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passage, meanwhile, scanning is the ability to search particular information.
7
When skimming, readers read the passage quickly to get something important of it or to get the writer’s notion of it. As Mather and McCarthy state that
readers will jump some sentences or paragraphs because the goal of skimming is to get a short description quickly in order to recognize the main
ideas.
8
It means that skimming is to underline the important points from a passage. When scanning, readers only search particular information of the
passage as quickly as possible until they get what they are looking for. According to Pavlik, “Scanning is a technique for finding facts. It finds
simple answers to questions such as: Which? What kind? How many? Where?”
9
It means that scanning is to mark what readers need in the passage. The writer concludes that intensive reading and extensive reading are
compliment each other. Teachers have to pay much attention to extensive reading as well as intensive reading. Teachers can not ignore the extensive
reading if they want their students be skilled readers.
3. The Strategies of Reading
Before reading a text, students need to take some strategies to be a smart reader in order to understand it easily. Sometimes, students have lack of
preparation to read a text and it makes them get confused. Lewin has proposed some strategies to make reading easier to be both understood and
comprehended. Those strategies are: a.
Focus strategies: selectively attend to significant information. b.
Information-gathering strategies: acquire needed new information. c.
Self-regulating strategies: monitor one’s own construction of meaning metacognition.
d. Generating strategies: produce new information, meanings, ideas, and
summaries.
7
Team of Five, Improving Reading Skill in English for University Students, Jakarta: Kencana, 2006, p. 40.
8
Peter Mather and Rita McCarthy, Reading and All That Jazz, Tuning Up Your Reading, Thinking, and Study Skills, New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 2007, p. 531.
9
Cheryl Pavlik, Read Smart 3, New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 2004, p. 2.
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e. Organizing strategies: track new information, construct and sort
meaning, and enhance retention.
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Those reading strategies can help students achieve one thing, that is understanding the text as easy as possible. On the other side, not all students
can construct perfect understanding and comprehending of a text with just the first reading. For those students who experience it, they will reread the text.
In addition, Lewin also proposes some reading repair strategies to get better understanding of a text. Those strategies as below:
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a. Reread an important part slowly to really get it.
b. Read a passage aloud softly to hear the words spoken.
c. Find out for sure which event happened before or after another
event. d.
Reread a key passage to see if you agree or disagree with it. e.
What do you think of the author’s decision to fill in something specific to the text in question?
f. Hunt for a key vocabulary word in its context to determine its
meaning. g.
Skim for evidence to prove or disprove that fill in something specific to the text in question.
h. Reread the title and change it to something better.
i. Return to the part where fill in something specific to the text in
question and look for some important insight. Those reading repair strategies can help students to recall information
from the first reading previously. They are great help to build better understanding of text. Good readers realize that go back to the text to read
again can increase understanding.
10
Larry Lewin, Paving the Way Reading and Writing: Strategies and Activities to Support Struggling Students in Grades 6-12, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003, p. 21.
11
Ibid., p. 49.
