Word Comprehension Reading Comprehension Achievement

in the text. Therefore, it can be concluded that reading comprehension is an activity that requires the readers to comprehend the text efficiently and also get the idea, important information, and message from the text. Hence, the readers comprehend the text if they can retell the important information of the text. Hornby 2005:12 defines achievement as how to do things successfully with effort and skill. It can be said that in the reading comprehension achievement, the students need to use their effort, knowledge, and skill in getting the idea from the text. In addition, Hughes 2003:12 defines that achievement is related to the test that is done to discover how successful students have been in achieving the objective of a course. In assessing the students’ achievement in reading class, the students have to get an appropriate test after having a course in particular time. There are some types of reading comprehension achievement test. According to Heaton 1991:107-133 reading comprehension test can be done in the form of matching test, truefalse reading test, multiple choice items, completion items, rearrangement items, cloze procedure, open-ended and miscellaneous items, and cursory reading. However, in this research the researcher will administer the test in the form of multiple choices because it is simple and easy to score and give the objective score. Finally, the purpose of the test is to measure the students’ achievement in reading comprehension. According to McWhorter 1989:90 there are four aspects dealing with reading comprehension, they are: word comprehension, sentence comprehension, paragraph comprehension, and text comprehension. In this research, the researcher administered the test covering the four aspects of reading comprehension in the form of multiple choice. The following section will focus on the discussion of the four aspects of reading comprehension.

2.1.1 Word Comprehension

Comprehending word meaning is the basic step that students have to do in reading comprehension. Grellet 1996:15 states that if the reader does not understand any words of the passage, some of the facts and ideas will probably escape him. It is inferred that understanding the word is very important for the readers when they try to understand the sentence. In addition, Fairbrain and Winch 1996:9 affirm that if we know the individual words meaning and how they are put together in our language, we know what the sentence means. It can be said that when the readers know the meaning of every single word, it will be easier for them to understand the sentence meaning. Thus, by comprehending the word meaning the readers can easily know the sentence meaning. In addition, the students will get difficulty in getting the idea of the sentence if they do not know the meaning of every single word in the sentence. In solving this problem, the students should identify the difficult word before they try to read the sentence. Wood 1991:57-58 clarifies that identifying key vocabulary words and terms just before you read, as part of the prereading process, and taking steps to learn them later as you read can improve comprehension dramatically. Further, Wood 1991:58 confirms that an early understanding of the most important words is to the comprehension of any book that students read. It can be said that the students will construct the sentence meaning quickly and easily of what they read if they try to identify the difficult word first before starting reading. From the explanation above, it can be concluded that comprehending word meaning is important for the students and it can be the key for successful reading compression although it will be very hard to comprehend the text meaning without understanding the word meaning. For example; “Finally, a generous woman helped him” Taken from: http:www.englishindo.com201308narrative-text.html The example question of word comprehension is “what does the same meaning of the underlined word?” and the answer is “Kind”.

2.1.2 Sentence Comprehension