as main idea, supporting idea, new information, generalization and exemplification.
5 Distinguish between literal and implied meanings.
6 Detect culturally specific references and interpret them in a context
of the appropriate cultural schemata. 7
Develop and use battery of strategies, such as scanning and skimming, detecting discourse markers, guessing the meaning of
words from context, and activating schemata for the interpretation of texts.
Brown, 2004: 187-188
2 Reading Comprehension
a. Definition of Reading Comprehension
Reading comprehension has much deeper definition than reading in general. However, reading comprehension has very close relation to reading
and it almost cannot be separated when it comes to reading activity. As Mikulecky 1990:2 says that reading can even be defined as practically
synonymous with reading comprehension. Accordingly, most of reading’s goal is to comprehend a text.
Westwood 2008:31 states that reading comprehension is an active thinking process which a reader intentionally constructs meaning to form a
deeper understanding of information presented in a text. In line with the statement, Klingner et al 2007:2 claims that reading comprehension is “the
process of constructing meaning by coordinating a number of complex processes that included word reading, word and world knowledge, and
fluency.” Weaver 1994:44 adds that reading comprehension is a process that
involves the orchestration of the readers’ prior knowledge about the world and about language. It involves such as predicting, questioning, summarizing,
determining meaning of vocabulary in context, monitoring one’s own comprehension, and reflecting.
Based on the definitions above, it can be inferred that reading comprehension is a complex process in which a reader makes efforts to
construct idea conveyed in a text. While the process of constructing idea, he or she employs the various reading abilities and connects his or her real-world
knowledge with knowledge about language.
b. Teaching Reading Comprehension
Kimbly and Garmezy in Brown 2000:7 describe that teaching is the activities to show or help someone to learn how to do something, give
instructions, guide in the study of something, provide with the knowledge, cause to know, understand knowledge, and give new knowledge. Accordingly,
teaching reading can be defined as the activity to facilitate students in order to achieve reading’s goals by guiding students, giving instructions and providing
them knowledge on how to read comprehensively. Mastropieri and Scruggs in Klinger, Vaughn and Alison 2007: 124
propose some activities that can help the teacher to improve students’ reading comprehension, as follows:
1 Teach strategies that have been documented as effective in
promoting reading comprehension. 2
Design instruction based on effective principles of direct instruction and strategy instruction.
3 Provide modeling, support, guided instruction, practice,
attributional feedback, and opportunities to practice across text types.
4 Monitor students’ progress and make adjustments accordingly.
Those are activities that can be taken into account for the teacher who wants to teach reading comprehension. The teacher needs to be wise in
selecting activities for teaching reading as it can determine the success of students’ comprehension.
c. Models in Teaching Reading Comprehension
