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skill covers the followings: understanding organization of the text, understanding implied details, understanding word meaning, understanding pronoun reference,
grammatical word classes noun, verb, etc, system e.g. tense, agreement, pluralisation, patterns, rules, and elliptical forms, and understanding the cohesive
devices in written discourse and their role in signalling the relationship between and among clauses.
5. Reading comprehension
Reading comprehension is the process of understanding a text that is read, or the process of “constructing meaning” from a written text. Comprehension is
called a “construction process” because it involves all of the elements of the reading process working together as a text that is read to create a representation of
the text in the reader’s mind. Olson and Diller 1982: 42 define reading comprehension as the process of
understanding and applying information contained in a written material. This definition is supported by Harris and Sipay 1980: 179, who define reading
comprehension as the ability that permits people to acquire and exhibit information gained as a consequence of reading written language.
Snow 1999: 11 defines reading comprehension as the process of extracting and constructing meaning simultaneously through interaction and involvement
with written language. The terms extracting and constructing mean to emphasize both the importance and the insufficiency of the text as a determinant of reading
comprehension. Comprehension covers three elements: 1 the reader who is doing the comprehension process. It includes all the capacities, abilities,
knowledge and experiences that a person brings to the act of reading; 2 the texts PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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to work on. They include any printed texts or electronic texts; and 3 the activity in which the comprehension process occurs. The activity includes the purpose,
processes, and consequences associated with the act of reading. According to William 1999: 20, reading comprehension is the process in
which the readers handle vocabulary, identify the text purposes or function, as well as the main topic and interpret sentences. Reading comprehension covers
understanding supporting ideasdetails, understanding organization of the text, understanding implied details, understanding word meaning, understanding
pronoun reference, understanding the communicative purpose of writing. In addition, Grellet 1998: 4
– 5 lists variety of skills involved in reading a text. They are recognizing the script of a language, deducing the meaning and use
of unfamiliar lexical items, understanding explicitly stated information, understanding information when not explicitly stated, understanding conceptual
meaning, understanding the communicative value of sentences, understanding relations within sentence, understanding relation between parts of a text through
lexical cohesion devices, understanding cohesion between parts of a text through grammatical cohesion devices, interpreting text by going outside it, recognizing
indicators in discourse, identifying the main point or important information in discourse, distinguishing the main ideas from specifically required information
and transcoding information to diagrammatic display. Based on some theories above, it can be concluded that reading
comprehension involves: 1 understanding word meaning; 2 understanding detailed information; 3 understanding pronoun reference; 4 understanding
main ideas; and 5 inferring implicit information. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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6. Reading in the Language Classroom
