Significance of the Research

Reading is one of receptive skills that must be fulfilled in learning a language. There are some definitions about reading proposed by some experts. Johnson 2008: 3 has some definitions related to reading. He defines reading as presented below. 1 The practice of using a text to create meanings. 2 A constantly developing skill. 3 Integrating visual and non-visual information. 4 The act of linking one idea to another. Accordingly, when there is no meaning being created, no effective reading occurs. Reading is also a skill which can be improved by doing a lot of practices. The more people read, the better their reading skills are. During the process of reading, the visual information that is acquired from the texts and the pictures if provided will be processed with the non- visual information that is created by the reader’s mind. Furthermore while reading the reader links the information in the text with hisher schemata or background knowledge in order to catch the meanings from the text. Urquhart and Weir 1998: 22 in Grabe 2009 present another definition of reading i.e. “the process of receiving and interpreting information encoded in language form via the medium of print”. This process involves constructing and dealing with meanings from a written text. Patel and Jain 2008: 114 state that “reading is not only a source of information and a pleasurable activity, but also as a means of consolidating and extending one’s knowledge of the language”. By reading, the learners can gain a lot of valuable information about the world and the language as well. They consider reading as the most important activity in any language class. The definition above suggests that reading is a process of getting and understanding meanings from a written text. When the readers gain the information of a text, they try to relate it with their existing knowledge. For that reason, each person has different interpretation of the same text. The readers can improve their knowledge and insight by doing more reading exercises. There are many opinions about how the reading process occurs. Generally, there are three models of reading namely bottom-up models, top-down models, and interactive models. 1 Bottom-up models of reading Karlin 1984: 47 states that according to bottom-up theories of reading, reading occurs as the readers focus on sequence of individual letters, letter combinations, words, and larger units such as phrases. Readers begin with the lowest level from which the symbols are identified. These graphic representations are transformed into sounds of the language or speech. If the readers are able to comprehend that conversion graphic symbols into sounds as a part of their language experiences, they tend to understand what they read. According to bottom-up models, reading is a process of translating graphic symbols into speech during oral reading or into inner speech during silent reading Harris and Sipay, 1985:8. Sensory and perceptual processes are done first and cognitive processes follow. The reader picks up graphic information from the printed materials letters or words, then syntactic and semantic processes occur. As the information flows, the printed material is understood. In brief, according to the bottom-up models, a good understanding of linguistic units is significant. 2 Top-down models of reading Based on the explanation of top-down models of reading, Goodman 1967 in Karlin 1984: 48 says that reading is a “psycholinguistic guessing game” which means readers generate hypotheses about meaning and revise them if they are not confirmed. Then, they predict meaning through the information that they have possessed and the graphic, syntactic, and semantic messages from the printed text. In top-down models, during the process of reading the knowledge that readers have about the world vocabulary, concepts, information, and ideas and also about language structures syntactic and semantic makes it possible for them to use the context to make predictions about meanings transferred by the text Karlin, 1984:48. In top-down models, the reader’s prior knowledge and their cognitive and linguistic competences play a significant role in the construction of meaning Harris and Sipay, 1985:9. Goodman and Goodman 1979, 1982 in Harris and Sipay 1985: 9 believe that novice readers are different from skilled readers in which they have the lesser strategies that they need to extract the meanings from the printed text. Many top-down theorists believe that skilled readers go directly from print to meaning without first recoding print to speech. Top-down models promotes the utilization of reader’s background of knowledge in the reading process. Bereiter 1978 in Karlin 1984: 48 gives an explanation of readers’ background knowledge called “schema theory”. This theory explains that comprehension depends on the readers’ background information and knowledge of the world that are saved in memory. Readers may have an incomplete schema and it is added more through reading. In this way, the schemata of younger or beginner readers would be less complete than older or intermediate and advanced readers. Karlin 1984: 48 states that “the new information interacts with the information previously held to produce a more complete schema that in turn makes possible increased comprehension”. 3 Interactive models of reading Rumerhalt 1976 in Karlin 1984: 49 claims that reading comprehension is the product of interaction between a bottom-up process and a top-down process. Readers process