The Significance of the Study

When people read, they try to find and comprehend the meaning in order to get the information based on their own perception because they want to give. Alderson states that, “’Read’ implies that we know what it means to read, to process text meaning through some process of interaction with print.” 3 It means that on reading activity, people communicate through the text that has printed and typed. In this communication there are many various symbols and language that written to transfer the information. In order to comprehend the text, people have to use a lot of skill in reading activity. Richard Allington and Strange point out the definition of reading, “Reading is an active cognition process that does indeed require using graphic letters and phonic sounds information; but for fluent readers particularly, the language-based cues-semantic meaning and syntactic grammar - seem far away more important than graphic and phonic cues.” 4 It means on reading, there are many skills that includes such as the letter and the sounds. Being the fluent reader to get more comprehensible, people also should know the semantic and syntactic of the language. In other words, reading includes many processing skills that are coordinated each other. Jeremy Harmer states these specialist skills on reading process, “The specialist skills are predictive skills, extracting specific information, getting the general picture, extracting detailed information, recognizing function and discourse patterns, and deducing meaning from context.” 5 On the predictive skills mean the readers have to predict first what they are going to read and could analyze the content to their prediction. While in the extracting specific information, the readers just have to find out the specific information that they need. Not only that, they also have to be able to see a general idea, and detailed information. On reading, the readers must follow the plot and identify 3 J. Charles Alderson, Assessing Reading, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 3. 4 Richard Allington and Michael Strange, Learning Through Reading in the Content Areas, Lexington: D. C. Health and Company, 1980, p. 16. 5 Jeremy Harmer, The Practice of English Language Teaching, New York: Longman, 1996, pp. 183- 4. the cohesion of the reading and then deduce the meaning of unfamiliar words from the context. From the theories above, it can be concluded that reading is an active process of communication that involves the writer and the reader interaction through the text. It is a communication that the reader wants to understand the writer’s idea by using some strategies. The reader has to use strategies, because in reading, there are a lot of symbols and letters that should be comprehend.

2. Reading Comprehension

Reading comprehension is a process of reading after decoding the text. To comprehend the text, the reader needs a lot of effort because every people have different background knowledge. There are some people would have a broader background knowledge while some others do not. It makes people have to glide over the text. Many experts state that reading comprehension is a complex activity and a complicated process. As Larry Lewin states that, “Accomplished readers like most of us have become so good at it through a lifetime of practice that it’s easy to forget tough it really is, how complicated the comprehension process is.” 6 It means that to comprehend the text, people would have a complicated process through a lifetime practice. They may use a lot of skill, strategies, and aptitude towards constructing the meaning from the text. Moreover, Naomi Flynn and Stainthorp explain that, “In much educational literature the term „reading comprehension’ is often used to depict the understanding of texts to differentiate this activity from comprehension of language when listening.” 7 It means that reading comprehension is not same activity with listening comprehension. 6 Larry Lewin, Paving the Way in Reading and Writing, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003, pp. 2-3. 7 Naomi Flynn and Rhona Stainthorp, The Learning and Teaching of Reading and Writing, Chichester: John Wiley Sons Ltd., 2006, p. 51.