E. Objectives and Benefits of the Study 1. Objective of the Study
8. Level of RCA at the Eight Grader of SMP PGRI 2 Sekampung
Comprehension is the activity of understanding what is being read by the reader. Related to the kind of reading comprehension abilities, they are broadly categorized into three kinds which depend on the reader’s level of comprehension. They are the following:
a. Literal Comprehension Ability
According to Dorn and Soffos, literal comprehension is the ability to recall factual information in the text.40 Meanwhile, Anderson, et.al state that literal comprehension entails the understanding the information that is explicitly stated in reading material.41 It means that literal comprehension involves the understanding of the text to gain the information which can be directly found by the reader at the surface part of the text.
39Stephen B. Kucher and Cecilia Silva, Teaching the Dimensions of Literacy, (New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publisher, 2006), p. 68
40Linda J. Dorn and Carla Soffos, Teaching for Deep Comprehension, (Portland:
Stenhouse Publishers, 2005), p. 14
41Linda Anderson, et.al, CliffsTestPrep® NYSTCE®:Multi-Subject Content Specialty Test (CST), (New Jersey: Willey Publishing, 2007), p. 13
Besides, Hussein asserts that literal comprehension deals with facts, such as dates, names and the others that can be easily comprehended by the reader.42 Besides, literal comprehension covers some essential abilities to gain the literal meaning found in the text.
Below are the examples of those abilities:
1) Identifying the sequence of events
This activity requires some abilities which entail recognizing action order signals or time words such as now, before, after, first, second, following and others and the sequence of the story.
2) Identifying the main idea and details
This activity requires the ability to look for the topic sentence in the text and to identify the details by reading a selection and answering the types of question like who, what, where, when, how and why. For example, what is the main idea of this text?
3) Recognizing cause and effect relationship patterns.
It requires the elaboration of the causes of events in the story and the result of those events. At the literal level, causal information directly stated in the text.43
42Basel Al-Sheikh Hussein, “Analysis of the Real Situation of Teaching Reading Comprehension to First Year Students at the Department of English Language and Literature at Al-Zaytoonah University of Jordan”, Journal of Asian Social Science Volume 8 (2012), p.241
43Linda Anderson, et.al, CliffsTestPrep., p. 13-14
From overall explanation that elaborates literal comprehension, it can be inferred that it is an essential one because it constructs the surface level of the text towards the complicated understanding of a written message.
b. Inferential Comprehension Ability
Inferential comprehension is ability which closely related to making inference. According to Mickulecky and Jeffries making inference is the ability to find out text clues and to guess the topic that is not directly stated in the text.44 It means that to know the point of the text the readers must comprehend in each important part of the text carefully based on the text clues.
Besides, Anderson asserts in making inference the readers are required to recognize referents, to identify unknown words from context clues, to draw conclusion, to identify cause and effect and to judge the author’s point of view. For example, after reading a short story, students can infer what the character might do next based on what he has already done or said, or by other context clues provided by the author. Other queries include questions such as “Why did a character do what she did?” and “Why do you think the book/story/chapter is named what it is?” The answers to these questions are not found in the book; instead, students learn to draw
44Beatrice Mickulecky and Linda Jeffries, More Reading Power, (New York: Longman, 1996), P. 150
conclusions based on what they already know about the characters, setting, events, and other related cues.45
Based on these statements, it can be inferred that inferential comprehension is different from literal comprehension because it deals with the reader’s interpretation how they infer the things that are not be directly stated in the text which needs good comprehension to gain the meaning or information. If the readers cannot be infer the implied meaning, the information or messages cannot be found.
c. Critical or Evaluative Comprehension Ability
Critical comprehension has higher complexities than previous kind of reading comprehension. According to Scanlon, critical comprehension entails the ability to evaluate the information in the text relative to what it means to the reader and relative to the intentions, expertise and author’s perspective.46 It means that critical comprehension needs deeper thinking to map the message or information.
Meanwhile, Dorn and Soffos state that critical comprehension is difficult to be assessed because it needs reader’s interpretations are directly influenced by his or her background experiences.47 From this statement, it can be inferred that to gain the overall meaning of the text, it needs deep interpretation by the reader that surely between one
45Linda Anderson, et.al, Cliffs Test Prep., p. 14
46Scanlon, et.al, Early Intervention., p. 278
47Linda J. Dorn and Carla Soffos, Teaching for Deep., p. 15
another have different interpretation based on their background experiences.
Moreover, to gain the meaning in the text Anderson asserts that evaluative comprehension needs ability to evaluate the text, to differentiate between facts and opinions, to detect faulty reasoning, and to explore author’s bias. For example, because everyone’s life experiences are varied, the answers to some of the following questions will vary such as “Is this argument logical?”, “Is this a fact or opinion?”, “Do you agree or disagree with the author?”, “What the best solution to this problem?”.48
Concerning about kinds of reading comprehension abilities, effective reading comprehension will be accomplished if the reader becomes more proficient in literal, inferential, and critical and it depends on the reader’s level of comprehension to be achieved in what category they will be intended. Regarding that kinds of reading comprehension were various, in this research the writer concerned on literal comprehension by paying attention on subject matter of this research was at the eighth grade students of Junior High School. It means that, at this level the student’s ability to comprehend the text included surface level.
48Linda Anderson, et.al, Cliffs Test Prep., p. 14