CHAPTER II REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
B. Partinent Ideas
2. Concept of Reading Comprehension
The following are some defenition of reading comprehension which have been proposed by some expert : (Ophelia, 1989) stated that reading comprehension means the understanding, evaluating,utilizing of information and gaining through an interaction between author and reader.
(Kustarto, 1988) stated that reading comprehension is a term to needed to understand and apply information contained within material.
(Pearson & Comporell, 1981) as cited in Alexander et al (1988:11-12) stated the lack of comprehension from a given passage may be accounted for in at least three way :
1) The reader does not have appropriate schemata.
2) The clues provided by the author are not sufficient to suggest the appropriate schemata.
3) The reader find a consistent interpretation that is not intended by the author : a. Good as cited in Mc. Whorter (1993) defines that reading comprehension as an
interaction between thought and language.
b. (Smith & Johnson, 1980) assumed that reading comprehension depend on many factors such as :
(1) The readers ability to attend the printed idea.
(2) The readers background knowledge to which new information must be added.
(3) The quality of lucidity writing itself.
(4) The readers purpose goal in reading text or material.
Based on the defenition above the researcher conclude that reading comprehension is level of understanding of a writing where in reading there are interaction between the teacher and the students in the classroom. The students can know the writer’s idea from the text that has read.
b. Categorizing Reading Comprehension
Comprehension involves thinking higher levels of comprehension would obviously include higher of thinking. There are four categories of comprehension according to Smith as cited in Mansur (2002:13-14) they are:
a) Literal Comprehension (Reading in Line)
Literal comprehension refers to the idea and facts that are directly stated on the printed pages. The literal level of comprehension is fundamental to all reading skill at any level because a reader must first understandwhat the writer said before he can draw inference of make an evaluation. In other words this category a lower level thinking skill than the others.
b) Interpretation (Reading Between the Lines)
This category demands a higher level of thinking ability because the question of interpretation are concerned with answer that are not directly stated in the text but they are suggested or implied to answer question at the interpretative level the reader must have ability and able to work various levels of abstraction.
The interpretation level is the one at which the most conclusion exists. The conclusion concerns the term inference. Inference may by defined as something that is not directly stated but suggested in the statement a logical conclusion that is drawn from the statement a dedication and induction.
c) Critical Reading (Reading Beyond Line)
Critical reading is higher than the other level of comprehension (literal and interpretation level) because it involves evaluation personal judgement. In addition, a reader must be able to collect, interpret, apply, analyze and synthesize the information to criticize of nerit for example in those part of the material where the writer has expressed his ideas or his facts better perhaps than other writer on some subject.
d) Creative Reading
Creative reading uses different thinking skill to go beyond the literal comprehension, interpretation and critical-reading level. In creative reading, the reader’s tries to come up with new or alternative solution to these presented by the writer.
c. The Process of Reading Comprehension
(Davies & Whitney, 1983) states are three vital process involved in reading comprehension, as follows:
a) Previewing-scanning, searching, reading HITS ( Heading, Ilustration, Paragraph Openers) and setting p some expectation.
b) Predicting: making guisses which are informed these expectation, knowledge of the subject, the writer, the type or time of writing, of the likely concept, contens or conventions.
c) Checking: confirming, exchancingor extending predictions or pre-knowledge by using feartures within the text or resources outside it.
The process above must be done onderly since its aim is to make the students better guessers. The work is directed as setting up situation where
students work closely as individuals or together in teaching or meaning, by gessing immediate context, wider context, part of speech or part of words.
In connection with the reading activities, the process of the teaching learning should be task-oriented; in the sense that the student have to do or perform something based on the task given. Therefore, the students in the learning reading have to do exercises and activities that the teacher instruct them to do or based in the text selection.
d. Factors Influencing Reading Comprehension
There are external factors in reading comprehension. All of which share the success in reading comprehension.
a) Motivation
Motivation is very important, the success and failure reading depends one’s motivation to read, when the students have high motivation to read they will work hard to ever come the difficult material. One’s motivation could be influenced by internal and external factors, such as the materials used by the teacher and prior knowledge.
b) Concentration
Concentration means to factors our attention clearly on a purpose.Concentration is very easy to do if we are interested in what we read.
c) Teacher’s Guidance
Teacher guidance influences how the students understand particular assignment because lack of sufficient guidence may also the major factor in low reading comprehension.
d) The lenght and the difficulty of materials influence readers for reading
e) Vocabulary acquisition and the ability form concepts are essential for reading E. Developing Reading Comprehension
(William, 1983) , there are five to developing reading skill that are commonly know, they are:
a) Finding Main Ideas and Supporting Skill
The most valuable reading comprehension skill are the probably the ability to determine the most importance thing in out her is saying. Read the following paragraph to see if you can distinguish between essential and non-essential information betwen the main idea and supporting details.
b) Skimming of Specific Information
It is not necessary to read every word if passage. Your purpose for reading something determines how closely you should read it. Once know what your purpose is, skimming is valuable procedure. Skimming through a passage involves reading very past in order to reacquire main ideas and supporting details while skipping (not reading) parts that are relevant to your reading purpose.
c) Defining Words from Context
As we probably know, the text way to improve your vocabulary is to read as often and so much as possible, we sometimes learn award what we don’t know by looking at it is need in a sentence that is, by looking at its context.
d) Making Inference
There are two basic kinds of reading comprehension, when you are able to use the author’s words to answer a comprehension question. It is your factual comprehension that is being tested. Sometimes however the information is not
directly stated, so we must infer a meaning using your own reasoning and logic.
This type of understanding is sometimes referred to as inferential comprehension.
e) Understanding Advertidement
Writers of advertising copy are amateur psychologist. They know just what will appeal to our instinct and emotion. In general, they are major areas in our nature at which advertising aims preservation, pride and pleasure.
3. Concept of Critical Thinking