57 idea of how ‘good readers’ read, either in their own or a foreign language, this will
enable us to decide particular reading techniques to help learners. Doff states In considering reading processes it is important to distinguish between two
quite separate activities. They are reading for meaning or silent reading and reading aloud. Reading for meaning is the activity we normally engage when
we read books, newspapers, road signs, etc. It is what you are doing as you read this text. It involves looking at sentences and understanding the
message they convey, in other words ‘making sense’ of a written text. Reading aloud is completely different activity, its purposes is not just to
understand a text but to convey the information to someone else. it is not an activity we engage in very often outside the classroom: common examples
are reading out parts of a newspaper article to a friend, or reading a notice to other people who cannot see it. Doff, 1990: 66-67
c. Selected Text
Motivation encourages person to act and gives energy to get what they need. Paying attention to what they need means giving motivation to the students. It is
stated above that reading is the most difficult skill that is faced by the students, one of the factors is that the reading texts are not interesting. The text cannot fulfill the
learner’s need. Silberstein states that students will read material that is relevant to their communicative needs 1994: 20. Mikuleckey states that students must begin
to develop the habit of extensive reading. This can only happen if they are given the opportunity to select their own materials 1986: vii. Further Mikuleckey states that
the best practice materials are the ones which the learners select. When learners select a book which attacks them, they usually already have some knowledge about
the subjects so their understanding will be greater. They will also find the reading more enjoyable 1986: 281.
58 Bartran and Paney states
The best way to get better at reading is to read. Don’t worry if what you read is not serious or important. read what you want to read. If you are interested
in computer, read about computer; if you like cooking, read cook book. The important thing is to read as much as possible and enjoy it. 1989: 5.
Further, Ruddle states: As a teacher, we need to be concerned not only with what children do once
they encounter print, but with what anticipations they hold for language generally as well as what decision they make about reading and writing on
the way to process. Written language activities provided for children should be meaningful, open ended, situationally valid and contextually rich enough
allow access to their material written language learning 1994: 68.
Based on the above statements it can be concluded that learners have the opportunity to select their own texts or materials of reading that they want to read.
Besides, teachers have the responsibility to select their learner’s texts. Teachers should select texts for their learners in accordance to their learners’ capability or
level. The following are the reason why text is called good text
1. Communicative intent
it is defined that the argument as the kind of discourse used to make the audience think or act as the arguer desires
2. Content
It is defined as discussion of things, person and even ideas. 3.
Structure It is defined sequence which is as to do with any account in which
progression is the key to the structure
4. Status of the information
Exposition presents knowledge already established Urquhart, 1998: 83. One of the requirements that the text is good is that text must be communicative to
the readers. The word communicative means that the texts can make the readers feel involved. In other word, the texts should be easy to be understood by the readers.
59 Nuttal states that books of comprehension passages are more likely to provide
satisfactory material and they may have the added bonuses of 1 being carefully chosen to give practice in particular reading skills and 2 being accompanied by
well conceived question or other exercise 1994: 25. But not all collections offer both bonuses, and even the best does not offer all that is needed for a full reading
course. Further, he states that if a teacher chooses supplementary material for the reading lesson, teacher will need to look at possible material from three points of
view: 1 readability; 2 suitability of content; 3 exploitability 1994: 25. Readability means that a text should be at the right level of difficulty for the
students. Further, she states that teacher should give the learners assignments depending on the student level, the content of text should be suitability to the
learners. Teachers might not be generalizing the learners. It is dangerous when teacher teaches so many variations of age and nationality. A teacher should know
what learners need and like before he orders them many books or select class reading materials. Exploitable is more important after interest. It happens because a
text that teacher cannot exploit is no use for teaching even if the students enjoy reading it. The word exploitation means facilitation of learning. Further Urquhart
states the requirement of selected text Condition
Description Purposes of reading
To test students’ ability to comprehend academic texts and extract important
information from those texts
Nature of texts text written for a non-specialist
audience with informative and interesting ides
Source of texts Chapters from textbooks, journals,
articles, abstract Rhetorical organisation
Mainly expository texts with rhetorical
60 organizations of comparison, collection
of descriptions, problemsolution, and causation
Prepositional features Lexical range
Normally no technical jargon:approximately 7000 wordsroot
forms; functional and substechnical lexis
topic Area Familiar to students: humanity and
managementscience and technologybiology and medicine
Background knowledge Within students’ background knowledge
but not totally given; students should not be able to answer test questions
from background knowledge without recourse to the text
Illucutionary features To inform, to explain, to describe, to
advise, to persuade Channel of presentation
Normally textual. Some texts might contain graphics
1992: 299 From the above description it can be seen that in teaching, needs analysis is
needed. As a teacher, he should engage all the learners to participate in every learning process. In determining materials to be taught, teachers should address
learners’ needs and interest.
6. Cooperative Learning
