Definition of Reading Reading

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CHAPTER II LITERATURES REVIEW

A. Reading

1. Definition of Reading

Reading is one of the most important factors in assesing a leaners’ linguistic competence. However, it is common problem for some students to complain their problem how to read effectively. Students still feel confused to find main idea of passage. Moreover, the teachers also find the difficulties in icreasing reading classes. Hence, the teachers should have some strategies and techniques for teaching reading effectively. Reffering to the importance of reading above, there are some definitions of reading according to some experts. Richard 1997: 6 defines reading as a powerful activity that gives knowledge, insight, and perspective on readers. It means reading is powe rful activity in getting knowledge, insight, and the reader’s perspective. Reading is a process of mentally interpreting written symbols. According Walance 1992: 4 reading is interpreting. It means reacting to a written text as a piece of communication. Then, Nunan 1998: 23 states that reading is a process of decoding written symbols, working from a smaller unit individual letters to large ones words, clauses, and sentences. Davies 1995: 1 states that reading is a mental, or cognitive, process which involves a reader in trying to follow and respond to a message from the writer who is distance in space and time. commit to user 9 On the other case, Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary in Bernhardt 1991: 5 offers several definitions of reading, those are; 1 to receive or to take in the sense of as letters or symbols by scanning; 2 to understand the meaning of written or printed matter, and 3 to attribute a meaning or interpretation to something read. Later on, Eddie 1977: 5 defines reading is the ability of an individually necessary to recognize a visual form, associate the form with a sound and or meaning acquired in the past, and on the basis of past experience, understand and interpret in meaning. From the theories above, it could be inferred that reading is a process to decode the written symbol which involves a reader in understanding and attribute the information from a text to build meaning as a piece of communication between the reader and writer. Basically, the goal of reading is building comprehension. Comprehension is the process of deriving meaning from connected text, so it is not passive process but an active one. Moreover, comprehension is an understanding of a written text or extracting the required ideas from it as efficiently as possible. Students’ comprehension is needed in reading activity, by comprehending a text, the students will understand the writers’ message in their writing. There are five roles of students in comprehending a text, according to Nuttall 1996: 33 as follows: a taking an active part in learning, reading is learnt rather than taught and only the learners can do learning; b monitoring comprehension, to monitor their own comprehension, if they do not understand a text, find out why and adopt a strategy that will improve the matter; c learning text talk, a good reader carries commit to user 10 on a dialogue with the text; d taking risk, they have got to take the risk of making mistakes and they won’t learn much if they don’t do this; and e learning not to cheat oneself, it certainly leads to personal development, interest and enjoyment, students who don’t want to learn can easily cheat on many of the activities. On the other hand, Spiro in Burns, et al., 1996: 150 emphasizes on two processes of comprehension; text-based process and knowledge based text. Firstly, text-based processes are those in which the reader primarily extracts information from text, and secondly, knowledge-based texts are those in which reader brings prior knowledge and experience to bear on the interpretation of the materials. Later on, there are four basic levels of reading comprehension according to Burs, et al,. 1996: 177, namely: a. Literal Reading The basic for literal reading is recognizing stated main ideas, details, cause, effect, and sequences. It is important because it as a prerequisite of higher level understanding. b. Interpretative Reading At this level, students are expected to obtain the author’s purposes such as detect moods of the author, make conclusion of his writing, find mind ideas and cause effect relationship when such factors are not explicitly stated. c. Critical Reading commit to user 11 In this case, the students are expected to evaluate the written material, comparing the ideas discovered with standard and drawing conclusion about the accuracy, appropriateness, and timeliness. d. Creative Reading. On tis stage, it involves the materials presented by the author. It requires the students or the readers to think as they read.

2. Micro and Macro Skills of Reading