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reports, professional journal articles, reference materials dictionaries, et cetera, textbooks, thesis, essays, papers, test directions, editorials and opinion writing.
2 Job – related reading
Job – related reading is a reading activity which involves texts related to any
activities in a job. Some written works that can be used for job
– related reading are message e.g. phone messages, letter or emails, memos e.g. inter office, reports e.g. job
evaluations, project reports, schedules, labels, signs, announcement, forms, applications, questionnaires, financial documents bills, invoice, etc, directories
telephone, office, etc, manuals and directions. 3
Personal Reading Personal reading is a reading that is closely related to reading for personal
interest. Some written works that can be used for personal reading are newspapers, magazines, letters, emails, greeting cards, invitations, messages,
notes, lists, schedules train, bus, plane, etc, recipes, menus, maps, calendars, advertisements commercials, want ads, novels, short stories, jokes, drama,
poetry, financial document e.g. checks, tax forms, loan applications, forms, questionnaires medical reports, immigration documents, comic strips and
cartoons. With regard to the explanation above, there are three genres in reading. They
are academic reading, job- related reading and personal reading. They enable readers to apply a certain strategy that assist them in constructing appropriate
meanings.
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d. Micro and Macro-Skills of Reading
Brown 2004:187 proposes fourteen micro and macro skills of reading. These skills are required to become an efficient reader. The micro- skills that are
suggested by Brown include seven items which are presented as follows. a.
Discriminating among the distinctive graphemes and orthographic patterns of English.
b. Retaining chunks of language of different length in short term memory.
c. Processing writing at an efficient rate speed to suit the purpose.
d. Recognizing a core of words, and interpreting word order patterns and
their significance. e.
Recognizing grammatical word classes nouns, verbs, etc, system e.g. tense, agreement, pluralization, patterns, rules, and elliptical forms.
f. Recognizing that a particular meaning may be expressed in different
grammatical forms. g.
Recognizing cohesive devices in written discourse and their role in signaling the relationship between and among clauses.
h. Recognizing the rhetorical forms of written discourse and their
significance for interpretation. i.
Recording the communicative function of written text, according to form and purpose.
j. Inferring context that is not explicit by using background knowledge.
k. Describing events, ideas, etc, inferring link and connection between evens,
deducing cause and effect, and detecting such relations as main idea,
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supporting idea, new information, given information, generalization and exemplification.
l. Distinguishing between literal and implied meanings.
m. Detecting culturally specific references and interpreting them in a context
of the appropriate cultural schemata. n.
Developing and using battery of reading strategies, such as scanning and skimming, detecting discourse markers, guessing the meaning of words
from context, and activating schemata for the interpretation of text.
2. The Nature of Reading Comprehension
a. Definition of Reading Comprehension
To make clearer about what is meant by reading comprehension, it is important for the researcher to discuss the definitions. There are various
definitions suggested by experts. Lenz 2007 says that reading comprehension is the process of constructing meaning from text. He explains that the aim of all
reading instruction is ultimately targeted at helping a reader comprehend text. Reading comprehension involves at least two people: the reader and the writer.
The process of comprehending involves decoding the writer’s words and then using background knowledge to construct an approximate understanding of the
writer’s message. Furthermore, Pressley 2001:1 defines reading as often thought of as a
hierarchy of skills, from processing of individual letters and their associated sound to word recognition to text-processing competencies. He clarifies that skilled
