commit to user
2. Reading Comprehension
Comprehension refers to an ability to understand the meaning or importance of something
www.thefreedictionary.comcomprehension .
Meanwhile, it is also stated that comprehension is the capacity of the mind to perceive and understand
http:www.brainyquote.comcomprehension .
Further, comprehension means to understand what is being communicated www.readingisgood.com200805comprehension-a-definition
. It can be summarized that one has comprehension when heshe is able to understand
and gets the importance of something. Reading comprehension is how far we can understand of what we
read www.readingisgood.com200805comprehension
. Ashmore 2004: 7 stated that there are three processes in reading comprehension: active,
cognitive, and affective process in which the reader actively engages with the text and builds hisher own understanding of the text. Meanwhile, Gipe
in Ashmore, 2001: 4 stated that in reading [comprehension] the reader construct the meaning by using background knowledge or past experience in
order to build new thoughts. It can be concluded from the theories that reading comprehension is
the degree to which the reader understand what heshe read, which is resulted from the what heshe knows before reading the text the
background knowledge and how well heshe reads it. However, types of comprehension, skills considered to successful reading comprehension, and
commit to user strategies for reading comprehension should be clearly exhibited. The next
discussions are on those issues.
3. Types of Comprehension
The primary objective of reading is comprehension. Thus, teacher had better give reading comprehension assessment to test student’s abilities.
Mohamad 1999: 2 mentions three stands of comprehension, literal, interpretive, and critical comprehension. The first comprehension involves
“surface meaning” in which students are asked to find out information and idea that are explicitly stated in the text; the second comprehension involves
“deeper meanings” that needs student’s critical reading with kind of activities such as drawing conclusion, making generalization; the third level
involves critical reading whereby ideas and information are evaluated and it occurs when students have understood the ideas and information that the
writer has presented http:iteslj.orgTechniquesNunn-interacting.html
. The more comprehensive explanation is stated by Day 2005 in the
journal Reading in a Foreign Language. In his article entitled Developing Reading Comprehension Questions, Day presents a detailed picture of six
types of comprehension. Below are the explanations of each. a. Literal comprehension: understanding of the straightforward
meaning of the text and can be answered directly from the text. b. Reorganization: it is based on literal understanding of the text;
students must use information from various parts of the text and combine them for additional understanding.
c. Inference: making inferences involves more than a literal understanding. Students may initially have difficult time
answering inference questions because the answers are based on material that is in the text but not explicitly stated. An inference
commit to user involves students combining their literal understanding of the
text with their own knowledge and intuitions. d. Prediction:…involves students using both their understanding of
the passage and their own knowledge of the topic and related matters in a systematic fashion to determine what might happen
next or after the story ends.
e. Evaluation:….requires the learner to give a global or comprehensive judgment about some aspect of the text.
f. Personal response:…requires readers to respond with their feelings for the text and the subject.
http:nflre.hawaii.edurflApril2005dayday.html .
The above comprehension types are from the lowest to the highest comprehension. The higher level the students are in, the higher
comprehension they will be. The writer assumes that generally students in junior high school are on the literal comprehension although in some cases
might go further on the reorganization comprehension-level. Due to the fact that the students where the writer will retain research are on the average
level, she is quite sure that her students are on literal comprehension-level. She elicits example, when the students are given a text entitled “ Tina’s
Family”, the question might be “what is Tina’s father’s name?, what is Tina’s mother’s name?, How many sister does Tina have? Where does Tina
live?” what is more, those questions can be answered explicitly from the text.
4. Micro Skills for Reading Comprehension
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