CHAPTER II
THEORETICAL REVIEW
A. Reading
1. The Nature of Reading
It is accepted that reading activity is suitable to transfer knowledge from generation to generation. There are some definitions of reading which is proposed by some experts. In the Oxford Dictionary, reading comes from word „read‟, means look at and able to understand something written or
printed. As stated by Finochiaro and Bonomo in Tarigan, (2008:9) reading is bringing meaning to and getting meaning from printed or written material. It also supported by Tella (2007), he said that reading is recognized as an art capable of transforming man‟s life and his entire society.
According to Miculecky 2008, reading is a conscious and unconscious thinking process. The reader applies many strategies to reconstruct the meaning that the author is assumed to have intended. The reader does this by comparing information in the text to his or her background knowledge and prior knowledge.
Alyousef, (2005) also defined that reading can be seen as an “interactive” process between a reader and a text which leads to automaticity
text as he/she tries to elicit the meaning and where various kinds of knowledge are being used : linguistic or systematic knowledge (through bottom-up processing) as well as schematic knowledge (through top-down processing).
From the definitions above the researcher can take conclusion that reading means a process of understanding and interpreting to get out of the printed message or written text. Reading is a crucial skill in learning and communication. It means that through reading we can get so many knowledge. Reading is a skill which must be develop, and can only be developed, by means of extensive and continual practice.
2. The Purposes of Reading
The good reading is reading for a purpose. Tarigan, (2008) stated that the purpose of reading is to find out and get information, to cover the content of the text or book, and to understand the meaning of the text or book. Meanwhile according to Anderson in Tarigan (2008), the purposes of reading are as follows :
a. Reading for details or facts
b. Reading for main ideas
Reading for main ideas is reading to know the topic, the problem on the story, something which is learned or experienced by the figure and summarize the things that has been done by the figure.
c. Reading for sequence or organization
Reading for sequence or organization is reading to know every part of the story, start from the beginning until the end of the story.
d. Reading for inference
Reading for inference is reading to know why the figure do something, what is the author means in the passage, why the figure is changed, etc.
e. Reading to classify
Reading to classify is reading to know something unusual, unnatural about the figure, what is the funny thing in the story, and to know whether the story is a fact or not.
f. Reading to evaluate
g. Reading to compare or contrast
Reading to compare or contrast is reading to know how the figure change, how the figure‟s life is different from the real life, how the two
stories has similarity, etc.
Based on the explanation, it can be concluded that reading is an individual activity. Therefore, every people has different purpose in reading. It depends on their necessity to read. Reading is not only to get information, but also as an amusement of the readers. However, no matter the purpose the most important thing that should be noticed is that the understanding about the text that is read.
3. Types of Reading
There are various reading activities that the readers can do to help them in understanding any type of resources. Ueta (2005:10-11) stated that there are 5 types of reading. Those are as follows:
a. Skimming
reading tasks. When introducing new lessons in the textbook, it believes more desirable to start with skimming, rather than interpret the text word by word or sentence by sentence, in terms of enhancing reading skills. b. Scanning
Scanning or searching reading is also a common reading activity when readers extract necessary pieces of information from a text without reading through the whole text. It is also useful skills especially in daily life, for example in searching through a telephone directory, reading a timetable or advertisements for getting information. The spread of the internet may well accelerate the need for this type of reading.
c. Careful reading
Urquhart and Weir in Ueta (2005: 10) stated that careful reading is associated with reading to learn. The reader attempts to handle detailed information in the text. Thus, reading rate seems to be rather slower than other types of reading because in this type of reading, readers often require reread and inference to connect information with background knowledge. d. Browsing
normally with limited English resources, students have few opportunities to browse English articles. It might be desirable for teacher to store supplementary English materials for browsing and provide some opportunities to browse them.
e. Reading for general comprehension
Grabe and Stoller in Ueta (2005: 14) stated that this is the most basic purpose of reading though it is actually more complex that commonly assumed. “Because reading for general comprehension requires rapid and
automatic processing of words, strong skills in informing a general meaning representation of main ideas, and efficient coordination of many processes under very limited time constraints”.
Based on the explanation the researcher take an example; during the test that has limited time in answering the questions, skimming is regarded as the appropriate way. The participants of the test may skim to find out the answer from the text. It will help them to get the answer quickly since they do not need to read the whole of the text, but directly read based on the question which is asked. Therefore, skimming can be used to get the idea from reading material that we read. For the rest, we can only guess the meaning of it.
even text. Commonly, scanning is used based on the level of the learners. It difficult for young learners. However, it is easy for advanced learners. They read what they need to read, if they do not need they may skip.
The more the readers read the reading material, the more background knowledge that the readers have. It is believed that when someone has many background knowledge, it can be a relief to improve their reading comprehension.
It has been stated before that the readers read what they need to read, however reading is also depends on someone intelligent. Finally, it can be concluded that there are some types of reading that can be used by the readers in order to help them to comprehend their reading material.
B. Reading Habit
Reading is a key to a wealth of experience that links people in a way far beyond distance or time. It means that reading is a way to get so many knowledge and information which can improve someone‟s life. According to
that the readers can widen their knowledge understanding by doing reading. Reading also involves having the skill to process information.
Meanwhile, habit is a person learns to do over and over again without thinking about how to do it. Many everyday action are habit. There are some factors that should be noticed in forming the habit, namely time, desire, and motivation (Tampubolon, 1990:227). It needs a long time to form the habit. Someone who wants to form the habit, they should have a desire and also motivation from themself to start doing and to do continuously until it becomes a habit that can not be separated from their daily life. Besides those three factors, the environment is also can be a factor in influencing the habit. The habit will be difficult to form when there is no support from the environment.
A good reading habit is necessary for a healthy intellectual growth. Thus, reading habit is the best formed at a young impressionable age in school. It has been known, forming reading habit should be done to the children from the early stage. Sukun in Abeyrathna, (2004:7) stated that reading is not an inborn skill. It has to be learned and cultivated from childhood. This should be done in order to help the children to get the more background knowledge. And also help them accustomed to reading habit.
Sangkaeo in Akande and Tella (2007: 121) stated that the term “reading habit” refers to the behavior which expresses the likeness of reading
of individual types of reading and tastes of reading. It also supported by Abeyrathna, 2004: 4, it is said that the reading habit refers to the amount of the different kinds of reading materials read by an individual, the frequency of reading, and the average time spent on reading materials.
spirit. The reading habit, therefore, plays a very crucial role in enabling a person to achieve practical efficiency.
It needs much time to make reading as a habit. According to Tampubolon, (1990:228-229) there are some steps that can be done in order to make reading as a habit start from the early stage. Those steps are as follows: 1) Making an effort of good basic interest of the children in the age of 2
years old when the children can speak and understand what they are saying. It is the way to stimulate children‟s visual and motoric motivation to recognize a book.
2) Giving an illustrated books and supporting the children to open, to see, and also to mention the name of the pictures in the book.
3) Trying to make the children learn the written in the age of 3-4 years, after they start to study in the school and can read the beginning of the letter, word, and sentence. It is the time to stimulate more for children to read the appropriate book that they learn in the school. It also needs to have books at home to be read.
4) Telling the story to the children before they go to sleep or in a certain time especially in the age of 3-5 years old. It is the way to increase their reading interest.
Based on the explanation, the researcher can take conclusion that reading habit should be habituate from the early stage. To make reading activity as a habit someone should start it from their self first. The reader should have interest in reading and also desire to make reading as a habit. Knowing that reading is very important to improve someone‟s
life, can be base for someone to keep on forming reading as a habit.
C. Reading Comprehension
1. The Definition of Reading Comprehension
Therefore, it can be concluded that reading comprehension is the process of someone‟s reading activity to construct meaning and make
connection with written language. Reading comprehension only happen when the readers read something seriously.
2. Components of Reading Comprehension
Donald (1987:30-38) stated that one must familiar with the major component of reading material. There are some components of reading comprehension that should be mastered by the reader, in order to be a good reader. Those components are as follows:
a) Decoding knowledge
Knowledge used to determine the oral equivalent of a written word. Decoding knowledge is important for comprehension when determining the oral equivalent of a word helps a reader to identify meaning.
b) Vocabulary knowledge
Knowledge about word meanings used to determine the appropriate meaning for a word in part text.
c) Syntactic knowledge
grammatical function and sometimes the meaning and pronunciation of word.
d) Discourse knowledge
It refers to knowledge of language organization of units beyond the single sentence level including knowledge of the structural organization of different types of writing.
e) Reading aspect
It refers to students‟ ability to benefit from initial reading instruction. Also refers to the students‟ ability to read and understand a
particular selection. f) Affective aspect
It refers to reading comprehension, include both interest and attitude. These increase motivation and facilitate reading comprehension. All readers comprehend better when they are interested in reading.
3. Evaluating Reading Comprehension
When we have already able to comprehend of what we read, there should be an assessment to know how far we really comprehend the reading materials. According to Brown (2004 : 188), there are some macro and micro skills representing the spectrum of possibilities for objective in the assessment of reading comprehension. Those are as follows:
1. Macro Skills
a. Recognize the rhetorical forms of written discourse and their significance for interpretation
b. Recognize the communicative function of written texts, according to form and purpose.
c. Infer context that is not explicit by using background knowledge
d. From described events, ideas, etc., infer links and connection between events, deduce causes and effect, detect such relation as main idea, supporting idea, new information, given information, generalization, and exemplification.
e. Distinguish between literal and implied meanings
g. Develop and use a battery of reading strategies, such as scanning and skimming, detecting discourse markers, guessing the meaning of the words from context, and activating schemata for interpretation of texts.
2. Micro Skills
a. Discriminate among the distinctive graphemes and orthography of English
b. Retain chunks of language of different lengths in short term
memory
c. Process writing at an efficient rate of speed to suit the purpose d. Recognize a core of words, and interpret word order patterns
and their significance
e. Recognize grammatical word classes (nouns, verbs, etc.), system (e.g., tenses, agreement), pattern, rules, and elliptical forms
f. Recognize that plural meaning may be expressed in different grammatical forms
In making set of question in reading test, it covers the comprehension of these features (Brown, 2004: 206)
1) Main idea (topic)
2) Expression/idioms/phrases in context 3) Inference (implied detail)
4) Grammatical features
5) Detail (scanning for specially stated detail) 6) Excluding facts not written (unstated detail) 7) Supporting idea (s)
8) Vocabulary context
Based on the explanation it can be concluded that there should be an assessment in reading comprehension to know how far we comprehend the reading materials. It can be macro and also micro skills. Those assessment is construct depends on the purpose of the assessment itself. In this study the researcher used both of them macro skills that have been evaluated. Macro skill including skimming, scanning, inference, find the implicit information. While micro skill including reference, and guess meaning from the context.
D. Reading Skill
According to Mikulecky (2008), reading skills are the cognitive processes that a reader uses in making sense of a text. These are some reading skills shown by Mikulecky:
1) Automatic decoding. Being able to recognize a word at a glance. 2) Previewing and predicting. Giving the text a quick once-over to be
able to guess what is to come.
3) Specifying purpose. Knowing why a text is being to read.
4) Identifying genre. Knowing the nature of the text in order to predict what the form and content.
5) Questioning. Asking question in an inner dialogue with the author. 6) Scanning. Looking through a text very rapidly for specific
information.
7) Recognizing topics. Finding out what text is about.
8) Classification of ideas into main topics and details. Categorizing words and ideas on the basis of their relationship; distinguish general and specific.
9) Locating topic sentence. Identifying the general statement in a paragraph.
11) Recognizing patterns of relationship. Identifying the relationship between ideas; the overall structure of the text.
12) Identifying and using words which signal the patterns of relationship between ideas. Being able to see connections between ideas by the use of words such as first,then, later.
13) Interfering the main idea, using patterns and other clues.
14) Recognizing and using pronouns, referents, and other lexical equivalent as clues to be cohesion.
15) Guessing the meaning of unknown words from the context. Using
the clues such as knowledge of word parts, syntax, and relationship patterns.
16) Skimming. Quickly getting the gist or overview of a passage or book.
17) Paraphrasing. Re-stating text in the reader‟s own words in order to monitor one‟s own comprehension.
18) Summarizing. Shortening material by retaining and re-stating main ideas and leaving out details.
19) Drawing conclusions. Putting together information from several parts of the text and inducing new or additional ideas.
21) Visualizing. Picturing, or actually drawing picture or diagram, of what is described in the text.
22) Reading critically. Judging the accuracy of a passage with respect to what the reader already knows, distinguish fact from the opinion.
23) Reading faster. Reading fast enough to allow the brain to process the input as ideas rather than single words.
24) Adjusting reading according to materials and purposes. Being able to choose speed and strategies needed for the level of comprehension desired by the reader.
Based on the explanation, it can be concluded that all of those reading skills can be achieved only when we do reading frequently. The reading skills that mentioned before are the skills which is commonly use in evaluating reading comprehension. Therefore, when the reader read often and have a good reading comprehension automatically they will have a good reading skill. With a good reading skill, they will be a good reader.
E. Relevant Studies
phones, televisions, and other means of entertainment, the reading habit of the general public, especially the younger generation, is undergoing a decline. In their journal, it conveyed that reading habit is affected by various other elements. The journal examined the reading habit of the students and identified the trends in their reading habit. The result of the study showed that the students‟ reading
habit increase because of the developmental era.
Erna Iftanti, (2012: ) in her journal explained that the student who learn English as their foreign language establish good English reading habits because they are very much involved in and greatly benefit from English reading practices. The study investigated the English reading habits of Indonesian students of EFL. The result of the study showed that the students who considered to have good English reading habits are those who always spend their time to read English texts regularly.
Meanwhile, another reading habits survey was done by Associate Professor Cheang Eng Othman on October 2005. The study was examine the reading habits of UiTM Perlis branch undergraduate students. The data showed that family background plays a very important role in encouraging students to read. The result of the study indicates that students who have higher score tend to read more reading materials compared to students who have lower score.
about reading habit and its relation to reading comprehension as discussed in this research.
F. Basic Assumptions
Reading comprehension is not easy for some students, so to understand well the text that have been read, the students must have a good reading habit. How often the student read a book determines the quality of reading skills. Reading habit refers to the behavior which expresses the likeness of reading of individual types of reading and tastes of reading. A good reading habit is necessary for a healthy intellectual growth. By good reading habit it is expected to have high comprehension in reading.
G. Hypothesis
The hypothesis of this research was, reading habit influences reading comprehension of the second graders of SMP N 2 Pekuncen in academic year
