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English is required. By having good reading skills, learners will make greater progress and development in all other areas of learning. The following explanation
deals with the nature of reading, the important aspect of reading, the models of reading process and teaching reading skills.
a. The Nature of Reading
Reading can be viewed from three points, namely materials, products, and process. On the basis of materials, reading is an activity of decoding the information
from the author by the reader. As a product, reading affects information getting. It means that the more a reader reads the more information heshe gets. Reading is
viewed as a process for there is such information transfer in it. In this process, a reader employs hisher background, experience, linguistic competence and conceptual
framework in processing the information Hafni 1981: 1.
b. The important Aspect of Reading
It is stated by Gibson and Levin that the ability to read well is the basis for success in school and later. That statement is well accepted because we realize that
we can learn many things from books, newspapers, magazines novels and other written or printed materials. People learn history, science, arts and other knowledge
through books, thus the ability of reading well is needed 1979: 1.
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Only by reading a pupil can get the skill that he needs to practice and achieve the goal after leaving school. It is impossible that in our literate society reading does
not require an ability to read. Professional competence depends on it. Bright and Mc Gregor 1973: 52
c. Models of Reading Process
There are three models of reading processes: bottom-up, top-down, and interactive models.
1 Bottom-up models
Bottom up models typically consist of lower level reading processes which represent the more automatic linguistic processes and are typically viewed as more
skilled oriented. Bottom-up models suggest that all reading follows a mechanical pattern in which the reader creates piece by piece a mental translation of the
information in the text, with little interference from the reader’s background knowledge. Readers start with the fundamental basics of letters and sound
recognition, followed by word recognition, building up to the identification of grammatical structures, sentences and longer texts. As Gough cited by Pehrsson and
Robinson 1985: 6 says:
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The process begins when a reader look at each letter, produces an equivalent phoneme sound for each grapheme written symbol that
represent a phoneme, synthesizes these into words and eventually deals with the syntactic structure sentence, etc and meaning
intended by the writer.
When a reader comes to an unknown word, he she can sound out the word because of the knowledge of the individual units that make up the word. The blending
together of the various sounds allows the reader to move toward comprehension.
Comprehension
From the processes above, the reader employs strategies in the following orders: visual look at print, auditory ascertain sounds, and syntactic synthesize
words in to sentence. 2 Top-down Models
Comprehension
Figure 2.4: Bottom-up Model
Pehrsson and Robinson 1985: 6
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Top down models begin with the idea that comprehension resides in the reader. They assume that reading is primarily directed by reader goals and
expectation. The reader uses the background knowledge, makes expectation and searches the text to confirm or reject the expectation they have made. The mechanism
by which a reader would generate expectations is not clear, but a general monitoring mechanism might create these expectations.
According to Goodman as cited by Pehrsson and Robinson 1986:6, in this model the readers use strategies on the following orders: semantic predict meaning,
syntactic generate anticipated language possibilities to structure meaning and visual in combination with auditory confirm expectation.
3 Interactive Models The interactive models combine elements of bottom-up and top-down models
assuming that “a pattern is synthesized based on the information provided
Reading begins with Reader’s background knowledge
Figure 2.5: Top-down Model s
Pehrsson and Robinson 1985: 6
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simultaneously from several knowledge sources” Stanovich, 2000: 22. Therefore, word recognition needs to be fast and efficient, but background knowledge is the
major contributor to text understanding, as in inferencing and predicting what will come next in the text. An interactive approach to reading would include aspects of
both intensive and extensive reading. The readers need to be provided with shorter passages to teach specific reading skills and strategies explicitly. Likewise, they need
to be encouraged to read longer texts without an emphasis on testing their skills.
Rumelhart views that the reader makes use of whatever strategies are needed at given time Pehrsson and Robinson, 1985:6 as the writer cited from Inocentia’s
thesis 2005: 18. The reader may place semantic or syntactic strategies, but when necessary it will emphasize visual or auditory strategies. As a consequence, when the
text is difficult to understand and not highly predictable, a reader tends to read it more slowly and make greater use of the graphic information. Out of those models above,
Reader’s background knowledge
Individual letters and sounds
Figure 2.6: Interactive Approach to Reading
Pehrsson and Robinson 1985: 6 Comprehension
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Mitchell 1982: 2-3 as the writer cited from Inocentia’s thesis 2005: 18, argues that it is likely that different people read in different ways. Thus, the strategy depends on
the response they make to the text. As Gibson and Levin 1975: 438 state that:
“A skilled reader is very selective. Sometimes he skims, sometimes he skips and sometimes he concentrates. He plans his strategy, suiting
it to his interests, to the materials and to his purpose, which may be entertainment, searching the wants for job, reading someone else’s
text while typing it, cramming for a quiz, completing a Double- Crostic, to name but few of a million or so possibilities”.
The meaning of all theories is that readers can use whatever strategy in reading based on the time given. The reader may place their strategies in semantic
related to the meaning of word or syntactic related to the meaning of sentences, and when necessary the reader should emphasize their visual or auditory strategies.
As a consequence, the reader will read more slowly when the text is difficult to understand and is not highly predictable; they tend to use graphic information thus. In
addition, based on Mitchell, out of the models above he argues that it is likely that different people read in the different ways, the strategy depends on the response they
make to the text.
d. Teaching Reading Skills
