Background of the Study

2. Reading Comprehension

Reading involves comprehension. That is proven by the fact that someone reads because he or she wants to get something from the writing. It called by the message. The message it may be fact, enjoyment, ideas, feelings, etc. whatever the message about the readers wants to comprehend the massage that what the writer intended. Reading has not happened yet, if the reader has not reached the comprehension of the text. The reader may be able to read aloud every sentence written in the text, but if the reader does not get the understanding of what the text is about, it means the act of the reading has not been exist. Francious Grellet state on his book “Reading comprehension is understanding a written a text means extracting the required information from it as efficiently as possible 4 .” It means reading comprehension that the process understanding the new information contained in the text, and the reader find what she or he looking for. Understanding the new information in the text that means the reading purpose in each case has been successfully, and it called reading process. Furthermore explanation has been made by G.C. Ahuja Pramila Ahuja that reading involves comprehension beyond decoding and literal label interpretation of the printed symbols. 5 Literal level interpretation involves translation of what the words say while decoding process serves as a tool for the mental process when the reader tries to get meaning out of the printed material. From all of explanation above, it can be concluded that reading comprehension is an active process in which the reader, by using his mind and eye which the reader construct an understanding of the message by interacting with the text. 4 Francoise Grellet, Developing Reading Skills, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 3. 5 G.C. Ahuja dan Pramila Ahuja, How to Increase Your Reading Speed, Kuala Lumpur: Synergy Books International, 1995, p. 13.

3. Purpose of Reading

Purpose refers to reader‟s aim or information in reading certain text. When dealing with reading, the reader seems to address the different purposes. William Grabe stated on his book there are six major purposes of reading: a. Reading to search for information When the readers want to search for some specific information, they engage on two skills: Skimming and Scanning. Skimming is the ability to identify the main ideas while very rapidly and selectively skipping over the reading material. Besides, they use scanning in order to identify specific information from the text.

b. Reading to learn from text

In academic and professional settings, sometimes the readers want to learn something from the text. It occurs when the information in a text is identified as important which will be used for some task given by the teacher at the specific course. c. Reading to integrate information, write, and critique texts. When the reader do integration of information in reading they have a purpose are required to insert the information from multiple text or bring together information taken from different textbook. Sometimes, the readers are required to evaluate and criticize the information of a text whether the parts of the text are important, and how the readers get their goal from the text. d. Reading for general information Since someone reads to get the comprehension of the text, this purpose becomes the commonest purposes for reading a text among the readers. This purpose takes place when we read an interesting novel, newspaper, and magazine. 6 6 William Grabe and Fredericka L. Stoller, Teaching and Researching Reading, Harlow: Longman Pearson Education Limited, 2002,pp. 13 —15.

4. Kinds of Reading

There are two kinds of reading mentioned by Harmer on his book; Extensive Reading and Intensive Reading.

a. Extensive Reading

This was discussed as the book told in the text, that the importance or extensive reading for development of stu dent‟s word recognition. An entire short story, or a chapter or sequence of chapters of a novel, or entire one-act play should be assigned, read briefly reported on as a single unit. The students should understand that in this type of reading their major concern in on the overall comprehension of characters and events rather than on the specific details of either language or story content. Where possible, reading for pleasure should be involved. This activity encourages students to choose what they want to read and gives them some opportunities to share their reading experiences.

b. Intensive Reading

In contrast to this, the technique employed in intensive reading should be definitely different. Intensive reading refers to the detail focus on the construction of reading text which takes account in classrooms. Teacher may ask students to extract the information from magazine, poems, internet websites, novels, and a wide range of text genre. The specific purpose will determine the exact choice of genres and topics. Intensive reading is characterized by study activities, such as the particular uses of grammar and vocabulary items. 7 7 Jeremy Harmer, The Practice of English Language Teaching, Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2007, pp. 283 —286.

5. Models of Reading

While processing a text, the readers need to use these three complementary ways; Bottom-Up Models, Top-Down Models, and Interactive- Models.”In some cases, one model predominates, but they are used by the readers while approaching a difficult text. According to William Grabe and Fredricka L. Stoller on Nida Husna book said “There are three models of reading skills.” 8

a. Bottom-up Models

These models assume that reading involves the way reader builds up a meaning from the text by creating a piece by piece mental translation. Recognizing letters and words and working out sentence structures are conducted in a linier fashion. In this case, the reader must scrutinize the vocabulary and syntax to meet the same point view as the writer intended.

b. Top-Down Models

Top- Down Models state that reading depends on the reader‟s expectations which is conducted to draw inferences and to interpret assumptions. The readers have their own set of goals while reading a text. They direct their eyes to the most likely place where useful information can be found.

c. Interactive Models

These models take useful ideas from a bottom-up perspective and combine them with the key ideas from a top down views. Practicality, readers shift from one focus to another, adopting a top down models to predict the probable meaning, then moving to the bottom up approach to check whether that is really what the writer says. 8 Nida Husna, Step by Step to Reading Skills Step First Edition, Jakarta: English Education Department Syraif Hidayatullah Jakarta, pp. 13 —14.