We use the words extracting and constructing to emphasize both the importance and the insufficiency of the text as a determinant of
reading comprehension. Comprehension entails three elements: • The reader who is doing the comprehending
• The text that is to be comprehended
4
Peter Strevens, New Orientation in the Teaching of English, Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1997, p.26
5
Feng Liu, A Short Analysis of the Nature of Reading
,
School of Foreign Languages, Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Qingdao, China
,
Vol. 3, No. 3; September 2010
• The activity in which comprehension is a part.
In considering the reader, we include all the capacities, abilities, knowledge, and experiences that a person brings to the act of reading. Text is
broadly construed to include any printed text or electronic text. In considering activity, we include the purposes, processes, and consequences associated
with the act of reading. These three dimensions define a phenomenon that occurs within a larger socio-cultural context see Figure 1 that shapes and is
shaped by the reader and that interacts with each of the three elements.
6
The RRSG‟s RAND Reading Study Group thinking about reading comprehension was informed by a vision of proficient readers who are
capable of acquiring new knowledge and understanding new concepts, are capable of applying textual information appropriately, and are capable of
being engaged in the reading process and reflecting on what is being read. The RRSG began its thinking by defining the term reading comprehension as the
process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with written language. It consists of three
elements: the reader, the text, and the activity or purpose for reading. The RRSG developed a heuristic to show how these elements interrelate in reading
comprehension, an interrelationship that occurs within a larger socio-cultural context that shapes and is shaped by the reader and that interacts with each of
the elements iteratively throughout the process of reading.
7
From the opinion above, writer can conclude that reading comprehension is emphasis in understanding the meaning from the written
text. Readers should not comprehend everything from the text, but the messages or the ideas can be understood. Each paragraph can represent one
6
Catherine, Snow. Reading For Understanding, Pittsburg: RAND, 2002, p. 33
7
Ibid., p. 11
