performance. The first type is oral reading. Teachers can ask the students to read orally at the beginning and intermediate levels. Oral reading activities can
evaluate bottom- up process skills, check the students’ pronunciation, and
highlight a certain short segment of a reading passage. The teachers may ask the students at the advanced level to read orally
only to get their participation in attending a certain part of reading texts. Too much using oral reading causes several disadvantages. Brown 2001:312 states
that oral reading is not a very authentic language activity. While one student is reading, other can easily lose attention. Oral reading also may have the outward
appearance of student participation when in reality it is mere recitation. The second type of reading performance is silent reading. Silent reading
can be categorized into intensive reading and extensive reading. Intensive reading is usually a classroom-oriented activity that focuses on the linguistic or
semantic details of a passage. Intensive reading calls the students’ attention to
grammatical forms, discourse markers, and other surface details. Brown 2001:313 says that exte
nsive reading is carried out “to achieve a general understanding of a usually somewhat longer text. Different from
intensive reading, extensive reading is performed a lot outside of the class time, for examples, reading novels, articles, essays, etc. It does not attend much the
surface forms of the texts.
c. Genres of Reading
Brown 2004: 186 defines reading into three genres. They are academic reading, job-related reading and personal reading. Each of them is discussed as
follows: 1
Academic Reading Academic reading is a reading activity in which the text is related to the
academic world. Some written works that can be used for academic reading are general interest articles in magazines, newspaper, etc., technical reports e.g.,
lab reports, professional journal articles, reference materials dictionaries, etc., textbooks, thesis, essays, test directions, editorials, and opinion writing.
2 Job-related Reading
Job-related reading is a reading activity which involves texts related to any activities in a job. Some written works that can be used for job-related
reading are messages e.g., phone messages, letters or emails, memos e.g., interoffice, reports e.g., job evaluations, project reports, schedules, tables,
signs, announcements, forms, applications, questionnaires, financial documents bills, invoices, etc., directories telephone, office, etc., manuals, and directions.
3 Personal Reading
Personal reading is reading that is closely related to reading for personal interest. Some written works that can be used for personal reading are
newspapers, magazines, letters, emails, greeting cards, invitations, messages, notes, lists, schedule train, bus, plane, etc., recipes, menus, maps, calendars,
advertisements commercials, want ads, novels, short stories, jokes, drama,
poetry, financial document e.ge. checks, tax forms, loan applications, forms, questionnaires medical reports, immigration documents, comic strips, and
cartoons. With regard to the explanation above, there are three genres in reading.
They are academic reading, job-related reading and personal reading. They enable the readers to apply certain strategies that assist them in constructing
appropriate meanings.
d. Micro- and Macro-Skills of Reading
According to Grabe and Stoller 2011:8- 9, the term ‘skill’ represents
“linguistic processing abilities that are relatively automatic in their use and their combination.” Furthermore, Grabe and Stoller 2011 view skills as “general
learning outcomes of goal-driven tasks, acquired gradually and eventually automatized.”
As stated by Brown 2004, there are two major skills of reading: micro- skills and macro-skills. In micro-skills, the readers are required to have skills in
dealing with graphemes, orthographic patterns, and linguistic signals. Brown 2004:187-188 provides the list of skills of reading comprehension as follows:
1. Discriminate among the distinctive graphemes and orthographic
patterns of English 2.
Retain chunks of language of different lengths in short-term memory 3.
Process writing at an efficient rate of speed to suit the purpose 4.
Recognize a core of words, and interpret word order patterns and their significance
5. Recognize grammatical word classes nouns, verbs, etc. systems e.g.,
tense, agreement, and pluralization, patterns, rules, and elliptical forms.
6. Recognize that a particular meaning may be expressed in different
grammatical forms
