students should be able to convey the meaning of the text and grasp the information and the message in it.
There are some specific skills involved in reading comprehension. Heaton 1991:105 states that reading comprehension deals with word comprehension,
sentence comprehension, paragraph comprehension, and text comprehension that support it. In other words, it can be said that the first step in reading is to comprehend
the words’ meaning in each sentence. After knowing the words’ meaning from a sentence, the readers have to try to understand the meaning of the whole sentence. By
understanding the meaning of all sentences the readers are able to comprehend what a paragraph tells them about. At last, by comprehending paragraph by paragraph, the
readers are able to comprehend the whole text easily. Thus, the readers will get the information and the message of the text easily.
The following section focuses on the review about word comprehension, sentence comprehension, paragraph comprehension, and text comprehension.
2.1.1 Word Comprehension
Comprehending word is the first step in comprehending sentences. Grellet 1996:15 states that some of the facts and ideas may probably be skipped by the
readers, when he does not understand the meaning of some words in the passage. In addition, Fairbrain and Winch 1996:9 say that the readers will know what the
sentence means when they know the meaning of individual words and how they are put together in a language. It means that comprehending word meaning is very
important since they give the readers clues to comprehend the sentence meaning. Moreover, the readers also have to know how the words are organized in order to
understand the part of speech that can help them comprehend the meaning precisely. Comprehending word meaning is very helpful in reading comprehension.
Grellet 1996:7 states that in the very beginning, students should be taught to use what they know to understand unknown elements, whether these are ideas or simple
words. Thus, it can be assumed that words’ meaning often bring signal in
understanding unknown element. They bring the students to comprehend the text and help them get the message of the text easier. Moreover, Westwood 2001:10 states
that in order to understand a text, a reader must be able to identify words rapidly, know the meaning of almost all of the words, and be able to combine units of
meaning into a coherent message. In conclusion, we can say that the importance of comprehending word meaning cannot be denied in the process of reading a text.
In this research, the word comprehension questions were given to measure the students’ ability in gaining the word meaning. For example, there is a statement
“
Sangkuriang was worried because he hunted no deer all day long”. The synonym of
the word “worried” of that statement is “anxious”. Based on the statement, it can be created a question like “What is the similar meaning of the underlined word?” and
the answer can be “anxious”.
2.1.2 Sentence Comprehension
