Objective of the Study

itself – especially when the information is important or interesting to the readers. 6 It means that reading comprehension can be seen as one of reading goals. In reading comprehension, the readers should have knowledge about understanding the reading passage, because without comprehension, reading has not truly happened. Other experts said that reading comprehension refers to reading for meaning, understanding, and entertainment. It involves higher-order thinking skills. 7 It can be defines as the readers understand what the text tell about, knowing the main idea of the text, and the details of the text tell about, knowing the main idea of the text, and the details of the text, then combine it with their knowledge about the topic discussed. Kristin and her colleagues also propose a definition of reading comprehension “Reading comprehension is the ability to construct meaning from a given written text.” 8 It means that the readers need to understand the ideas of the author’s mind to the reader’s mind, in other words, what the author means should be understood well by the readers. Reading and comprehension cannot be separated each other. Reading comprehension is an activity to understand written ideas through recognition of written materials.

3. Characteristics of Reading

Richard Anderson and the Commission on Reading define reading as the process of constructing meaning from written texts. Skilled reading is: a. Constructive: learning to reason about written material using knowledge from everyday life and from disciplined fields of study; b. Fluent: mastery of basic processes to the point where they are automatic so that attention is freed for the analysis of meaning; 6 Beatrice S. Mikulecky and Linda Jeffries, More Reading Power Second Edition, New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2004, p. 16. 7 David Nunan, Practical English Language Teaching: Young Learners, New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 2005, p. 71. 8 Kristin Lems, Leah D Miller, and Tenena M Soro, Teaching Reading to English Language Learner, New York: The Guilford Press, 2010, p. 170.