CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
C. The some Concept of Reading 1. Concept of Reading
2. Reading Comprehension
a. Definition of Reading Comprehension
Reading comprehension is the process of constructing meaning involving the written language by interpreting textual information in the light or prior knowledge and experience using appropriate and efficient comprehension strategies.
This part deals with reading comprehension, which is a more complex activity than reading in general as explained above. Reading comprehension is often considered as the elementary way of learning new information and the most important skill required for the students‟ success (Mohammadi & Abidin, 2013).
Reading comprehension appears to the surface from an interactive process between the readers and the texts. Readers in this case bring in their knowledge of the world or their background knowledge that is already stored in their memory
trying to match this knowledge to the upcoming/new information from the text they are reading. The following are the statements from some experts and sources about reading comprehension.
Firstly, Meyer and Ray (2011) remark that reading comprehension involves building new understandings actively by establishing relationships among the parts of text and between the text and readers‟ prior or previous knowledge.
Secondly, reading comprehension, according to the Boundless (2009), refers to extracting and making meaning by interacting and generating involvement with texts being read.
Thirdly, Woolley (2011:15) maintains that reading comprehension is the process of generating meaning from text. The aim of this process is to obtain a whole understanding of what is given or presented in the text rather than to gain meaning from isolated words or sentence.
To sum up, reading comprehension is the ability of a reader to construct meaning of a text by making connection between the information presented in the text and their knowledge that is already stored in their brain. Therefore, reading comprehension can be successfully attained if readers build strong relationship between their background knowledge and the text they read.
b. Level of Reading Comprehension
The levels of Reading Comprehension according are: Literal reading, Interpretative reading, Critical reading and Creative reading. But Reseacher will
not explaine all of them in detailly, but only specific information, sequencing event, and creative reading which is corelated with the variables, it will be shown as below :
a. Literal Reading
Literal reading refers to the acquisition of meaning of ideas or information that is explicitly stated in the text. Some specific reading skill at the literal level of comprehension are: identifying specific information , sequencing event when explicitly.
1. Identifying Specific Information This reading requires one to focus his attention only on one or some particular information or detail which he need form a text;
the rest of the text may not be read anymore. That information may be a name, a date, a scientific term, or a place or just anything, the search for which motivates the person to read. In looking for a detail, the reader must look for signals in the environment of the needed information or in the information it self.
2) Sequencing Events Meaningful reading results from the reader‟s ability to follow the flow of thought of the writer. This is so because any discourse is made up of words and sentences which are not only grammatically linked to one another, but also related with conflict and plot, the basic conflict is dramatic conflict. For convinience, we can place the dramatic conflict that foubd in short stories in three categories. Those are:
a) First is the fhisical or Elemental Conflict. Here we usually find a person or thing in conflict with nature. In such a story we may go through the struggles of a man climbing a mountain, a woman fighting to survive in acycloue,etc.
The principal appeal of kind of story is almost wholly to the emotions of the reader.
b) The second types of dramatic conflict is Social conflict. In this type the is of one person against another:two women seeking to marry the same man, two men competing for job, a detective pitted against a criminal, a child in conflict with his parents,etc. The principal the conflict happen between the actor to another actor.
c) The tird type of confict is Internal or Psychological conflict. Here we find a person struggling against with him or her self, his conscience, his guilt, or simply trying to decide what he‟s going to do. In such a story we may see an honest man but poor, a women struggling with the consequence of a lie she‟s told, or unwanted pregnant girl trying to decide whether to have an abortion, place her child up for adoption, or raise him alone, etc. The principal this conflict telling about anxious,doubt, uncertainly it self.
Sequence also related with plot, probably the most populer kind of story is the action of the story. In action story we concerned chiefly with what happen.
Plot is planned by the author.The story moves from a beginning through a series of events to a climax or turning point, and to logical end. The inciting forces are those statements or happenings that excite the reader and are part of the build-up of the story. In a closed plot the author resolves or concludes the story for reader.
In an open plot the story frequently ends at the climax, and the reader is left to decice what he thinks the resolution or outcome of the story might.
b. Creative Reading Creative reading involves going beyond the material presented by the author, creative reading require the readers to think as they read just as critical reading and it also require the reader to use their imagination, in creative solution to those by the author. Creative reading, that is so apply ideas from the text to new situation and to combine author‟s ideas with other ideas to from new concepts or expand old ones. In creative reading the reader tries to purpose new alternative solution or response those by the writer. It requires readers feeling for the text and subject. The answers are not found in the text; they come strictly from the readers. While non personal responses are incorrect, they cannot be unfounded; they must relate to the content of the text and reflect a literal understand of the material. According to Marshall (1998), creative reading is the readers‟understood to involve the more predictable and manageable set of skills.
The ability to accurately represent the argument in the assigned reading. While we do think the ability to accurately represent the ideas of other writer is of central importance. We also think that it is not just away to better comprehend the ideas of others, but can also be creative process for developing and then better understanding your own ideas as they relate to the ideas of others. Creative readers make sure that they know what the author is saying while, at the same time, devoting their energies to actively constructing otherwise implicit relationship between ideas, even, and context. Tha is, creative reading involves imagining how and why different position represented in the text migt be made to relate to each other. Creative reading also means using your own experience and knowledge of the world to critically examine the ideas presented in the text. By
considering an authors‟ ideas in new context, you can find your own ways to develope your own contribution to the public debate which these reading text.
c. Theory of Reading Models
In this part, the present researcher discusses the theory of three models of reading; bottom-up, top-down, and interactive, that is of great importance in terms of reading activity.
1) Bottom-up Model
The old-fashioned perspective on reading model is a bottom-up or text- driven processing model. In this model, it is argued that reading is an act of understanding a text which is initiated from the lowest level. The sequence of letters when processed is from left to right until a word has been processed as a whole from which meaning is obtained and connected to other words in the sentence.
In accordance with the explanation above, Gough cited in Barnett (2007) remarks that model of the reading process can be considered as a detailed description of the way a reader processes a text they are reading from the first time they look at the text until the time when meaning is taken or generated from the words. Reading basically is an activity of translating graphic signs into spoken form. Processing what is given by these symbols is the only activity in reading. In other words, the meaning of the entire text is built by making understanding of single letters to the word level, to the sentence level, and then to the text level. It therefore is focused on the printed materials and what the readers can get from
this instead of the knowledge that the reader brings to the text.
Referring to the above explanation, this reading model gives an emphasis on the importance of processing input or incoming data from the text in reading.
The analysis of the readers‟ and their identification of small parts of a text take place prior to obtaining meanings from the text (Barnett, 2007). In this case, meaning making is reliant significantly on the text.
2) Top-down Model
The next perspective of model of reading is top-down model or reader- driven model. This theory is considered as a psycholinguistic model and was developed by Barnet (2007). He states that reading is a selective process through which the readers formulates temporary decisions or predictions to be then confirmed, rejected or refined by them as their reading progresses.
In this model, information in the form of graphic found in the text is only utilized to support predictions about the possible meaning of the text. The background knowledge and experiences of the readers, related to what might the text discuss about, are the key factors of meaning making. It can be argued that, referring on the information already stored in the readers‟ mind about how a language works based on their knowledge related to oral language, a reader in this case already figures out something about the way words are structured and what kinds of meaning these words possess in particular contexts.
In summary, reading, in this model, is the act of making sense out of what we read by relying on what we know or the theory of the world that we have in
our head. Principally, a reader is expected to utilize their prior knowledge and experience with a language to generate meaning from texts. Top-down model occurs as the system that creates general predictions based on higher level of thinking and general background knowledge.
3) Interactive Model
The current perspective of reading model is interactive model. In this model, reading comprehension is recognized as an interaction of both bottom-up and top- down models. Schemata or background knowledge along with predictions facilitates the processing of incoming data from the text. Through this model, bottom-up and top-down processing take place simultaneously at all levels (Holmes, 2009). Readers possibly use bottom-up process as a basis for comprehension of text and then turn to top-down process to establish high-level interpretation of the content of or the information presented in the text.
The above explanation is supported by Hacker (2008) that readers use their background knowledge, whether it is knowledge relating to the text topic or text structure, to comprehend the text they are reading. This process is interactive since a pattern is shaped based on information provided simultaneously from various sources such as the features and meaning of words, the structure of sentence and the overall textual organization made use combined with the readers' previous knowledge on grammatical structure and topics to promote understanding. Therefore, this interactive model is greatly reliant on both the text and the reader.