According to Ruddell 2005:90, in the process of comprehension, the readers will use their prior knowledge and experience to connect with
the new information found in the text that will lead to the success of comprehending the text. In line with this, Antonacci and O’Callaghan
2011:3 mention three major factors affecting the comprehension of the text: reader, text, and context. Reader as the first factor brings the prior
knowledge, previous experience, cognitive and meta-cognitive strategies, and personal motivation, that can affect to the way of comprehending the
text since each reader has different style of learning. The second factor is text. It influences to the process of
comprehension with its various characteristics such as the writer’s style, the difficulty level of vocabulary, content knowledge, and the layout. The
text commonly tells the reader what becomes the purpose of the writer in writing the text. Moreover, there are texts with different level of
difficulty and flat layout. Those all of the characteristics will bring the readers to the assumption as the result of their comprehension.
The last factor is context. It tells the purpose of the reading, the sequence events such as the time and place of the story. It also involves
the socio-situational context in which the reader can connect the story they read with their real life. For example, they may ever experience the
events just what is being there in the story in their reading so that they can construct the meaning based on their logical feeling.
In addition, Echevarria, Vogt, J. Short 2000:25 assert the concepts of content that must be considered in choosing the reading
materials. Those are the students’ first language, their reading ability, and the difficulty level of the material to be read. The topic chosen must be
related to the students’ background knowledge. In this case, the teacher should thoroughly analyze the students’ needs in order to understand
what is being taught.
e. The Relationship between Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension
Many research have been conducted to show the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension. Most of the
results show that there is a strong relationship between vocabulary and reading comprehension. Tannenbaum Torgesen 2006:394 assert that
the breadth of word knowledge influence to the performance on reading comprehension in which the reading comprehension will increase if the
breadth is increased as well. This study was conducted to find the relationships between word knowledge and reading comprehension using
two aspects of an individual’s word knowledge: breadth and depth. The result shows that the breadth gives a stronger relationship to the reading
comprehension than does depth. Research has also been conducted to find the correlation between
vocabulary knowledge depth and reading comprehension using three instruments, those are depth of vocabulary knowledge measure, reading
comprehension test and questionnaire. In their study, Ho Lien 2001:91 concluded that the correlation between participants with depth
vocabulary knowledge and their reading comprehension was significant.
It indicates that by improving participants’ vocabulary knowledge in particular vocabulary depth, reading comprehension would also be
improved.” This research uses the different aspect from what is used in the above research, but both of the study give evidences that vocabulary
knowledge and reading comprehension are significantly related. Furthermore, Hirsch 2003:16 states that reading comprehension
can be achieved by a person with at least knowing 90 to 95 percent of the words in a text. It is quite clear that vocabulary influences the success of
reading comprehension with the significance of relationship is almost perfect.
In line with Hirsch, Antonacci and O’Callaghan 2011:10 say that vocabulary and reading comprehension have a strong relationship that
can be proven by the teachers’ experiences during teaching them in which the good result of vocabulary test will influence to the good result
of reading comprehension test as well. In this case, the students’ word knowledge is the key to comprehend the text.
3. Vocabulary Self-Collection Strategy VSS a. The Nature of VSS
The Vocabulary Self-Collection Strategy VSS was developed by Ruddell in 2005. It was implemented in the classroom consisting students
from the seventh grade, high school and graduate school students. Ruddell 2005:166 promotes that VSS is a strategy for teaching that can
be implemented as the pre-reading or post-reading activity in which the
