A. Nature of Reading Comprehension 1. Definition of Reading Comprehension
4. Component of Reading comprehension
The most important thing that need to be considered is the component of reading itself. According to Donald et al (1987, p.31-38) there are six major components of reading comprehension, and they are : 1) Decoding knowledge
Knowledge is used to determine the oral equivalent of a written word.
Decoding knowledge is important for comprehension when determining the oral equivalent of word to help the reader. Identifiying meaning is frequently true and relatively unfamiliar with printed of many word in spoken but are relatively unfamiliar with printed word.
2) Vocabulary knowledge
The knowledge is what one has about word meaning used to determine the appropriated meaning for a word in a particular context. Vocabulary knowledge is important at all grade levels, but is particulary important aspect of reading instruction as develop and explore less familiar subject offers with some what specialization vocabularies.
3) Syntactic knowledge
Knwledge of the other rules that determine grammatical function and sometime the meaning and pronounciation of word. Syntactical knowledge indludes understanding word order rules that exist within sentence and permit.
4) Discourse Knowledge
Knowledge of language organization at units beyound the single sentence levels includes knowledge of the structure organization of different type of writing.
5) Readiness aspect
Reading readiness describe instruction designed to assist both preferred skill are important instruction during kinderganrden and beginning of the first : recently reading readiness has wider definition, it includes reading to read and understand a particular selection.
6) Effectiveness aspect
Reading comprehension includes both interest and attitude and these increase motivation and facilitate reading comprehenion, always make reading comprehension and reading instruction as interesting and enjoyable as possible. Aspectibve aspect is important to consider at age and grade level stated by Donald et all (1987, p.57).
a. The Process of Understanding A Text
Reading implies comprehension, which is the process of capturing and constructing the meaning of a text (oral and written). This is the result of the interaction that occurs between the text itself, the reader, and the context stated by Duke & Carlisle (2010, p.30). According to Kintsch and Perfetti, the reader‟s mind works on the meaning of words and the syntax of the text; it builds coherence (identifying degrees of relevance among different fragments of the text), and generates a situation model of the text”. These steps are influenced by the context in which the communicative act takes place. The interaction of the factors mentioned above makes the reading process a highly elaborate enterprise.
In addition, the act of reading and understanding a text consists of functions that work simultaneously. It implies both decoding content and relating it to previous knowledge from the reader. Similarly, Snow (2002, p.45) explian that reading comprehension is “the process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with written language. According to the author, reading comprehension involves the reader as the process agent, who uses all
cognitive and experiential capacities for this task, including "the purposes, processes, and consequences associated with the act of reading and the text as the printed or electronic object to understand. These aspects interact with the sociocultural context, which influences the attitudes and abilities of the readers, as well as the activities they develop regarding the text.
Consequently, reading comprehension is a complex task that demands considerable effort from the reader who follows a series of important processes. According to Lin, comprehension implies obtaining and analyzing information to generate a cohesive and a solid product that will demonstrate its understanding as cited in Hill (2011, p.75). Besides, Hill (2011, p.57) conceived reading comprehension as a process that implies interaction and strategies that can lead to reading fluency, which according to Hirsch (2003, p.73), is the general correlation between comprehension speed and comprehension quality. Assimilating the content of a text goes far beyond understanding mere words; it requires a series of analytical and critical skills, intended to obtain a meaningful outcome about the ideas expressed by an author. In this sense, Swan (1975, p.90) complemented these ideas by defining reading comprehension as the capacity of capturing the highest amount of information from a text with the least misunderstanding, as well as the capacity of re-stating the ideas expressed by an author.
From the description above, it can be concluded that the reading comprehension is the process of understanding the text, the reader should be interacted with the author. Reading is the active process of
understanding print and graphic texts. Reading is a thinking process.
Effective readers know that when they read, what they read is supposed to make sense. They monitor their understanding, and when they lose the meaning of what they are reading, they often unconsciously select and use a reading strategy. Moreover, reading comprehension that is about helping someone to learn how to do something. It can be done by giving the learners instructions on how to do that or by guiding them in doing the thing that they expected to learn. Someone who teaches can be called as a teacher, while the one who is taught can be called as a learn.
b. Students Strategies For Enhancing Reading Comprehension
Reading comprehension strategies are paramount to support students in coping with possible complexities interfering with comprehension, and foremost, to become independent readers and learners, which in Cohen‟s words (1998, p.54), will help to shift the responsibility for learning off the shoulders of the teachers and on those of the learners. Reading comprehension strategies, defined by Graesser (2007, p.67) as actions that can be behavioral or cognitive, are enacted under particular contextual conditions, with the goal of improving some aspect of comprehension. In this regard, McNamara (2009, p.90) asserted that such strategies bring mechanisms to cope efficiently with comprehension problems and, over time, they will be part of students‟
habits. Through an adequate use of strategies, students may reduce the obstacles they find when reading a text.
The concerns with strategy training models, Liu (2010, p.37) affirmed that a reading strategy is a deliberate action that readers take voluntarily to develop and understanding what they read, and mentioned the one proposed by Chamot and O Malley: the Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach (CALLA). This approach, according to Lin (2010, p.63), embodies the academic language development, content area instruction and explicit instruction in learning strategies for both content and language acquisition. This model encompasses six stages (preparation, presentation, practice, evaluation, expansion, and assessment) that can provide useful guidelines to support our learners in their reading comprehension development.
The appropriate selection of learning strategies for students, as well as the adequate criteria for elaborating the materials through which teachers implement reading strategies in their classes, will be crucial in the development of students‟ reading comprehension.
c. Element of Teaching and Learning Reading Comprehension
Teaching Reading has 3 elements. The teaching elements are roles of learners, the roles of teachers and materials.
1) Roles of learners. According to Edge (2001, p.9) that all learners are the same. They have everything whose is possessed somebody else, among others emotional, intelligence, a place to live and everything else that goes with being a human being including the ability to speak at least one language. These characters are typical of good language learners,
although no learners would have them all. a) They have a positive attitude about the language they want to learn and about speakers of the language;
b) They have a strong personal motivation to learn the language; c) They are confident that they will be successful learners; d) They are prepared to risk making mistakes and they learn from the mistakes that they make; e) They like to learn about the language; f) They organize their own practice of the language; g) They find ways to say things that they do not know how to express correctly; h) They get into situations where the language is being used and they use the language as often as they can; i) They think about their strategies for learning and remembering and they consciously try out new strategies.
2) Roles of Teacher. According to Richards & Rodgers (2001, p. 28) states that teacher is a main actor in success or not to transfer of knowledge in teaching learning to the students. They must have a wide knowledge, good idea, etc. The teacher is the most powerful in the classroom. There are many ways for the teacher to use that power, these are as follow:
a) Organization: The learners have the purpose in their activity in the classroom, which they are learning in the classroom to get knowledge. The learners feel confidences in their teaching- learning proces.
b) Security: The learners must give one condition which safe and comfortable to the student. So, the condition in the classroom will be conducive without students feel afraid or noisy in their learning.
c) Motivation: Learners will be successful if they are given motivation when they learn. The teachers should give motivation to their students if they faced difficulties or the problem in their assignment.
d) Instruction: Learners need to be told about new things and told how to do new things.
e) Modeling: Learners need to be told about new things and shown how to do new things.
f) Guidance: Learners need a helping hand to discover new things and to practice new skills.
g) Information: Learners need sources of extra information about what they are learning, which they can call on as require.
h) Feedback: Learners need to know how close they are getting to their target.
i) Encouragement: Learners need to feel that the language is developing inside them, even if what they are producing at the moments seems unlike Standard English
j) Evaluation: Learners need to know the result of their study, so, motivate instruction, model, guidance, information, give feedback, encourage, and evaluate
3) Roles of Intercational Materials. The last component is the role of instructional materials that pecified with respect to objectives, content,
learning activities, and learner and teacher roles suggests the function for materials within the system of learning stated by Richards & Rodgers, (2001, p. 29). Some elements that need to be prepared for international materials are: Curriculum; earning outcomes; Syllabus; Lesson Plan.
a) Curriculum: The curriculum is a set of students‟ educational experiences obtained at school. Keep in mind that education in the broadest sense can be a god. The first problem is determined by the preferred curriculum, namely in terms of determining goals that really are fun, encouraging and provide convenience in the analysts that students do in learning. Richards (2001, p.2) adds curriculum focuses on determining what knowledge, skills, and values students learn in school, what experiences should be provided to bring about intende.
b) Learning outcomes, and how teaching-learning in schools or educational systems can be planned, measured, and evaluated.
c) Syllabus: According to Richards (2001, p.2) syllabus is a specific of the content of a course of instructions and lists what will be taught and tested by the teacher. Generally, a syllabus should include some elements they are: a) The purpose of the subject study that should be taught; b) The target of the subject study; c) The skill that is needed to dominate well; d) The formation of topics that are taugh; e) The activities and the source of the study to support the success of teaching; f) Some evaluation techniques that are used.
d) Lesson Plan: The main elements in the lesson plan, according to Harmer (2001, p.57) a) Who are the students for this activity?; The description or characteristics of the class and study groups who will learn to use the lesson plan; b) What will it achieve? A description of the learning objectives to be achieved; c) How long will it take? It is a statement about the time limit allocted for conducting the learning process;
d) What might go wrong? Problems that might arise and anticipate them;
e) What will be needed? Media needed for learning; f) How does it work?
A series of activities that will be carried out to achieve the goal.
d. Students‟ Problem in Learning Reading Comprehension
Talk about reading problems, Grabe (1991, p.69) stated that reading is an interactive process between the reader and the reading material he reads which is the result of his reading skills. Reading is a complex activity that involves perception and thinking which consists of word recognition and comprehension processes. Anderson (1999, p.90) said that reading comprehension has 4 interactions, namely, the reader, reading materials, fluency and reading strategies. In order to understand reading material completely and quickly, a reader must have skills in reading. This skill in reading is usually called or known in the process of learning and learning language.
The factors in teaching which are most often responsible for people to comprehend reading materials according to Kennedy (1981, p.141) included:
a. Classroom management: There are some teachers who are not good enough in managing classin teaching learning process, especially in teaching reading. It is caused by some factors. They are from the condition of class, time, students by some factors. when the class has many students, it means that the class is not an effective class to teach. Then, the teacher will find difficluties related to manage the class.
b. Lack of pupil interest: It is difficult to any but the most thorough disciplined readers to concentrate on materials they dislike or that is unrelated to their personal interest. Without thoroughly attention to content comprehension of such materials will be negligible. Lack of interest causes the mind to wander, eliminates any desire to excel, encourage a dislike for the task and reduces consciousness effort.
c. Knowledge: Knowledge is an essential to comprehension without an appreciation of the meaning of words, they can be no comprehension.
Moving beyond the meaning of individual word, domain knowledge is also considered crucial for comprehension. Apperciation of the domain that is being reffered to in a text allows the reader to move from a word of propositional level represntationof the text to one which integrates this knowledge with a broader body of background 28 knowledge, thus allowing the reader to build a potentially inference- rich mental models of the situation or event.
d. Vocabulary difficulties: An excessive vocabulary burden forces the readers to rely on a dictionary or to bypass many important words. In
summary, factor in teaching reading comprehension above, in these research students' problems on reading comprehension are less of vocabulary, difficult material. And lack of pupil interest that influence on teaching-learning process in the classroom.
e. The Solving Problem of Teaching Reading: The teacher should be a good faciliator as Brown (1994, p.7) states that teaching is guiding and facilitating learning, enable the learner to learn, setting the codition for learning it means that teaching is a process of guiding the students to learn and develop their knowledge. Furthermore, teaching is a guideline for the teacher to help the strudnets in comprehending the text easily. It means that teacher must create a good atmosphere.
B. Nature of Self-Esteem 1. Definition of Self-Esteem
According to Plummer (2006, p.67), self-esteem refers to a state of liking and approving of our selves. It is about recognizing our competencies and accepting our needs to continue learning and developing. Brown (2014, p.59) stated that Self-esteem is probably the most pervasive aspect of any human behaviour. It could easily be claimed that no successful cognitive or affective activity can be carried out without some degree of self-esteem, self-confidence, knowledge of yourself, and belief in your own capabilities for that activity. Based on the theory above it means that in the learning process self-esteem is one important affective factor in improving students knowledge in language learning.
Branden (1992, p.45) has pointed out that self-esteem is a sense of confidence in our ability used to think and to cope with the basic challenging things that come to our life. Besides, he said that confidence in our right to be happy, the feeling of being worthy and enjoying the things that we get by our efforts is also called selfesteem. As suggested by Coopersmith in Brown (2007, p. 154) “selfesteem is a personal judgment of worthiness that is expressed in the attitude that individuals hold toward themselves”. Self-esteem deals with pervasiveness of aspect of any human behavior. Without some degree of self-esteem, there would be no successful activity can be done.
Based on theory above, it indicates that self-esteem is important thing because it influences the people reaction to respond something that they face in their life especially the students. For example, they respond to others and themselves in positive ways if their self-esteem is positive. It is also supported by the theory from Block (2011, p.70) that self-esteem is a crucial factor in the developmental process of teens. It means that self esteem is the crusial aspect that influence the students developmental included developmental of their ability.
Self-esteem is one of the psychological factors which influence the students to learn about language. Anders (2002, p.76) claimed that language learning is affected by both domains which are the mental and emotional sides of human behaviour. Farley (1970, p.41) stated that the role of personality had been much less a concern of researchers. Self-esteem is another factor in SLA. Learners with low self-Self-esteem are less
likely to participate in a class or practise the language Brown (2014, p. 56) . Some of these students do not like to speak aloud in front of the class.
They may also think to be less critical and that their contributions are not valuable.