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deals with one category of information, and all students must communicate their information to one another to come up with the best plan for the trip Knutson,
1998. 9.
Online tasks Online task is a kind of online learning that uses computer and internet as
the medium. The computer is merely the vehicle that provides the processing capability and delivers the instruction to learners Clark, 2001 as cited in Ally,
n.d. Online learning is an educational material that is presented on a computer Carliner, 1999 as cited in Ally, n.d. Khan 1997 as cited in Ally, n.d defines
online instruction as an innovative approach for delivering instruction to a remote audience, using the Web as the medium. The aims of Online learning are to access
learning materials; to interact with the content, instructor, and other learners; and to obtain support during the learning process, in order to acquire knowledge, to
construct personal meaning, and to grow from the learning experience.
4. Theory on reading
The theory of reading presents three major kinds. They are the process of reading, kinds of reading activities, comprehension in reading, reading skills, and
problems in reading.
a. The Process of Reading
The number of different theories of reading is simply overwhelming: what it is, how it is acquired and taught, how reading in a second language differs from
reading in a first language, how reading relates to other cognitive and perceptual
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abilities, how it interfaces with memory. All these aspects are important, but will probably never be brought together into coherent and comprehensive account of
what it is we do when we read. When we consider the complexities of analyzing the texts: since the nature of what we read must have some relation to how we
read Alderson, 2000, p. 1. The process of reading is what we meant by ‘reading’ proper: the
interaction between a reader and the text. The ‘reader’ is presumably also ‘thinking’ about what he is reading: what it means to him, how it relates to other
things he has read, to things he knows, to what he expects to come next in the texts like this. He is presumably thinking about how useful, entertaining, boring,
crazy, the text is. Evidently, many different things can be going on when a reader reads: the process is likely to be dynamic, variable, and different for the same
reader on the same text at a different time or with a different purpose in reading Alderson, 2000, p.3.
Understanding the process of reading is presumably important to an understanding of the nature of reading, but at the same time it is evidently a
difficult thing to do Alderson, 2000, p. 4. The process is normally silent, internal, private. It is sometimes said that, although different readers may engage
in very different reading processes, the understanding they end up with will be similar. Thus, although there may be many different ways of reaching a given
understanding, what matters is not how you reach that understanding, but the fact that you reach it, or, to put it another way, what understanding you do reach. The
problem of potentially infinite variation in processes of interpreting text is then
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supposedly reduced by a focus on what one has understood Alderson, 2000, pp. 4-5.
b. Kinds of reading activities