such as interpretation, application to other contexts, criticism, or evaluation.
30
From the definitions given by linguists above, the writer concluded that reading is a process of getting meaning. Reading is not just process of decoding,
deciphering, identifying the words but it is a process of getting meaning from the messages or written text and it is a process of transferring the meaning from the
writer to the reader.
2. The Purposes of Reading
In the real life, people read and listen to the language because they want to know and grasp the information in written text and because they have a purpose
for doing so. According to Rivers and Tempely, they list the following examples of the reason that students may need or want to read because they need:
To obtain information for some purposes or because we are curious about some topic, to obtain instruction on how to perform some
task for our work or daily life, to keep in touch with friends by correspondence or to understand business letters, to know when o
where something will take place or what is available, to know what is happening or has happened as reported in newspaper, magazine,
reports, and for enjoyment or excitement.
31
From the explanation above, reading has some purposes to look for the information in many kinds of printed materials. In addition, reading for pleasure is
considered as for enjoyment activities. In this sense, the readers read the text to get the knowledge. It means that they learn something from a text. Actually, it
needs abilities to remember the main idea, recognize and build rhetorical in the text, and correlate the prior knowledge to the text that has been read.
Another linguist such as Jeremy Harmer, he divided the reasons why people like to read and to listen. Those are categorized into two broad areas: First
is, Instrumental; where people want to get some clear aim.
32
It means that a large amount of the reader integrate all the information that be found in the text to get
30
Penny Ur, A Course in Language Teaching; Practice and Theory, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 150.
31
Jo McDonough and Christopher Shaw, Material and Method in ELT; Teacher’s Guide, Oxford:
Blackwell Publishers, 1993, pp. 102 —103.
32
Jeremy Harmer, The Practice of English Language Teaching, 1990 p. 200.