7
meaning for themselves as they think of the writer’s text.
4
In addition, Alderson emphasizes that knowing the process of reading means knowing the
main characteristic of reading.
5
Thus, reading is a bit complex process than people had thought previously.
Based on the point of views above, reading is a process to get an information from a text, to make an explanation, and to make a conclusion of
that information which it needs understanding to rebuild the meaning of the text continually as the reader read the text.
2. The Kinds of Reading
Students will need to experience variety of reading tasks to the kinds of reading they plan in the target language in order to be independent
language users. Mostly, teachers want their students to develop reading ability by reading short texts. Besides, students also need to develop their
reading abilty by reading longer texts. Nuttal describes this case as intensive reading and extensive reading.
Intensive reading includes the text used under the close advice of the teacher or under the advice of a duty which power students to pay huge
attention to the text. The goal of intensive reading is to reach detailed understandng of the text, not only what it means, but also how the meaning is
produced. Meanwhile, extensive reading is in order to understand the whole book, students must be able to understand the components of text such as the
sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. Teachers do not have to pay little attention for longer texts which are used in the classroom. Skimming and
scanning can train the practice on reading longer texts.
6
Besides intensive reading and extensive reading, there are also skimming and scanning. Skimming is the ability to find main idea from a
4
Ibid., p. 38.
5
J. Charles Alderson, Assessing Reading, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 3.
6
Nuttall, op. cit., p. 23.
