CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
Chart 2. The Factors that Influence RSE According to Harjasujana, (1997:67) The factors that
2) Reading Speed for High School Students
vocabulary, making inferences, locating references of the text, scanning for details information and determine the writers’ opnion. Moreover, the questions related to the text comprehension that were constructed based on the Purwati and Sudarwati’s theory (2005 cited in Handayani, 2013:35) about hortatory exposition text types. The students are also asked to determine the types of the text, communicative purpose, generic structure, and language features of the text.
automatized recognition of common combinations, and does not waste time working out each word or group of words. The students will understand more when reading something twice at a faster reading rate than reading it slowly only one more time. This activity helps empower foreign language readers and strengthens their metacognitive awareness of the value of reading rate.
However, the speed of reading will influence reading comprehension of the students (Soedarso, 2005:17). Generally, reading rate of the reader will be measure by dividing the total of words with the time (minutes) needed. While, comprehension will be measured by the percentage of correct answer from the comprehension questions. While, to know the effectiveness of reading speed of the students, it can be shown from their Reading Speed Effectiveness (RSE).
Reading Speed Effectiveness is a measurement of the students reading rate and understanding of the text (Harjasujana, 1997:60). This formula combine both of comprehension aspect and also speed of reading, the integration of the formula will show the students reading speed effectiveness.
Speed reading is a strategy used to improve one's ability to read quickly.
As the teacher, we need to train our students more practices in order to develop their reading speed. As someone’s reading speed is not something they got from birth, but from reading practices and high motivation and attitude toward reading activity itself. Reading speed is a skill. The success in mastering this skill is highly depends on your own attitude, your level of seriousness and readiness to do the exercise (Harjasujana, 1997:65).
As Nuttall (1996:54) says that a “good reader does not read word by word”. So, reading in foreign language is not merely the reader need to exactly know what is the meaning of each words in the text, but the context and meaning of the text as a whole information. While, in fact, “the students who have slow reading speed tend to have problem in fixating on units of word, spending time on each fixation and making many regression” (Nation, 2009:62).
In speed reading, the students are led to have a good way to absorb a lot of printed information quickly, and need to get the gist of what is being written about, without all the details. There are two major kinds of expeditious reading according to Nation (2009:70), they are skimming and scanning. But in order to support the students’ reading speed, increasing skimming skill is one that needs to be considered.
“Skimming is a process of speed reading that involves visually searching the sentences of a page for clues to meaning” (Nation, 2009:70). For some people, this comes naturally, but is usually acquired by practice. In skimming, readers take the main ideas from the reading material without reading all the words. They look for and seize upon words that appear to give the main meaning. Readers skim when time is short or when they need to understand the general ideas but not the particulars of an article or book. Skimming occurs at three to four times the normal reading speed. For that reason, your reading comprehension takes a nose dive when you skim.
Skimming is taking the most important information from the page without reading all the words. When you speed read, you skim to the extent that you don’t
fixate on all the words. In effect, you weed out some words and focus on the remaining ones. However, skimming takes the notion of passing by some words to another level. In the act of skimming, you focus only on the essential ideas and skip over the insignificant, marginal, and secondary.
From the explanation above, it can be derived that the physical involvement in reading helps the students to improve their reading speed. In addition, realizing the benefit of reading speed and practicing it more will make the students more efficient and effective in reading. Overall, the main point in reading speed is to gain as many as important information and comprehend it in lesser time.
Reading speed skill is very significant for High School students, as Depdiknas (2004:7) states that there are many different advantages of the reading speed, which are (1) reading speed saves time, (2) reading speed create efficiency, (3) the less time it takes to do routine things, the more time working available for another important thing, (4) reading speed has value fun / entertaining, (5) reading speed expand mental horizons, (6) reading speed helps to speak effectively, (7) reading speed helps in the exam, (8) by reading speed the reader can improve understanding, (9) reading speed vouch for always up to date, and (10) reading speed also can be regarded as mental strengthen.
As the importance of reading speed toward the students’ need in comprehending the material. While, there are lack of knowledge and skill of the students about reading speed, which was shown by their average of reading speed on the previous test. Besides, the recent activity also did not give the students
much chance to improve their reading speed. This research found out the effect of one reading strategy toward the students’ reading speed.
c. Assessing Students’ Reading Speed
The average of reading rate is basic reflection of visual capabilities, as the ability of eye movements motorist in seeing symbol - emblem graphic. While, content of reading comprehension is a reflection of cognitive ability, as the ability to think and reason in a digest input of interpreting graphics through the senses of the eyes (Hrajasujana, 1997:63). Then, the reading speed skill itself is the ability in understanding a text in a certain time and be measured by using comprehension test of the text. That is why the test of reading comprehension is needed in measuring reading speed score. Because, analyzing someone’s reading speed ability cannot be predicted only through observation, interview or questionnaire (Soedarso, 2005:21). Even tough, those can be used to analyze someone’s reading ability, but those are less practical than the test.
As already mentioned before, assessing students’ reading speed is the combination of reading rate and students reading comprehension. Reading speed test aim to measure not only students reading rate but also their comprehension toward the text given through comprehension questions. To know the integration of students’ reading rate and their comprehension toward the text, the researcher measured the students’ Reading Speed Effectiveness by using the following formula:
RSE =
RSE =
wpm
RSE = x(60)
(Harjasujana, 1997:9) So, reading rate is the time needed by the students to read a certain words or text.
While, reading comprehension is the percentage of students’ correct answer of comprehension questions from the total questions. Those two components will be calculated to count and find out the students’ reading speed score or their reading speed effectiveness.
By knowing the score of reading speed effectiveness, it can be identified how good the students’ reading speed skill are. According to Nuttall (1996:56)
“secondary school pupils in countries where English is a foreign language may read at 120-150 words per minutes (wpm) before training”. The general views tend to consider 70% comprehension as the minimum standard of comprehension in reading speed. Because, it will be worthless if someone has high reading rate but low comprehension, as the goal of reading itself is the comprehension of the text. Another formula that can be used to measure reading speed effectiveness score are as follow:
(Nurhadi, 2005:34) Another alternative formula that can be used to measure and determine someone’s reading speed effectiveness are as follow (Mulyati, 2003):
RSE =
:
So, to measure someone’s reading speed effectiveness score based on the formulas above, there are several things need to prepare, they are: (1) reading text with a certain word length, (2) watch or stopwatch, (3) comprehension test, and (4) time keeper.
Since this research is done on Senior High School, so the standard of students’ reading speed would also based on senior highs school students’ reading speed of English as foreign language. According to Nuttall (1996:56) secondary school pupils in countries where English is a foreign language may read at 120- 150 words per minutes (wpm) before training”. It is a basic standard of reading speed for students of English as foreign language.