According to Harmer 2001:200, there are two reasons why reading is important. He divides the reasons into two categories: instrumental and pleasurable. The pleasurable
reason is similar to Grabe’s opinion in which a reading activity is seen as something that can give pleasures to the readers. The instrumental reason is related to the readers’ aim or
purpose. He states that by reading, the readers can achieve their goals. For instance, they read science books in order to be able to pass a test or an exam. In other words, reading
can be a stepping stone for them to reach what they want to achieve. In brief, it can be stated that reading becomes important for people in the modern
era and students in the academic contexts. There are two main reasons why reading cannot be separated in life. The first, by reading people can find pleasures. They will be
able to enjoy the content of the texts and they do not need to think deeply. The second, by reading they can develop, improve their life skills and elevate their knowledge. By having
well knowledge of reading, they can achieve their goals or aims such as passing an
examination.
e. Types of Reading
According to Brown 2004:189, in the case of reading, variety of performance is derived more from the multiplicity of types of texts than from the variety of overt types of
performance. Several types of reading performance are typically identified, and these will serve as organizers of various assessment tasks.
1. Perceptive: In keeping with the set of categories specified for listening comprehension, similar specifications are offered here, except with some differing
terminology to capture the uniqueness of reading. Perceptive reading tasks involve attending to the component of larger stretches of discourse: letters, words,
punctuation, and other graph emic symbols. Bottom-up 2.
Selective: In order to ascertain one’s reading recognition of lexical, grammatical or discourse features of language within a very short stretch of language, certain typical
tasks are used: picture-cued task, matching, truefalse, multiple choice, etc. brief responses are intended. combination of bottom-up and top-down
3. Interactive: reading is a process of negotiating meaning; the reader brings to the text a set of schemata for understanding it and intake the product of that interaction.
Typical genres: anecdotes, short narratives and descriptions, excerpts, questionnaires, memos, announcements, directions, recipes, etc. Mainly top-down. Bottom-up still
necessary 4. Extensive: It applies to text of more than one page, up to and including professional
article, essays, technical reports, short stories, and books. f.
Reading Comprehension
Sadoski 2004 proposes that comprehension is an understanding or getting meaning process in which readers try to reconstruct a message conveyed by a writer.
From his point of view, there are some processes involved in reconstr ucting the writer’s
message. The readers should reflect on what they are reading, evaluate it, compare it with their previous schemata and try to correlate all to get the message. In line with Sadoski,
Scanlon, Anderson Sweeney 2010 and Smith 2004 see comprehension as a process of constructing a writer’s message by combining what is stated directly the written
language in a text and the background knowledge that readers have. Transforming printed or visual information cannot be separated from the reading
process happens in brain. The brain should process the information from visual and printed input and combine them before comprehending the information into a meaningful
interpretation. Based on Willis 2008:127-128, the processes of reading with
comprehension are:
1 Information intake: it focuses on relating directly the subject being discussed with the environment.
2 Fluency and vocabulary: it is related to readers’ ability in associating the words on a
text with stored knowledge to bring meanings to the text.
