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variety of interesting activities are important to make the learning enjoyable. Third, the teacher should give clear directions so that the students will know both the
teacher’s expectations and their responsibility. Fourth, the teacher should give students cues to help elicit the correct response rather than supply immediate answer
or call on another student when a student fails to answer. Fifth, the teacher is encouraged to use any teaching tools which support the learning.
2 Psychological Considerations
Regarding the psychology of the learner, the teacher should consider some points. First, in planning learning activities, he should consider the development of
the students’ character, not their grade level. Second, he encourages the students to listen when another student is attempting to contribute some ideas to a discussion.
Third, whatever contribution a student is able to make, even if his answer is incomplete, the teacher should be able to recognize.
c. Teaching Reading Comprehension
Previously, teaching reading simply emphasized accurate and fluent pronunciation. Today, a dominant goal of reading is comprehension. This means the
ability to find meaning in what is read McNeil, 1980: 129. The idea of gaining understanding, meaning, or knowledge from reading is emphasized.
There are two specific comprehension skills and techniques that help students understand what they are reading McNeil, 1980: 129-130. The first is
literal comprehension by which the skill helps the students deal with explicitly
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stated information. At this level, to comprehend means they must have vocabulary knowledge, know how to follow the structure of the passage and know how to locate
answers to specific questions. The second is inferential comprehension. It requires
the student’s understanding in order to find meanings of what is read. Therefore, they need to possess a general ability to reason with the information presented, to be aware
of linguistic clues, and to draw from personal experiences to what author has written. Comprehension is the main goal of today’s reading program. Each teacher is
expected to develop a set of reading program which facilitates the students in gaining the comprehension. To do this, Rouch and Birr 1984: 4-6 propose six factors
affecting students’ comprehension which can be teacher’s guideline in developing his reading program.
1 Difficulty of Materials
A teacher should be aware of the readability levels of the written materials being used in the classroom. He or she needs to check whether students are having problems in
understanding what is being read. Giving them too difficult materials can make them frustrated and lose motivation.
2 Grouping for instructional materials
For the success of comprehension development, students need to be grouped based on the reading ability level.
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3 Interest
To develop the students’ reading comprehension skill, the selection of written materials should consider their interest. The students’ interests are varied. Therefore,
various materials can help students enjoy the reading. 4
Background of experiences Developing the background will help students to understand the concept included in
the written materials. Comprehension involves an abstract thinking process based upon understanding of concrete facts. Students cannot fully grasp the meaning of the
sentence unless they truly understand the concept of certain things. The understanding can be accomplished through discussion or by presenting pictures or
story reading. In many instances the real experiences of the students can be related to the written materials.
5 Purpose for reading
Students should understand the purpose for reading before they start reading. It can be established in many ways, such as discussion about the materials, student’s
experiences related to the topic and benefit they can take from the reading material. 6
Reading rate Children should learn to adjust their speed of reading to the purpose for reading; thus,
two points need to be considered. First, speed of reading should not be a concern until the students have mastered the decoding skills. Otherwise, the students might be
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frustrated. Second, there is no one speed of reading. It means different materials need different speed of reading.
2. Language Experience Approach
