Reading Comprehension The Theory of Reading

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a. Principles for Teaching Reading

To be successful in teaching reading in an FL, an FL teacher should adapt the principles for teaching reading. Anderson as edited by Nunan, 2003 offers good Principles for teaching reading. According to him there are eight principles for teaching reading: 1 Exploit the reader‟s background knowledge Because background knowledge can influence reading comprehension, it is important to activate students‟ background knowledge by setting goals, asking questions, making predictions, teaching text structure and so on. 2 Build a strong vocabulary base Students‟ strong vocabulary base can support their success in reading. The focus of teaching vocabulary explicitly in reading class is for teaching general, basic vocabulary, while less frequent vocabulary are taught implicitly by teaching the students to use context to effectively guess the meaning. 3 Teach for comprehension Reading class should more emphasize on teaching students how to comprehend the text rather than testing their comprehension. In doing so, the teacher can encourage students to use cognitive skills that include what strategies they can use to comprehend the text and metacognitive skills to monitor their comprehension process. 18 4 Work on increasing reading rate To increase reading rate, the focus is not to develop speed-readers, but fluent readers in which their reading rate and reading comprehension skills are in balance. 5 Teach reading strategies Teaching students to use a range of reading strategies should be a prime of consideration in reading class to match their purposes for reading. 6 Encourage readers to transform strategies into skills Reading teachers should encourage readers to transform strategies, conscious actions that learners take to achieve desired goals or objectives, into skills, strategies that have become automatic. 7 Build assessment and evaluation into your teaching Both quantitative and qualitative aspects should be included in assessing the students‟ reading skills. Quantitative assessment is gathered from students‟ scores of their reading comprehension, while qualitative assessment is gathered from reading journal responses, reading interest surveys, and responses to reading strategy checklist. 8 Strive for continuous improvement as a reading teacher Reading teacher‟s quality facilitates the success of secondforeign language readers. The success of reading teachers depends on how they facilitate their students to discover what work best in their reading. 19

b. The Stages in Teaching Reading

There are three stages in teaching reading. The first stage is pre-reading activities. The second stage is whilst reading activities and the third stage is post reading activities. 1 Pre-reading Activities The activities used in pre-reading serve as preparation to read a text. Students are required to construct much meaning of the text before they reading it. During pre-reading activities the teacher may: - prepare readers for linguistic features in the following text, - prepare readers for conceptual or cultural difficulties, - draw on readers‟ existing knowledge and views, Wallace, 1992: 86 - build a vocabulary base - establish a purposes for reading - motivate the students to want to do the reading Durkin, 1987 As a result, the students will be able to read the text more fluently or even more independently. Pre-reading activities enable students to reduce their dependent to the words on the text. They will also be able to minimize the disadvantages of having less proficiency than native speakers have in the language. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI