READING ABILITY

Serba Serbi Pendidikan -- Reading is one of receptive skills; reading becomes the goal of  most foreign language programs. It shows that reading is an important  part on the teaching of knowledge. It might be to obtain some intellectual information or some common factual information or merely for pleasure. Here are overviews of present several definitions of reading:

1)  Grabe and Stoller defined reading is the ability to draw meaning from the printed page and interpret this information appropriately.

2)  Caroline T. Linse defined reading is a set of skills that involves making sense and deriving meaning from the printed word.

3)  Hennings defined reading is a thinking process that sets two people in action together (an author and a reader).

So, in reading activities there are two subjects involved in.  They are the writer and the reader. The writer tries to convey, to present his or her messages through letters, words, phrases and their relationship, while the reader tries to get the messages from the written verbal symbols. 

Based on the definitions above, it can be concluded that reading is not merely as a process of reading words by words of the printed page but it is also a collaboration of thinking process, recollection of the past experience, interaction and it acquired language faculty to interpret the author’s intention. Reading is also a process of matching information since the activity of reading is the reader matches his information that he already had with the printed page in order to get the message.

 In Islam, reading becomes something important because it was the first commandment all at once the first defines revelation to the prophet Muhammad (p.b.u.h). It is stated in Quran surah Al-Alaq 1-5.

“Read the name of your lord who created, created man from clots of congealed blood. Read! Your lord is the most beautiful one, who taught by the pen, taught man what he did not know.”

 The term ability according to Grabe and Stoller refer to whatreaders do while reading and processes to mental operations. Learning to read is a different process because it involves learning about a symbolic system (writing) used to represent speech. So, there is close connection between oral vocabulary, grammar and sound system of the oral language. The ability to attend the individual sounds within words (phonological and phonemic awareness) is also in oral skill that is closely associated with reading ability. Reading ability will be developed best in association with writing, listening, and speaking activities. 

Aspects of Reading Ability

 There are some aspects that must be mastered by the English students in improving their ability in reading. These aspects will help the students in understanding texts or even passages. The students are actually trained to master some important aspects of text as follow;

1) Reading comprehension 

Reading comprehension refers to reading with understanding. According to Grabe and Stoller reading comprehension is an extraordinary feat of balancing and coordinating many abilities in a very complex and rapid set of routines that makes comprehension a seemingly effortless and enjoyable activity for fluent readers.

Grellet states that understanding the written test means extracting the information from it as possible. Simanjuntak points out that reading comprehension is most likely to occur when students are reading what they want to read, or at least what they see some good reason to read.

Reading is one of the basic communicative skills, but it is a very complex process. In the process of reading, there are some factors, which influence reading comprehension. According to Harris and Smith explained some factors influencing reading comprehension that are:

a) Background experience 

The knowledge backgrounds and the past experiences of the students are very important in reading in order to anticipate the author’s message. The ability to reconstruct meaning from printed page, including various kinds of skills and style the writer has, is based on the reader’ s previous experience with a topic, his familiarity with key concepts, and his knowledge of how language works. In summary, readers must have ability to relate the text to their own background  knowledge efficiently.

b) Language abilities 

Reading and language are two things that cannot be separated because reading is one of the skills in learning a language. As a means of communication the expresses ideas, thought, opinions, and feelings.

Language abilities refer to the abilities of students in using a language. It includes the ability to understand the structure underlying the passage and the vocabulary of the language.

c) Thinking abilities 

Thinking abilities refer to the students’ ability to link their new experience with their previous one. In this case, readers should think the act of recognizing words, whereas, teachers give the appropriate questions to help the students develop their thinking abilities.  

d) Reading purposes 

Haris and Smith, Reading Instruction: Diagnostic R The purposes for reading are reading for information and reading for pleasure. It is important to judge the purpose of reading because it will influence us in choosing the technique. 

e) Affection 

Motivation, interest, belief, and feelings belong to affection. They may have improved the influence on students’ reading comprehension.

2) Reading Purpose

Reading is a skill that must be developed, and can only be developed, by means of extensive and continual practice. Students learn to read by reading. Their reading will tend to be effective when they have a purpose and motivation to learn first.  Grabe and Stoller said that the purposes for reading as follow;

a) Reading to search for simple information.

b) Reading to skim quickly.

c) Reading to learn from texts.

d) Reading to integrate information.

e) Reading to write (or search for information needed for writing).

f) Reading to critique texts.

g) Reading for general comprehension.

There are many purposes in reading texts as stated above. Each person has to own purpose in reading text. Mikulecky states why reading is important when you are learning a new language.  People usually read for a reason. There are some reasons why is reading important: 

a) Reading helps students learn to think in new language.

b) Reading can enlarge students’ English vocabulary.

c) Reading can help students to improve their writing.

d) Reading may be a good way to practice students English if  they live in non-English speaking country.

e) Reading can help students to prepare for study in an English speaking country.

f) Reading is a good way to find out about new ideas, facts and experiences. 

Elizabeth S. Pang et al explain that a reader reads a text to understand its meaning, as well as to put that understanding to use. A person reads a text to learn, to find out information, to be entertained, to reflect or as religious practice. 33 So in the classroom, teachers need to be aware of their students’ learning needs, including their motivation for reading and the purpose that reading has in their lives.

3)  Models of Reading

According to O’malley and Valdez Pierce in their books, reading process in a second language is similar to those acquired in the first language in that they call for knowledge of sound or symbol relationships, syntax, grammar and semantics to predict and confirm meaning. As they do in their first language, second language readers use their background knowledge regarding the topic, text structure, their knowledge of the world, and their knowledge of print to interact with the printed page and to make prediction about it. O’malley and Valdez Pierce also explained models of reading that are;

a) Bottom-up Models

Bottom-up models refer to the decoding of individual linguistic units on the printed page, working one’s way up from smaller to larger units to obtain meaning and to modify one’s prior knowledge.

According to Brown bottom-up processing is readers must first recognize a multiplicity of linguistic signals (letters, morphemes, syllables, words, phrases, grammatical cues, discourse markers) and use their linguistic data processing mechanisms to impose some sort of order on these signals.

b) Top-down Models

Top-down models the reader’s hypotheses and predictions about the text and his or her attempts to confirm them by working down to the smallest units of printed text. According to Harmer top-down processing the reader or listener gets a general view of the reading or listening passage.

c) Interactive Models

Interactive models of reading are proposed for second language learners to give balanced emphasis to these top-down and bottom-up process. In these models, the term interactive has three meanings: a) the interaction between the reader and the text, b) the interplay between lower and higher level reading process (decoding and using prior knowledge) and c) the relationship between form (text structure) and function (genre) in text.

4)  Reading Skills

Reading skills can be categorized into four types: skimming,scanning, intensive reading and extensive reading. These four skills are usually used integrative when reading a text. For instance, a reader may skim the text first to find out whether it is relevant for his/her purpose and then decide to read it intensively. 

a) Skimming

This skill is used in reading to get the main ideas of a text. The function of skimming is to read quickly to discover the gist to see whether the text is worth reading or not according to the reader’s purpose. According to Mikulecky skimming is high-speed reading that can save you time and help you get through lots of material quickly. Skimming consists of quickly running one’s eyes across a whole text (such as an essay, article, or chapter) for its gist. Skimming gives readers the advantage of being able to predict the purpose of the passage, the main topic, or message, and possibly some of the developing or supporting ideas.

b) Scanning

This skill is used to look rapidly for a particular piece of information. According to Mikulecky scanning is very high speed reading that you do when you are looking for a specific piece of information. Scanning exercises may ask students to look for names or dates, to find a definition of a key concept, or to list a certain number of supporting details. The purpose of scanning is to extract specific information without reading through the whole text. The skill of scanning is supposed toensure that learners do not read word-by-word but instead they will glance at the text quickly and look for the information which they know is in it.

c) Intensive Reading

Intensive reading is usually a classroom oriented activity in which students focus on the linguistic or semantic details of passage. 42 Intensive reading calls students’ attention to grammatical forms, discourse markers, and other surface structure details for the purpose of understanding literal meaning, implications, rhetorical relationships, and the like. Intensive reading also may be a totally content related reading initiated because of subject matter difficulty. In other words the aim of intensive reading is to achieve a detailed understanding of the text.

d) Extensive Reading

 Extensive reading is carried out to achieve a general understanding of a usually somewhat longer text (book, long article, or essays, etc). Most extensive reading is performed outside of class time. Extensive reading is also to obtain global or general meaning from longer passages; use extensive reading is to improve general knowledge.

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