From the above statement, it can be inferred that reading comprehension is defined as an essential interaction between an author as sender and the reader as
receiver, through the process of guessing and understanding the ideas and receiving the message from the reading text being read. After reading, the readers should
understand the writer’s intention or important information presented in the text. In this reading comprehension deals w
ith the students’ ability to understand reading text of finding general information and specific information both implicitly and explicitly
stated.
2.2 Reading Comprehension Level
Learning to read requires many building-block skills such as phonological awareness and alphabet understanding. What is not as widely acknowledged is that
reading comprehension, an even more complex process, also requires different building-block skills. One model of reading comprehension proposes that
understanding what we read is really the result of 3 levels of comprehension, such as: literal comprehension, inferential comprehension, and evaluative comprehension.
Besides, the comprehension level that is related in this thesis which can be assessed the students’ active reading skill through PLAN Strategy are literal comprehension
and inferential comprehension.
a. Literal Comprehension Level
This level is known as what is actually stated which includes facts and details, rote learning and memorization. In this level, the students are required to read through
the text simply because it involves surface understanding only. Literal comprehension level closes related to find the general information of a certain text. In this case, the
readers build their prior knowledge but they do not necessarily have command of it. Because the readers can easily get the general information through common question
that is used to illicit the type of thinking such as who, where, when and what which
sometimes stated in the text directly. Thus, at the literal comprehension level, the readers are at the most basic of levels.
According to Carnine, Silbert and Kameenui cited in Schieffer, Marchand- Martella, Martella and Simonsen 2008:19, literal comprehension is seen as the first
level of comprehension. It is the simplest form of locating information in texts because the information is stated directly in the text. Questions assessing literal
comprehension skills examine how well students can identify and understand information that is directly stated in a text. They add that by literal comprehension,
the students recall relevant information explicitly stated in the reading selection by: 1.
Identifying the order of events or a specific event from a sequence of events
2. Identifying a statement that best indicates the main idea.
3. Identifying details such as key words, phrases that explicitly state
important characters, times or place. 4.
Identifying directly-stated opinions. 5.
Identifying directly-stated facts e.g., actions or events, names of characters, places or things in the text, etc.
b. Inferential Comprehension Level
