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11 Reading performance in classroom activity can be classified into oral
and silent performance. The first deals with pronunciation skill and the latter with intensive and extensive performance. Intensive reading performance
focuses on linguistic and semantic details of a passage. Intensive reading calls students’ attention to grammatical forms, discourse markers, and other surface
structure details for the purpose of understanding literal meaning, implications, rhetorical relationships, and the like.
Extensive reading performance has to do with general understanding of a text, usually longer text book, long article, or essays, etc..
c. Reading Comprehension Skill
Comprehension takes place when a person is reading. It needs a set of skills that let her find the information and able to understand it. Grellet 1998:
3 states that reading comprehension means extracting the required information from it as efficiently as possible. And according to Smith and
Robinson 1980: 54, reading comprehension is the understanding, evaluating, and utilizing of information and idea gained through an interaction between
the reader and author. Kennedy 1981: 192 defines reading comprehension as a thought
process through which readers become aware of an idea, understand it in terms of their experiential background and interpret it in relation to their own needs
and purpose. Husein and Postlethwaithe 1994: 4940-4941 state that reading comprehension is an extraction of certain meaning from text by the reader. It
is an adaptive that is a dynamic process where the reader applies different
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12 cognitive strategies according to both their aims and the given situational
context. This idea is supported by Yoakam in Smith and Dechant, 1961: 213. He says that comprehending reading matter involves the correct association of
meanings with word symbols, the evaluation of meanings which are suggested in context, the selection of the correct meaning, the organization of ideas as
they are read, the retention of these ideas and their use in some present or future activity.
Kustaryo in Widiastuti, 2003: 18 states that reading comprehension skill cannot be completely isolated because they are so interrelated that one
skill depends on some degree on another skill. In a broader sense comprehension could be divided into three levels of skills, namely:
1 Literal Comprehension Literal reading refers to the ideas and facts that are directly stated on
the printed page. Literal reading places much emphasis on what a writer says. It requires ability to locate specific facts, to identify happenings that
are described directly, to find answers to questions based on given facts, to classify or categorize information given and to summarize the details
expressed in a selection. 2 Inferential Comprehension
Inferential reading is referred as reading between the lines. It means that if students want to get inferences, implied meaning, from the reading
material one must read between lines. Inferences are ideas a reader receives when he goes beneath the surface to the sense relationships, put
facts and ideas together to draw conclusions and make generalizations, and
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13 detects the mood of the material. Making inferences requires more
thinking on one’s part because one must depend less on the author and more on personal insight. Finding what a writer says is not always enough.
3 Critical Comprehension Critical reading requires higher degree of skill development and
perception. Critical reading requires reading with an inquiring mind and with active, creative looking for false statement by making judgment. It
means questioning, comparing, evaluating and appreciating.
d. Approaches to Reading
