b. Types of Reading Skills
In reading different kinds of texts, the readers tend to go through different processes. The processes in reading a novel for example, will not be the same as
those in reading a recipe since what the readers are reading for are different. Based on the purposes of reading, there are six different types of reading skills
Harmer, 2001. These skills are identifying the topic, predicting and guessing, reading for general understanding, reading for specific information, reading for
detailed information, and interpreting text. The first skill which is identifying topic is used when the readers want to
get the idea of what they read. In predicting and guessing, the readers can predict the content without reading the whole text. Next, reading for general
understanding is usually known as skimming. It means reading quickly to get an idea without worrying about the details. Meanwhile, reading for specific
information or scanning is used to find specific detail information. Then, to understand everything of the text in detail, the skill which is used is reading for
detailed information. For the last type of the reading skill, interpreting text is needed in order to see beyond the literal meaning and understand the implied
meaning of words. On the other hand, types of reading can be identified based on what
students can perform in a classroom. Brown 2001 points out that there are two types of classroom reading performance which are oral and silent reading. Though
the first one is not a very authentic language activity, teachers occasionally ask their students to read orally to check their pronunciation and to add some students
participation in a certain short segment of a reading passage. Meanwhile, silent reading can be subcategorized into intensive and extensive reading.
Intensive reading draws students’ attention to language features and content details of a passage. Comprehension of the text may be the goal of this
kind of reading Nation, 2009. In contrast to this, extensive reading is carried out to achieve a general or global understanding of longer texts Brown, 2001. The
texts which are chosen are usually interesting and engaging for students because extensive reading is often pleasure reading. Extensive reading provides the
conditions for fluency development if the texts that learners read are very easy ones with almost no unknown items, and it fits into the meaning-focused input if
the texts contain only a few unknown vocabulary and grammar items Nation, 2009.
c. Micro- and Macro-skills of Reading
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