sentences of the text using their brain into a meaningful whole.
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It means that comprehending a text needs active readers to analyze and process words and
sentences to construct an appropriate meaning by connecting to their background knowledge, personal experience and vocabulary mastery to get a meaningful
understanding of the text.
5. Strategies for Reading Comprehension
A message of written text can be properly received by the readers with varying degrees of comprehending. Readers who have good skills in
comprehension will easily construct the meaning of the text. However, being good comprehensive readers is not easy because sometimes they face some reading
problems which can disturb their comprehension. There are several essential comprehension strategies for the readers to improve their reading
comprehension.
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a. Using Prior Knowledge In order to comprehend a text, students need to integrate their new information
from the text with their background knowledge related to the text. b. Asking and Answering Questions
When reading, making some questions and reading to answer the questions are reading activities in improving their ability to get significant details from the
text. By asking some questions related to the text, the students will more pay attention to the information to answer the questions.
c. Determining What is Important The purpose of reading is getting information. However, most texts contain so
much information which sometimes make students confuse what information should they get from the text. In this case, students need to deny the
unimportant information and focus on the most significant information from the text based on their purpose of reading.
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Jane Oakhill, et al., Understanding and Teaching Reading Comprehension: A Handbook, New York: Routledge, 2015, p. 1.
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Raymond Philippot, and Michael F. Graves, Fostering Comprehension in English Classes, New York: The Guilford Press, 2009, pp. 107—115.
d. Summarizing Students need to summarize of what they read using their own words by
selecting the important ideas and choosing significant detailed from the text. Practice in summarizing a text may lead the students to improve their skill in
understanding a reading text. e. Making Inferences
Sometimes, many texts have unstated ideas which require the readers to construct the full meaning of the text. Therefore, in this strategy, students infer
the meaning of what they read when the ideas of the text are not explicitly stated. Inferring the meaning of the text can be done by using information
from the text and students’ existing schemata to fill in information. f.
Dealing with Graphic Information Sometimes, a text consists of illustrations, graphs, maps, or diagrams.
Students need to pay special attention to the graphic information because they often provide key points that students can use to support them in
understanding the message of the text. g. Imaging
When imaging, it is necessary for students to create mental pictures of the text. The imaging consists of graphically organizing key ideas of the text. Imaging
can help students to visualize what they read so that they easily have fully understanding of the text.
h. Monitoring Comprehension To achieve greater comprehension of texts, students need to monitor their
comprehension by considering their desire to gain from a text and their understanding of the text. Students can monitor their comprehension by asking
them some questions such as “Am I understand what the author is saying? What can I do to increase my understanding?” Students can reread the text to
build meaning and they can use dictionary if they face unfamiliar words during the rereading.
