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9
CHAPTER II REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURES
A. Theoretical Description 1. Reading Competence
a. Definition of Reading
William 1996: 2 defines reading as a process whereby someone looks at and understands what has been written. Along with the definition it is said
that reading involves processing language messages, a process of receiving and interpreting information encoded in language via the medium of print
Urguhart, 1998: 15. According to Nunan 2003, 68 reading is a fluent process of readers combining information from a text and their own
background knowledge to build meaning. Moreover, Dechant and Smith 1977: 237 explain that an effective
reading should include not only a literal comprehension of an author’s word, but also an interpretation of his mood, tone, feeling, and attitude. It means that
reading for comprehension skill is not only merely the ability to recognize words and sentences but the intention of the writer as well. When people read
something they understand it at three levels. First, the purely literal responding to the graphic signals only with little depth of understanding, the second level
at which the reader recognizes the author’s meaning and the third level where the reader’s own personal experiences and judgments influence his response to
the text.
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10 On the other hand, there is a definition of reading stating that there are
three basic definitions of reading. The first definition states that learning to read means learning to pronounce words. The second definition says that
learning to read means learning to identify words and get their meaning. And the third definition explains that learning to read means learning to bring
meaning to a text in order to get meaning from it httpwww.ncrel.orgsdrsaresissuescontentcntaresreading li7lkl.htm
So, it can be concluded that there are two types of reading. They are reading aloud of written material and reading for comprehension.
b. Types of Reading Performance
Reading aloud of written material is also called oral performance but reading for comprehension is recognized as silent performance. Reading aloud
is closer to pronunciation than to comprehension. The reader shares information that the members of the audience want. The real life purpose of
reading aloud to others is to convey information to them, to entertain them, or to share a good story that they do not have.
Brown 2001: 312 shows a chart of classroom reading performance as follows:
Classroom Reading Performance Oral
Silent Intensive
Extensive Linguistic Content Skimming Scanning Global
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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
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