Strategies of Reading Testing Technique for Reading

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4. Strategies of Reading

Grellet 1998: 4 offers some strategies in reading as follows: a. Scanning Scanning is quickly going through a text to find a particular piece of information. The readers only try to locate specific information ex: name, a date, etc and do not follow the linearity of the passage. b. Skimming Skimming is quickly running one’s eyes over a text to get the gist of it. It is more through activity which requires an overall view of the text and implies a definite reading competence. c. Extensive Reading Extensive reading is reading longer text, usually for one’s pleasure. This is a fluency activity mainly involving global understanding. Reader has general understanding without necessarily reading every word. d. Intensive Reading Intensive reading is reading shorter texts to extract specific information. This is more an accuracy activity involving reading for detail. Readers are expected to understand everything they read and to be able to answer detailed vocabulary and comprehension questions. From the theories above, it can be concluded that there are four strategies of reading, such as: scanning, skimming, extensive reading, and intensive reading. Scanning is used to find a particular piece of information. Skimming is used to get the gist and see what a content of text is about. commit to user 16 Extensive reading is a fluency activity mainly involving global understanding. Meanwhile, Intensive reading is more an accuracy activity involving reading for detail.

5. Testing Technique for Reading

According to Madsen 1983: 76-79 test of reading comes in a wide variety of forms and evaluate a broad spectrum of reading activities. These range from pre-reading concerns learning the Romans alphabet, for example, or word- attack skills to reading comprehension, reading speed, and skimming techniques. Advanced and more specialized applications include translation, reading aloud, and reading literature. He also states that there is no need to test comprehension of an essay if students still have difficulty in understanding a sentence. Sentence comprehension must precede essay comprehension. Some sentence level comprehension items are good for beginning students. Here are the techniques for testing reading comprehension. a Testing sentence comprehension 1 Picture cues We will start with question that simply asks for the right picture to be circled. 2 Phrases and sentences cues One of the simplest forms of sentences comprehension is the true-false sentence. commit to user 17 b Testing passage comprehension 1 Question techniques for beginners There are two useful approaches for testing beginning students who can read simple passages. One of these is true-false items and the other is the matching techniques. 2 Question techniques for more advanced students There are two useful approaches for testing advanced students. The first is standard multiple-choice and the second is multiple-choice cloze.

6. Reading Comprehension