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what and how much students read and their reactions to what was read in order to guide them in getting the most out of reading.
10 The teacher is a role model of a reader.
Example is the most powerful instructor. It also makes it possible for the teacher to recommend reading material to individual students. In this way,
teacher and students can become an informal reading community, experiencing together value and pleasure to be found in the written words.
c. Types of Reading
Wallace 1992: 6 - 7 explains that there are three purposes for people to do reading. Those three purposes are reading for survival, reading for learning,
and reading for pleasure. Each purpose brings the benefits for readers. Harmer 1991: 283 stated that “To get maximum benefit of reading,
students need to be involved in both extensive and intensive reading. Teacher encourages students to choose for themselves what they read and to do so for
pleasure and general language improvement, the latter is often but not exclusively teacher-chosen and directed. It is designed to enable students to
develop specific receptive skills such as reading for gist or general understanding – often called skimming, reading for specific information often called scanning,
reading for detailed comprehension or reading for inference what is behind words, and attitude.”
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There are two reading types based on Harmer 1991: 283 - 287, 1
Extensive reading This is also called “language- learner literature.” Teachers set and
encourage the reading programme but the learners themselves choose their readings. Learners choose what they want to read.
2 Intensive reading
Teachers select and decide what to read together as reading programmes. Teachers encourage students to read for general understanding, without
worrying about the meaning of every single word. For the designed materials, the writer uses intensive reading. Reading materials
are selected based on the results of needs survey.
d. Reading Activities
According to Cushenberry 1985: 5- 29, “Reading is a process and not a subject. Reading is following directions, finding main ideas, remembering details,
and gathering inferences. The reading process must be thought of a pleasurable and enjoyable activity which can cause the reader to be happy and joyful. The
feeling is generated that as new knowledge is gained a new world of interesting and delightful experiences awaits him or her. Reading is a complex process and
the development of a competent reader requires proficiency in a long list of sequential skills.”
Thus, in order to obtain good comprehension, Wallace 1992: 114 - 122, explains three stages in reading activities as presented in the following page :
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a Pre-reading activities
This stage can be conducted in three ways. The first is learner provides questions, hypothesis, or statements. This aimed at motivating learners for
further reading. Second is by giving cross-cultural pre-reading tasks. This compares the characteristics of their own cultures to the target language
cultures. Third is by giving pre-reading tasks which challenge conventional outcomes. These tasks would encourage learners to discuss and draw
opinions in accordance with the content of reading materials. b
While-reading activities Include offering learners alternative readings of a text, identifying parallel
discourses, and analyzing linguistic choices. Offering alternative readings of a text means that learners are offered more than one way of a reading
text. It will be dealing with reading techniques. Then, a text may have more than one discourse. Therefore, it would be better to compare those
discourses in parallel way for it helps learners to get mental images and understanding. Identifying parallel discourse would not be successful
without knowing linguistic choices made by the writer. The linguistic choices determine the discourses which unfold in text. Thus, the writer
should analyze it to avoid misunderstanding. c
Post-reading activities After while-reading, post-reading activities should be conducted to achieve
a purpose that is heightening readers’ awareness of the topic being learned.
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The post-reading activities could be in the form of giving tasks or providing other texts in the same discourse.
e. Reading Techniques
