11 he or she perceives and does. The knowledge and the way someone sees themselves
affects the perception of the world around. When a person has a relatively stable and positive self-concept, he or she may perceive something positively.
2. Reading
This part presents the theories of reading. Those theories are the definition of literature, the reading skills, the reading interest, and the reading comprehension.
a. Definition of Reading
As stated by McDonough, Shaw, and Masuhara 2013, reading is the most
important language skills. Reading is the activity or skill of understanding written words Bullon et al., 2005. Leipzig 2001 states that reading is a multifaceted
process involving word recognition, comprehension, fluency, and motivation. Grabe and Stoller 2002: p. 9 state that reading is the ability to draw the meaning
from the printed page and interpret the information appropriately. Besides, Schoenbach, Greenleaf, Cziko, and Hurwitz 1999, p. 38 define
the reading as a complex process of problem solving in which the reader works to make sense of a text not just from the words and sentences on the page. The
effective reading is a flexible and appropriate response to the material in hand, and this is always guided by the
reader’s purpose; it means that readers are aware that they have options, including the option to give up Wallace, 2003: p.5. As well as
being aware of patterning at the word level, the readers need to make the sense of connected text. Every part of the text relates to each other. It creates a meaningful
12 whole and the whole takes on meaning from situation and culture context Wallace,
2003: p. 11. As stated by Perfetti and Marron 1998, learning to read is an acquisition
of increasingly number of the words and the alteration of the individual representations along the quality. There are three majors of learning achievement
based on Ahmadi and Supriyono 1991. The first is learning the stimuli factor which is related to leaning factors outside the learners; materials, tasks, and learning
atmosphere. The second factor of learning reading is the method used by the teachers in classroom. It will give impact on the students’ improvement. The third
is the individual factors. Individual factors include the readiness, motivation, and learning experience.
b. Reading Skills
Reading skills enable the readers to turn writing into the meaning and achieve the goals of independence, comprehension, and fluency. The reading skills
will enable the readers to make the meaning out of written language, interact and engage with the language, and comprehend and analyze the language of the reading
passage Erfort, 2013. There are some reading skills that help the students to improve their ability to understand the English text. Those readings skills are
previewing, predicting, skimming, scanning, guessing the meaning of unknown words, making or drawing inferences, and summarizing. When readers make
connection, question, infer, determine importance, visualize, synthesize, and monitor for meaning, they have more complete understanding on the text Harvey
13 Goudvis, 2000 as cited in Daunis Iams, 2007, p. 14. The reading skills are
described as follows.
1 Previewing and Predicting
A preview is a quick and an easy way to find out what a text will be about before reading the whole text. This skill helps the students to decide whether they
need to read a particular text or not. It also helps the students to decide what the text will be about before reading the whole text Leane, 2002. If the students are able
to use this strategy, the students will be able to catch the information before they read the whole text. If the information they want does not look like it will be in the
text, they shouldn’t bother reading all the text of the reading passage. As stated by Daunis and Iams 2007, whether the text is a professional text or a quick memo,
knowing the genre of the text and having expectations of it allows the students to be more skillfully reading the text itself p. 16. It is as if the students put a frame
around their thinking before they start reading, helping them to contain their thoughts to both a specific purpose and a certain genre. When the students engage
in this essential pre-reading skill, the students set their selves up for more successful comprehension of the text.
Whereas, predicting is using knowledge of the subject matter to make predictions about the content and the vocabulary and check the comprehension. By
using the knowledge of the text type and purpose, the students are able to make predictions about the text structure. Predicting involves using cues in the text to
guess what is going to come next Leane, 2002. Understanding the context of what the students have already read helps the students to make predictions. The students
14 can also use the illustrations, the vocabulary or the grammatical structure to guess
what is coming next Leane, 2002
2 Skimming
Skimming is a strategy that gives the students the sense of the theme, purpose, the organization of the text, the perspective or point of view of the writer,
the issues, the arguments and theoretical perspectives through using the authors organizational cues, the introductions and conclusions, the headings and the sub-
headings, the italics, and the summaries. Skimming can also help the students make decision about where to place the greatest focus when there is limited time for
reading Freedman, n.d as cited in Chiew, 2013. Skimming helps the students identify whether or not to continue reading, what to read carefully, and where the
best place is to begin The Teaching and Learning Unit, University of Melbourne, 2010. Liao states that skimming is done at a speed three to four times faster than
normal reading. People often skim when they have lots of material to read in a limited amount of time 2011, as cited in Chiew, 2013.
The purpose of skimming is to perceive the text organization and search out the main ideas Kol Schcolnik, 2000 as cited in Chiew, 2013, p.14. Skimming
from the text involves quickly looking over the whole text, selecting and discarding information, and quickly reading and highlighting selected parts to get the main
ideas of the text Feuerstein Schcolnik, 1995 as cited in Chiew, 2013. Skimming a text immediately before read the text carefully can help the students consider what
they already know and can help them to develop a purpose for reading The Teaching and Learning Unit, University of Melbourne, 2010. Skimming can
15 maximize the students’ interest in the text, the understanding, and the reflection on
the material The Teaching and Learning Unit, University of Melbourne, 2010. Chiew 2013 states that skimming is an essential academic reading skill because
the students face massive amount of information in their academic studies which required them to read selectively by applying the skill of skimming.
3 Scanning
Scanning is reading quickly to search for the specific information The Teaching and Learning Unit, University of Melbourne, 2010. Scanning is a reading
skill which is used to quickly locate specific information Study Learning Center [RMIT], 2007. When the students scan, they know what they are looking for e.g.:
key words, dates, etc.. Scanning is useful when the readers want to find out specific information. It helps the students to save the time by quickly locating particular
information that is relevant to the students ’ study. Therefore, the students avoid
reading unnecessary material. Scanning is the process of quickly searching for the particular piece or pieces of information in a text.
The purpose of scanning is to extract specific information without reading through the whole text Brown, 2001: 308 as cited in Yusuf Amanda et al., 2010,
p. 5. Koзak 2011 also states that general reading or scanning is reading to extract
specific information; reading for general understanding. To scan a reading text, the students should start at the top of the page and then move the eyes quickly toward
the bottom. Generally, scanning is a technique that helpful when the students are looking for the answer to the known question
Koзak, 2011.
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4 Guessing the meaning of unknown words from context
Consulting the meaning of the unknown words to the dictionary sometimes takes time in reading. The students can guess the meaning of the unknown words
from the context without opening the dictionary. Words are like glue and paint. They are there to provide the connections and add interests, but those are not
essential for meaning. If the students concentrate on the information words, they can read faster and with better comprehension The Teaching and Learning Unit,
University of Melbourne, 2010. The students can often determine the meaning by considering the context in
which a word appears. As stated by Langan 1986, when students are reading the reading text, the surrounding words and sentences frequently provide the clue to the
meaning of the words. The students can use the prior knowledge and the ideas of the text as a clue to understand the meaning of the unknown words instead of
stopping to look at the unknown words. Guessing the meaning of unknown words
involve using a wide variety of clues including linguistic and nonlinguistic to guess the meaning when the students do not know all the words. Guessing helps the
students to overcome the knowledge limitation in reading. The students do not need to recognize and understand every single word before they can comprehend the
overall meaning. The students can actually comprehend a lot of reading passage through systematic guessing without necessarily comprehending all the details
Oxford, 1990: 90 as cited in Yusuf et al., 2010, p.5.
17
5 MakingDrawing Inferences
Inferring means making the use of syntactic, logical and cultural clues to discover the meaning of unknown elements. If these are words, then word-
formation and derivation will also play an important part Grellet, 1999. The most meaningful ideas from the text often stem from what the readers infer, not from
wh at’s written on the page Daunis Cassiani 2007, p. 26. The ability to make
inferences is the ability to use two or more pieces of information from a text in order to arrive at a third piece of information that is implicit Kispal, 2008. Inference can
be as simple as associating the pronoun ‘he’ with a previously mentioned the male person. It can be as complex as understanding a subtle implicit message, conveyed
through the choice of the particular vocabulary by the writer and drawing on the reader’s own background knowledge Kispal, 2008.
6 Summarizing
Summarizing is making a condensed, shorter version of the original passage Yusuf et al., 2010. Mikulecky 1990: p. 145 states that summarizing is shortening
materials by retaining and re-stating main ideas and leaving out details. When the students summarize, they show the comprehension of the texts because the students
conclude the important points of the reading text. Summarizing is usually done after finishing reading the reading text. It also make sure whether the students understand
the story or not. Summarizing makes the students aware of their understanding of the text Mikulecky, 1990. By summarizing, the students can demonstrate their
comprehension of the text.
18
c. Reading Interest
As stated byTaschow 1985, interest is one of affective factors that develops and maintains a desire for reading. Harris 1954 also states that there are
some factors influencing reading interest, they are accessibility and availability, teacher, friend, media, and the difficulty of the books p.420. Schiefele and Krapp
1999 find that interest was related to deep-comprehension questions, recall of main ideas, and to a higher degree of cognitive or
ganization in college students’ knowledge structures. They conclude that interest does not simply enhance the
amount of recalled text information, but have a strong influence on the quality of learning. That is, interest seemed to motivate readers to go beyond the surface
structure of the texts and focus on the main ideas and their underlying meaning Krapp, 1999.
Ryan and Deci 1990 also conclude that interest leads to more elaborate and deeper processing of expository texts.
Hidi 2001 finds that interest is a clear indicator of the quality of learning derived from reading. When the st
udents’ interest in reading, they are encouraged to go beyond the surface elements of the text and focus on more elaborate, higher-
order thinking skills, to help them uncover the underlying meaning of the main ideas. Flowerda, Schraw, and Stevens 2004 emphasize that the materials are
interesting, it will affect the application and transfer of deeper text processing. What the students find interesting, they consider meaningful Fink Samuels, 2008.
Providing the students with a wide choice of reading materials and sharing the books regularly with the students seemed to help maintain their interest in reading.
19
d. Reading comprehension
Reading comprehension is the process of making meaning from the text. The goal, therefore, is to gain an overall understanding of what is described in the
text rather than to obtain meaning from isolated words or sentences. The meaning of reading comprehension also well described by Kustaryo 1988:
“Reading comprehension means understand what has been read. It is an active thinking process that depends not only on
comprehension skill but also the students’ experience and prior knowledge comprehension involves understanding the vocabulary
seeing the relationship among words and concepts, organizing
ideas, recognizing author’s making judgment, and evaluating”. As stated by Kustaryo 1988, the process of comprehending the reading texts need
the students’ experience and the prior knowledge comprehension that involves understanding the vocabulary, the organizing ideas, the
recognizing author’s making judgment, and the evaluating. Reading comprehension understanding,
gaining meaning and interpreting the text depends on a variety of the reader- related, the text-related, and the situational factors De Corte et al., 2001. Yorio
surveys the second language students, who states that vocabulary is their most important problem in reading comprehension 1971, as cited in Anjomshoa
Zamanian, 2014, p. 91. Meaning is formed in the reader’s head, that is, a person’s prior knowledge
affects the kinds of meanings constructed from the text information Fukkink de Glopper 1998; Lipson 1983 as cited in Wolley, 2011. Comprehension is more
effective when the students use what they already know about the text theme to conceptualise the gist of the present text Goodman 1996; Smith 1978 as cited in
Wolley, 2011. This process allows the students to construct a more appropriate
20 situational model of the text. There are a multiplicity of factors that contribute to
the reading difficulties for many students with special needs and the underlying causes of their reading problems may be largely unknown Lewis Doorlag 1999.
3. Reader’s Log
