A THESIS Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements to Obtain Sarjana Pendidikan Degree in English Language Education

  READING STRATEGIES OF NON-ENGLISH DEPARTMENT STUDENTS A THESIS Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements to Obtain Sarjana Pendidikan Degree in English Language Education By S. MULAT ANDRIYANI 981214062 ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDUCATION STUDY PROGRAM DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGE AND ARTS EDUCATION FACULTY OF TEACHERS TRAINING AND EDUCATION SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY YOGYAKARTA 2007

  I dedicate this thesis to

  

STATEMENT OF WORK’S ORIGINALITY

I honestly declare that this thesis which I wrote does not contain the works or

part of the works of other people, except those cited in the quotations and

bibliography, as a scientific paper should. th Yogyakarta, 16 January 2007

  

S. Mulat Andriyani

  

ABSTRACT

Andriyani, S. Mulat. 2007. Reading Strategies of non-English Department Students.

  Yogyakarta: English Education Study Program, Sanata Dharma University.

  Strategies are important tools to gain the success of reading comprehension. They help the readers read effectively and efficiently since strategies can reduce the difficulties which occur in their reading.

  The aim of this research was to find out the patterns of strategies used in reading English texts. This research was carried out on the ground that to comprehend their compulsory books written in English, non-English department students use different strategies. There was a question asked in this research. The question was: what the participants’ patterns of strategies in reading English text are.

  This research was qualitative with three participants to find out the patterns of strategies in English reading tests. This research used three instruments to get the data. They were observation, tests, and interview. The observation was done to identify the participants’ activities during doing the tests. The tests were done to identify their reading comprehension. The tests were written tests. There were six written tests given. Each written test consisted of a text and questions. The questions related to identify title, locate main idea, and draw conclusion. The interview was done to get information on the strategies. The interview was what the participants did to comprehend the texts contain. The interview was conducted after the participants did each test.

  The analysis result presented the data resulted from interview, observation, tests, and other data that are considered important for the research. The result of the analysis shows that: The participants used certain patterns to comprehend the reading texts. The patterns were: first, they read the text between the lines. Second, they consulted dictionary. The last, they reread the text to make sure their comprehension. Other findings showed that: (1) the three participants had different comprehension level. It could be seen from the data that Participant 1 was the best among the participants, Participant 2 was better than Participant 3, (2) it was found out that the participants did not master the grammar well, (3) the participants’ did not also master vocabulary well, but they tried to answer the questions using their own words, and (4) the participants were not careful in writing the vocabulary. This research recommended the students to use various and suitable strategies, since they can facilitate their reading comprehension.

  

ABSTRAK

  Andriyani, S. Mulat. 2007. Strategi-strategi membaca oleh mahasiswa program non-

Bahasa Inggris. Yogyakarta: Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris, Universitas Sanata Dharma.

  Strategi-strategi adalah alat yang penting untuk berhasil dalam pemahaman membaca. Mereka menolong pembaca untuk membaca secara efektif dan efisien karena strategi-strategi bisa mengurangi kesulitan-kesulitan yang timbul saat mereka membaca.

  Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui strategi-strategi dalam pemahaman membaca teks berbahasa Inggris. Penelitian ini dikembangkan atas dasar bahwa untuk memahami buku acuan yang ditulis dalam bahasa Inggris, siswa non- program bahasa Inggris menggunakan strategi-strategi. Ada sebuah pertanyaan yang ditanyakan dalam penelitian ini. Pertanyaan tersebut adalah: pola-pola strategi apa yang digunakan siswa dalam memahami teks berbahasa Inggris.

  Penelitian ini adalah penelitian kwalitatif dengan tiga partisipan untuk mengetahui strategi-strategi dan pemahaman membaca bahasa Inggris. Penelitian ini menggunakan tiga alat dalam memperoleh data. Alat-alat tersebut adalah pengamatan, tes-tes, dan wawancara. Pengamatan dilakukan untuk mengetahui kegiatan kegiatan apa yang dilakukan oleh para partisipan selama mengerjakan tes. Tes-tes dilakukan untuk mengetahui pemahan membaca bahasa inggris mereka. Tes- tes tersebut berupa tes tertulis. Ada enam test tertulis yang diberikan. Tiap tes terdiri dari sebuah teks dan pertanyaan-pertanyaan. Wawancara dilakukan untuk memperoleh informasi tentang strategi. Wawancara tersebut adalah tentang apa yang para partisipan lakukan untuk memahami isi bacaan tersebut. Wawancara tersebut dilakukan setelah para participan selesai mengerjakan tiap tes.

  Hasil analisa membicarakan tentang data yang diperoleh dari wawancara, observasi, tes-tes, dan data-data lain yang penting untuk penelitian ini. Hasil analisa menunjukkan bahwa: para partisipan menggunakan pola-pola tertentu untuk memahami teks berbahasa Inggris. Pola tersebut adalah: pertama, mereka membaca teks sekilas. Kedua, mereka membuka kamus. Terakhir, mereka membaca kembali teks untuk memastikan pemahaman. Penemuan lain menunjukkan bahwa: (1) ketiga partisipan mempunyai tingkat kemampuan pemahamn membaca yang berbeda. Hal ini dapat dilihat dari data bahwa kemampuan membaca Partisipan 1 yang terbaik dari ketiganya, Partisipan 2 lebih baik daripada Partisipan 3, (2) diketahui bahwa para partisipan tidak menguasai tata bahasa dengan baik, (3) para partisipan juga tidak menguasai kosakata dengan baik, tapi mereka berusaha untuk menjawab pertanyaan dengan menggunakan bahasa mereka sendiri, dan (4) para partisipan tidak teliti dalm menulis kosakata. Penelitian ini merekomendasikan agar siswa-siswa untuk penggunaan strategi secara bervariasi dan tepat, karena strategi-strategi tersebut dapat mambantu pemahaman bacaan mereka.

  

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to express my sincere gratitude to those people who have assisted me in a variety of ways during my study and those who have contributed a lot to the accomplishment of this thesis.

  First of all, I am grateful to my Lord Jesus Christ for His everlasting blessing, love, and talents so that I was able to finish this thesis. This completion of this thesis has required hard efforts and taken a lot of energy, and it would not have been possible without the assistances of others. Therefore, I would like to acknowledge my greatest gratitude to Ag. Hardy Prasetyo, S.Pd., M.A., my sponsor for spending his time to correct my thesis.

  My greatest gratitude is expressed also to Dr. J. Bismoko who has kindly spent his precious time guiding, advising, correcting me to finish this thesis, and who has provided me with valuable and helpful comments to improve my thesis.

  I would also like to express my greatest gratitude to Th. Astanti Rorik W., S.Pd., M.Ed. for her patience and willingness to read and correct this thesis and for her help in giving ideas and comments.

  My appreciation goes to all the members of the lecturing staff of the English Education Study Program of Sanata Dharma University who had guided and taught me, and to all secretariat and library staff for their warm and kind help.

  I would like to thank to my friends, PBI ’98: Dewi, Sari, Cathy, Nana, Inang and Lis for the fun time being together. My deepest gratitude is dedicated to my beloved parents, Bapak, Ibuk, for their love, encouragement, and being patient, to my sisters: Mbak Nining, Mbak Lus,

  Mbak Kanti for their love and support.

  My deepest gratitude also goes to Albertus Iwan Setiyanto, my dearly beloved husband, for being patient and giving support, help, care, and greatest love to me, and also to Christophorus Indriawan Wibisono, my dearest cute little son, for bringing cheerfulness to my life. He is my amazing grace that God gives to me. Both of them complete my happiness and are my biggest spirit. I love them both so much.

  S. Mulat Andriyani

  

TABLE OF CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE ................................................................................................. i PAGE OF APPROVAL ................................................................................ ii PAGE OF ACCEPTANCE ........................................................................... iii PAGE OF DEDICATION ............................................................................ iv STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY .............................................................. v ABSTRACT ................................................................................................ vi

  

ABSTRAK ...................................................................................................... vii

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .............................................................................. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................. ix LIST OF TABLES ......................................................................................... xii

  

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION ................................................................. 1

A. Background .......................................................................................... 1 B. Problem Identification ........................................................................... 3 C. Limitation of the Research .................................................................... 4 D. Research Questions ............................................................................... 4 E. Research Objectives .............................................................................. 4 F. Research Benefits ................................................................................. 5 G. Definition of Terms .............................................................................. 5

  CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................... 7 A. Theoretical Discussion ........................................................................... 7

  1. Strategies ............................................................................................ 7

  a. Types of Strategies ...................................................................... 7

  b. The Importance of Strategies .................................................... 11

  2. Reading .............................................................................................. 13

  a. Nature .......................................................................................... 13

  b. Comprehension ........................................................................... 17

  3. Non-English Students ....................................................................... 23

  4. Strategies and Reading comprehension in EAP .................................. 25

  B. Theoretical Framework ........................................................................... 26

  CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY .............................................................. 29 A. Method .................................................................................................... 29 B. Procedures and Data Acquisition and Analysis ........................................ 29 C. Research Participants ............................................................................... 30 D. Research Instruments ............................................................................. 30 E. Data Recording ...................................................................................... 32

CHAPTER IV ANALYSIS RESULT ....................................................... 33

A. Data from Interview ................................................................................. 33

  1. Data Presentation ................................................................................ 33

  a. Participant 1 ................................................................................. 33

  c. Participant 3 ................................................................................. 34

  2. Data Interpretation............................................................................... 34

  a. Reading Between the Lines .......................................................... 34

  b. Detailed Reading ......................................................................... 34

  c. Consulting Dictionary .................................................................. 35

  d. Translation ................................................................................... 35

  e. Marking ....................................................................................... 35

  f. Taking Note ................................................................................. 35

  g. Connecting to Knowledge of the World ....................................... 35

  h. Connecting Sentences .................................................................. 36 i. Guessing ...................................................................................... 36 j. Rereading .................................................................................... 37

  B. Data from Observation ............................................................................. 37

  C. Data from Tests ........................................................................................ 37

  1. Data Presentation ................................................................................ 37

  2. Data Interpretation .............................................................................. 38

  a. Text 1 .......................................................................................... 38

  b. Text 2 ......................................................................................... 39

  c. Text 3 .......................................................................................... 40

  d. Text 4 ......................................................................................... 41

  e. Text 5 ........................................................................................ 42

  f. Text 6 ......................................................................................... 43

  D. Other Data ................................................................................................ 44

  CHAPTER V CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMENDATIONS.................... 46 A. Conclusions ............................................................................................. 46 B. Other Findings ......................................................................................... 47 C. Recommendations .................................................................................... 48 BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................... 49 APPENDICES ............................................................................................... 51 APPENDIX 1: Test Materials .......................................................................

  52 APPENDIX 2: Interview of Participant 1........................................................

  61 APPENDIX 3: Interview Interpretation of Participant 1 ................................

  65 APPENDIX 4: Observation on Participant 1 ...................................................

  69 APPENDIX 5: Interview of Participant 2 .....................................................

  71 APPENDIX 6: Interview Interpretation of Participant 2 .................................

  75 APPENDIX 7: Observation on Participant 2 .................................................

  78 APPENDIX 8: Interview of Participant 3 ...................................................... 80 APPENDIX 9: Interview Interpretation of Participant 3 ...............................

  84 APPENDIX 10: Observation on Participant 3 ...............................................

  87

  

LIST OF TABLES

  1. Table 4.1 The results of reading tests …………………………………… 37

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION This chapter purposes to clarify the research questions. Therefore, it discusses

  the background of the research, problem identification, limitation of the research, research questions, research objectives, benefits, and definition of the terms.

A. Background

  When one reads a text, he or she tries to get the ideas of the text. Reading does not merely know each word in the text, but it needs one’s text comprehension.

  Comprehension is the product of reading. One needs strategies to facilitate successful comprehension. Reading strategy is a mental process that a reader consciously chooses to use in accomplishing reading tasks (Cohen, 1990: 83). Strategies help the reader to meet successful reading and to reduce the difficulties that occur in the reading activities.

  Reading in a second language is not only done by students of the English program. Students of non-English Programs also require reading their textbooks written in English. It is not easy since English is a foreign language or second language. We are quite sure that reading in a native language is much easier than in a second language since we have mastered its vocabulary and structure of our own language. On the other hand, reading in a second language is difficult. It demands enough knowledge of the target language which has a different system from the native language. The lack of vocabulary, structure, and other knowledge cannot influenced by one’s mother tongue. Sometimes, reader uses his mother tongue structure in reading English. Sartinah (1988: 34) states that “to express oneself in a foreign language is an impossible thing if it is combined with the way of thinking in one’s mother tongue”. Reading ability is individual because each person has different reading ability. Reading ability refers to what extent the process is well developed and the result is achieved. According to Davis as cited in Smith and Johnson (1980: 13), one can have good reading comprehension when she or he has the ability to find the main thought of passage and to draw inferences from the passage that determine the writer’s attitude purpose. Those two abilities then will be mentioned as comprehension in this research if the participants master them. There are three abilities, those are the elements of comprehension, will be discussed in this research. Besides the two abilities above that are ability to find the main thought of passage or then will be mentioned as the ability to locate main idea and ability to draw inferences from the passage or then will mentioned as the ability to draw conclusion, there is also ability to identify title.

  Reading comprehension is the ability to make sense of printed symbols by coordinating emotional, cognitive and psychomotor abilities to understand the meaning of the text that is being read, and reading strategy is a mental process that the reader consciously chooses to use in accomplishing reading task. Reading cannot be separated from strategies in that they facilitate the reader to read more effective and efficient. To gain successful reading comprehension one needs reading strategies. One can have different strategies in his reading process. Different reading tasks require different strategies. So, it needs research to find out the strategies in

B. Problem Identification

  Comprehension cannot be separated from strategies. Strategies play an important role in reading comprehension because they facilitate the readers to read efficiently to meet successful reading comprehension. Strategies can be metacognitive, cognitive, social, and affective. Metacognitive strategies control the reader’s cognition by coordinating the planning, organizing, and evaluation of the learning process. Cognitive strategies encompass the language learning strategies of identification, grouping, retention, and storage of language material, as well as the language use strategies of retrieval, rehearsal, and comprehension. Social strategies include the actions which the learners choose to take in order to interact with other learners and with native speakers. Affective strategies serve to regulate emotions, motivation, and attitudes.

  Successful reading also involves emotion, cognitive, and psychomotor abilities (Taschow, 1985: 24). Emotion is connected with interest. When one is interested in reading a text, he or she tries hard to comprehend the text, and the goal of reading that is comprehension, hopefully achieved. Cognition relates to understanding in reading. Understanding involves interpretation, assimilation, accommodation, adaptation, and equilibrium. Cognition depends on perceiving, recognizing, conceiving, judging, and reasoning, all of which lead to understanding. Psychomotor abilities connect to reading fluency that fluency in silent reading can be expressed in agility or mental action and nimbleness of thought, comprehension, and resourcefulness in completing and composing stories, solving problems, and initiating and working out new ideas.

  Based on the identification above, therefore, this research was done to find out their strategies in reading English text. The research was on three participants of non-English department. The research uses qualitative research that makes use observation, tests, and interview to collect the data.

  C. Limitation of the Research

  From the problem identification above and to make this research feasible, it is necessary to limit the study into several areas. The purpose of it is to make the writer easy to develop the research so that she can present deep discussion.

  The environment of the research is the non-English Department and requires three non-English department students of different universities as the participants.

  The research focuses on the strategies used by the participants in their reading English texts. The comprehension can show the effectiveness of the strategies they choose. The criteria of comprehension are the participants’ abilities in identifying title, locating main idea, and drawing accurate conclusion in each test.

  D. Research Questions

  The problems of this research can be formulated as: What are the students’ strategies in reading English texts?

  E. Research Objectives

  Because the research was on strategies used by three non-English department students, therefore, the objective of the study is to find out their strategies in reading

  F. Research Benefits

  Strategies in reading are mental processes that the reader chooses to use in accomplishing reading task (Cohen, 1990: 83). Reading strategies have important roles in comprehension English texts. Strategies here mean techniques of reading to get the idea of the reading texts. There were various strategies used to meet successful reading comprehension. The result of this research could be useful not only for the students but also for the teachers.

  The students will get information about the strategies they should use for certain texts. They can apply different strategies to solve their problem in comprehending English texts. Therefore, by knowing various kinds of strategies they can comprehend English text better and can apply them appropriately. Finally, those might make the reading texts easier to comprehend. Using different strategies to read English text is useful since a problem in reading comprehension cannot only be solved by a strategy but sometimes need more than one strategy.

  The teachers will also get information about reading comprehension. He or she can inform his or her students about the strategies they should apply when they read difficult text. Comprehension can be gain if the readers apply various strategies.

  G. Definition of Terms

  It is necessary to clarify up some terms used in the research that are considered important. Those terms are:

  1. Reading Strategies Reading strategies are mental processes that readers consciously choose to use in strategies, paraphrasing strategies, strategies for establishing coherence in text, or strategies for supervising strategies use (Sarig in Cohen, 1990: 91).

  2. Reading Comprehension Reading comprehension in this research is the ability to identify title, locating main idea, and draw conclusion in the reading tests.

  3. Non- English Department Students The three students who learn English to support their academic and professional success in non-English related studies, such as Health, Economic, and Education.

CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter discusses the theory of reading and it is divided into two big areas. Those are theoretical description and theoretical framework. The theory description

  presents some theories that support this research. The theory framework discusses the theory to clarify related concepts to answer the research questions theoretically and to show their complexities.

A. Theoretical Discussion.

   This section presents some theories that support this research. This section is

  divided into four subsections. They are Strategies, Reading, Non-English Students, and Strategies and Reading Comprehension in EAP.

1. Strategies.

  Specifically, Cohen (1990: 83) proposes strategies in reading as mental processes that reader consciously chooses to use in accomplishing reading tasks. According to this definition, all levels of strategies, such as guessing new words from context to more specific ones, like performing interparagraph analysis to guess words, are all considered “strategies”, as opposed to referring to the more specific ones by some other term, such as “techniques” or tactic”. Such strategies facilitate successful comprehension of text.

  Strategies refer to both general approaches and specific actions or techniques to learn a second language, in this case, reading English text. A reader deploys strategies to overcome particular reading problems. Generally, reader is aware of the strategies he uses

  Strategies contribute indirectly to learning by providing the reader with the data about second language which he then processes. However, some strategies may also contribute directly, for example, memorization strategies directed at specific lexical items or grammatical rules. Strategies use varies considerably as a result of both kinds of task the reader is engaged in and individual learner preferences.

  The following are possible differences that distinguish a skill from strategy that presented by Urguhant (1998: 91).

   Strategies are reader-oriented; while skills are text oriented. It is true that skill taxonomies tend to focus on text.

   Strategies represent conscious decisions taken by the reader; skills are deployed unconsciously. Another way of phrasing this is that skills have reached the level of automatically.

   Strategies, unlike skills, represent a response to a problem, e.g. failure to understand a word or significance of preposition, failure to find the information one was looking for.

  On the whole, William and Moran in Urguhant (1998: 91) draw the distinction between skill and strategy. A skill is an ability which has been automated and operated largerly subconsciously, whereas a strategy is a conscious procedure carried out in order to solve a problem.

  Sometimes, strategies are referred to as good, effective, successful, and converse. It needs to be pointed out that with some expectations, strategies themselves are not inherently good or bad, but have potential to be used effectively, whether by the same reader from one instance within one task to another instance within that same task, from one task to another, or by different readers dealing with different task (Cohen, 1990: 8).

  There is an opinion that readers who use more strategies indicate that they are better than they who use fewer strategies. The total number or variety of strategies employed and the frequency with which any given strategy is used are not necessarily indicators of how successful they will be on a language task. Whereas the successful completion of some tasks may require the use of various strategies used repeatedly, the successful completion of others may depend on the use of just a few strategies, each strategy is only used once but successfully.

a. Types of Strategies

  There are actually many possible reading strategies to choose from. Sarig in Cohen (1990: 91) classifies strategies into four basic types. They include:

  1. Support strategies Types of reading acts that are undertaken to facilitate high level strategies. For example, skimming, scanning, skipping, marking the text, and using glossary.

  2. Paraphrasing strategies Decoding strategies to clarify meaning by simplifying syntax, finding synonyms for words and phrases, looking for prepositions or basic ideas, and identifying the function of potions of the text.

  3. Strategies for establishing coherence in text The use of world knowledge or clues in the text to make the text intelligible as a piece of connected discourse, for example, looking for organization, using context, and distinguishing the discourse functions in the text (such as introduction, definition, exemplification, and conclusion).

  4. Strategies for supervising strategies use Conscious strategies for checking ongoing self-evaluation, changing the planning and executing of task, identifying misunderstandings, and remediating when reading problems are found. O’Malley and Chamot (Ellis, 2003: 536) distinguish strategies in accordance with the information-processing model, based on their research. Strategies can be cognitive, metacognitive, social, and affective strategies. Cognitive strategies refer to the steps or operations used in problem solving that require direct analysis, transformation or synthesis of learning material. They have an operative or cognitive-processing function, e.g. translation, deduction, elaboration, transfer, and inferencing. Translation is making use the first of language as a base for understanding and/or producing the second language. Deduction is consciously applying rules to produce or understand the second language. Elaboration means relating new information to other concepts in memory.

  Transfer is using previous acquired linguistic and/or conceptual knowledge to facilitate a new language learning task. And inferencing means using available information to guess meanings of new items, predict outcomes, or fill in missing information. Metacognitive strategies make use of knowledge about cognitive processes and constitute an attempt to regulate language learning by means of planning, monitoring, and evaluating. Such strategies allow learners to control their own cognition by coordinating the planning, organizing, and evaluating. Social strategies concern the ways in which learners select to interact with other learners and native speakers, e.g. asking questions to clarify social strategies serve to regulate emotions, motivation, and attitudes, e.g. strategies for reduction of anxiety and for self-encouragement.

b. The Importance of Reading Strategies

  Reading strategies are very important in reading comprehension. They facilitate readers who want to read efficiently. A reader who has determined what he expects to gain from his reading should select reading strategies which best suit his particular purpose (Kustaryo, 1988: 4). If he is reading a novel or a magazine for pleasure, he would obviously not use the same kind of reading strategies that he would use in reading a book of science, linguistics, mathematics, biology, and other subjects.

  Reading is very complex and progresses from very poor reading habits to better ones. It requires a high level of effort and concentration. It is more than just a visual task.

  A reader must not only see and identify the symbols in front of him but also must be able to interpret what he needs, associate with his past experience, and project beyond this in term of ideas, judgments, applications, and conclusions. These reading necessities should be trained to improve the reader’s reading abilities. Readers should know some reading strategies that they need for their college work. They should be sure that suitable strategies are used to facilitate their rapid understanding of the reading materials.

  Different types of reading materials call for different reading strategies. In any reading task, a reader should be flexible in using these strategies, meaning that the strategies should be appropriately chosen. They should fit with the aim of reading. This appropriateness will help his reading and give positive effects, that are, the objective he wants to obtain, to get some information, to get the main idea, to understand the whole

  Research has shown that the strategies one uses in reading in a target language may be similar to the ones one uses for reading in his native language. This may be good or bad depending on the kind of reader he is in his native language. For learners who are poor readers in their native language, the reading of language target language material may produce similar problems. According to Levine and Reves (Cohen, 1990: 74), if the target language trains such learner in the use of the reading strategies, the learning of the target language may provide an opportunity for them to strengthen their reading skills altogether, which has been found to have positive backwash effect on native language reading.

  It has been thought that readers decrease their use of strategies in target language reading once the level of language is beyond their language proficiency. It now appears that readers may read on, drawing on their reading strategies, but possibly with little or no comprehension because of the excessive linguistic (Sarig in Cohen, 1990: 74). In other words, rather than give up on a reading passage if it makes demands beyond their level of language, non-native readers may well continue reading, drawing on their reading strategies to compensate for a lack of proficiency.

2. Reading a. Nature

  Reading is the ability to make sense of written or printed symbols. The reader uses the symbols to guide the recovery of information from his or her memory and subsequently uses this information to construct a plausible interpretation of the writer’s message (Mitchell, 1982: 1). A reader involves himself or herself in learning to read and reading to learn, he or she engages the whole organism, not only the mind, in complex, purposeful processes by coordinating emotional, cognitive, psychomotor abilities.

  Biglmaier, as quoted by Horst G. Taschow (1985: 24), calls emotion, cognition, and psychomotor abilities as the dimensions of reading and describes each dimension in terms of its major criterion. Thus, emotion is connected with interest, cognition with understanding, and psychomotor abilities with certainty, fluency, and speed. Emotion is characterized by reading interest. Interest is one of the affective factors that develop and maintain the desire for reading. Understanding involves interpretation, assimilation, accommodation, adaptation, and equilibrium. Cognition or the act of knowing depends on perceiving, recognizing, conceiving, judging, and reasoning, all of which lead to understanding. Reading understanding means grasping the ideas represented in print and apprehending clearly the nature and subtleties of the reading content and becoming thoroughly familiar with them.

  Psychomotor abilities are characterized by reading certainty, reading fluency, and reading speed which defines the reader’s state of being almost free of doubt in processing graphphophonic, syntactic, and semantic information and being able to process them fluently and expeditiously. Reading certainty can be expressed through handling new, unknown, and difficult words in isolation and in context and through using them in oral and written responses and communications. Reading fluency: in writing can be described as being able to form letter without interrupting the stroke of the pen from the beginning to the end of a word. Quality in written word fluency is expressed in agility or mental action and nimbleness of thought, comprehension, and resourcefulness in completing and composing stories, solving problems, and initiating and working out new ideas. Speed is we determine whether the reader’s mind attaches meaning with the same speed as the eye’s race along and down the printed lines. Reading certainty, fluency, and speed, which constitute the psychomotor reading abilities, support and strengthen the reader’s progress from a dependent, outside-regulated reader to an independent, self disciplined reader.

  Without this abilities, reader find it burdensome if not self-defeating to process print. But when reading certainty, reading fluency, and reading speed work together with the reader’s emotion and cognition, the reader’s whole organism engages in reading to extract meaning from text effectively, efficiently, and economically, meaningful and experiential learning.

  Reading is an active set of skills. According to Eskey in Cohen (1990: 75), reading has been viewed as a continual interaction of identification skills and interpretive skills. Identification skill is the recognition of words and phrases and the grammatical signal required for the simple decoding of the text. Interpretive skill is the higher-level skill that allows for meaningful reconstruction of a text as unified, coherent structure of meaning. In this interactive model, readers are seen to use their previous knowledge of form (the alphabet, words in context, rhetorical form to identify the visual cues and their expectations about the conceptual structure of the text (cultural, subject matter, pragmatics) in order to perform a personal reconstruction of the meaning of the text.

  Reading is a receptive language process. It is a psycholinguistic process in that it starts with a linguistic surface representation encoded by a writer and ends with meaning which the reader constructs (Goodman, 1988: 11). During the reading process, readers construct a meaningful representation of text through an interaction of their conceptual and linguistic knowledge with the cues that are in the text. The reader uses minimal syntactic, and semantic cues) assist readers in sampling, confirming, correcting, and rejecting the predictions they make about the message (Barnitz, 1985: 4).

  According to the research reported in Spiro, Bruce, and Brewer as quoted by Barnitz in Reading Development of Nonnative Speaker of English (1985: 4), there are at least three essential elements of an adequate model of reading. First, reading is multileveled in that native readers use various levels of a language simultaneously to access meaning. Readers use their knowledge of the world and their pragmatic, discourse, syntactic, morphological, and phonological knowledge in constructing and reconstructing meaning. Secondly, reading is interactive in that the reader’s comprehension is “driven” by the knowledge structure or “schemata” of the reader and the specific content and linguistic in the text. All the levels of background knowledge (social, linguistic, conceptual, etc) interact simultaneously as readers construct a meaning of a text. Thirdly, reading involves the generation of hypotheses as readers make predictions about the meaning of a text. These predictions will be confirmed or rejected as reading proceeds.

  Quoted by Barnitz (1985: 6), Goodman and Burke wrote that psycholinguistic research on reading implies that reading instruction should provide opportunities for students to discover the process of the total orchestration of language and conceptual skills with an emphasis not only on the meaning intended by the author and reader, but also on the strategies for constructing meaning or a text. A language must be studied in process.

  There are two kinds of information used in respective language. First, the language structure which is the grammar, or set of syntactic relationships that make it possible to express highly complex messages using a very small set of symbols. The concepts and conceptual sentences. Meaning is the end product of receptive language.. Readers bring meaning to any communication and conduct themselves as seekers of meaning.

  According to Carrell, Devine, and Eskey (1988: 16), readers employ five processes in reading. The brain is the organ of information processing. It decides what tasks it must handle, what information is available, what strategies it must employ, which input channels to use, where to seek information. The brain seeks to maximize information it requires and minimize effort and energy used to require it. The five processes in reading are:

  1. Recognition-initiation The brain must recognize a graphic display in the visual field as written language and initiate reading.

  2. Prediction The brain is always anticipating and predicting as it seeks order and significance in sensory inputs.

  3. Confirmation If the brain predicts, it must also seek to verify its prediction. So it monitors to confirm or disconfirm with subsequent input what it expected.

  4. Correction The brain reprocesses when it finds inconsistencies or its predictions are disconfirmed.

  5. Termination The brain terminates the reading when the reading task is completed, but meaning is being constructed, or the meaning is already known, or the story is uninteresting or the reader finds it inappropriate for the particular purpose. At any rate, termination in reading is usually an open option at any point. These processes have an intrinsic sequence. Prediction precedes confirmation which precedes correction. Yet the same information may be used to confirm a prior prediction and to make a new one.

b. Comprehension

  Comprehension is frequently mentioned in cognitive and educational psychology, as well as, of course, the pedagogical literature. There is often an assumption in the literature that it is the goal of reading process (Urquhant, 1998: 84). Strategies appear to have come into reading research via psychology, where they were used to describe how an organism sought to attain its goals. In both reading research and practice a focus on strategy has had the effect of making the whole operation more learner-centered.