itself – especially when the information is important or interesting to the readers.
6
It means that reading comprehension can be seen as one of reading goals. In reading comprehension, the readers should have knowledge about understanding
the reading passage, because without comprehension, reading has not truly happened.
Other experts said that reading comprehension refers to reading for meaning, understanding, and entertainment. It involves higher-order thinking
skills.
7
It can be defines as the readers understand what the text tell about, knowing the main idea of the text, and the details of the text tell about, knowing
the main idea of the text, and the details of the text, then combine it with their knowledge about the topic discussed.
Kristin and her colleagues also propose a definition of reading comprehension “Reading comprehension is the ability to construct meaning from
a given written text.”
8
It means that the readers need to understand the ideas of the author’s mind to the reader’s mind, in other words, what the author means should
be understood well by the readers. Reading and comprehension cannot be separated each other. Reading
comprehension is an activity to understand written ideas through recognition of written materials.
3. Characteristics of Reading
Richard Anderson and the Commission on Reading define reading as the process of constructing meaning from written texts. Skilled reading is:
a. Constructive: learning to reason about written material using knowledge
from everyday life and from disciplined fields of study; b.
Fluent: mastery of basic processes to the point where they are automatic so that attention is freed for the analysis of meaning;
6
Beatrice S. Mikulecky and Linda Jeffries, More Reading Power Second Edition, New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2004, p. 16.
7
David Nunan, Practical English Language Teaching: Young Learners, New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 2005, p. 71.
8
Kristin Lems, Leah D Miller, and Tenena M Soro, Teaching Reading to English Language Learner, New York: The Guilford Press, 2010, p. 170.
c. Strategic: controlling one’s reading in relation to one’s purpose, the nature
of the material and whether one is comprehending; d.
Motivated: able to sustain attention and learning that written material can be interesting and informative; and
e. A lifelong pursuit: continuous practices, development, and refinement.
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From the explanation above, it can be concluded that the characteristics of reading make the students learn more about comprehending the text by using their
previous knowledge from their daily life and also the students can learn more about analyzing the meaning and get the information from the text.
4. Purposes of Reading
We read because we wanted to get something from the writing, facts, ideas, enjoyment, information, and pleasure. The purpose of reading is to connect
the ideas on the page to what we already know. If we do not know anything about a subject, then pouring words of text into our mind is like pouring water into our
hand. People have their own reason in doing reading. Flynn and Staintrop simply
gave the reason why people doing reading. The reason is because people would like to access the information which is described in the reading page.
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It means that the readers want to get new information or specific information from the text
and also to reach the meaning or message toward kinds of reading itself. Grellet proposes some purposes in reading activity. Grellet added, “There
are two main reasons for reading; reading for pleasure and reading for information.”
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Reading for pleasure is the key to improving our English, it gives us an opportunity to have lots of contact with the language improving our
9
Reading Definition, retrieved from http:lrs.ed.uiuc.edustudentsjblantonreadreadingdef.htm on September 24
th
, 2016 02:44 p.m.
10
Naomi Flynn and Rhona Staintrop. The Learning and Teaching of Reading and Writing. West Sussex: Whurr Publisher Limited, 2006, p. 42.
11
Francoise Grellet, Developing Reading Skills, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, p. 4.
