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b. The Intensive Approach Intensive approach deals with short texts. Murcia and Mclntosh 1979:
150 says that intensive reading consists of short reading selections which can be read and discussed in one class in one meeting. This is an accuracy activity
involving reading for detail Grellet, 1981: 4. In this approach, each text is read carefully and thoroughly for maximum comprehension. Intensive reading involves
approaching the text under the guidance of a teacher. It means that teacher provides direction and help before, sometimes during, and after reading. The aim
is to arrive at an understanding Nuttal, 1983: 38. Students do many exercises that require them to work in depth with various selected aspects of the text.
Brown 2001: 312 says that intensive reading is usually a classroom- oriented activity in which students focus on the linguistic or semantic details of a
passage. Intensive reading calls students’ attention to grammatical forms, discourse markers, and other surface structure details for the purpose of
understanding literal meaning, implication, and rhetorical relationship.
4. Reading Materials
For students to develop communicative competence in reading, classroom and homework reading activities must resemble real-life reading tasks that involve
meaningful communication. In this case, the reading materials selected must be authentic. An authentic material according to Harmer 2001: 204 is a language
where no concessions are made to foreign speakers. In other words, it is normal and natural language used by the native speakers. This is what students will
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encounter in real life if they come with target language speakers. Also, it must be the kind of material that students will need and want to be able to read when
traveling, studying abroad, or using the language in other contexts outside the classroom.
When selecting texts for student assignments, one thing should be remembered that the difficulty of a reading text is less a function of the language,
and more a function of the conceptual difficulty and the tasks that students are expected to complete. Simplifying a text by changing the language often removes
natural redundancy and makes the organization somewhat difficult for students to predict. This actually makes a text more difficult to read than if the original were
used http:www.aft.orgtopicsreadingindex.htm. Nuttal 1996 as in Brown 2001: 314 offers three criteria for choosing
English reading text for students: 1 suitability of content: a material should be interesting, enjoyable, challenging, and appropriate for the students’ goal in
learning English; 2 exploitability: a text that facilitates the achievements of certain language and content goals should be exploitable for instructing tasks and
technique and integratable with other skills; 3 readability: a text with lexical and structural difficulty that will challenge students without overwhelming them.
5. The Role of the Teacher
Teachers take a very important role in the process of teaching and learning in a class. The success of teaching and learning depends on what kind of strategies
the teacher uses. The teacher should know what role he or she should play for
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certain condition in the class. According to Harmer 2001: 57-61 the role of the teacher are as a controller, an organizer, an assessor, a prompter, a participant, a
resource, a tutor, and an observer. a. Controller
When teachers act as controllers they are in charge of the class and of the activity taking place in a way that is substantially different from a situation where
students are working on their own in groups. Controllers take the roll, tell the students things, organize drills, read aloud, and in various other ways exemplify
the qualities of a teacher-fronted classroom. b. Organizer
One of the most important roles that the teachers have to perform is that of organizing students to do various activities. This often involves giving the
students information, telling them how they are going to do the activity, putting them into groups, and finally closing down when it is time to stop. When the
teacher takes a role as an organizer, he or she should explain things clearly so that the students can get a clear picture about what they are going to do.
c. Assessor Acting as an assessor, the teachers give feedback, correction, and grading
students in various ways. d. Prompter
Sometimes, when students are involved in a role-play activity, for example, they lose the thread of what is going on, or they are “lost for words”. In
such condition, the teachers should help the students but not in the purpose of
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taking charge because teachers are keen on to encourage the students to think creatively rather than have them hang on the teacher’s every word.
e. Participant This is a time when a teacher wants to join the activity not as a teacher but
as a participant in his or her right. By taking a role as a participant, the teacher creates a good atmosphere that can make the students enjoy having the teacher
with them. The danger of teachers as participants is that they can easily dominate the proceedings. It takes great skill and sensitivity to avoid this situation.
f. Resource Students might ask how to say or write something or what a word or
phrase means. They might want to know information in the middle of an activity about that activity or they might want to information about where to look
something. This is where teachers can be one of the most important resources they have. When acting as a resource the teacher will want to helpful and available, but
at the same time she or he has to resist the urge to spoon-feed the students so that they become over-reliant on the teacher.
g. Tutor When students are working on longer projects, such as pieces of writing or
preparations for a talk or a debate, teachers can act as tutors, working with individuals or small groups, pointing them in directions they have not yet thought
of taking.
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h. Observer Teachers need to observe what students do in order to give them useful
group an individual feedback. Teachers do not only observe students in order to give feedback. They also watch in order to judge the success of the different
materials and activities that they take into lessons so that they can make changes in the future.
B. The Definition of Expository Text
