The Nature of Reading

In the field of language teaching, reading is becoming more important point as it can be separated from the students’ activity in the effort to improve their knowledge. Rivers (1981) supports that reading is an important activity in any language class, not only source of information, but also as a means of consolidating and extending one’s idea and knowledge.

In general, the nature of reading comprehension can not be separated from different ways of defining the term of reading.

According to Nuttal (1982) reading is a communicative process in which a reader, a text, and a text writer are involved. Therefore, the writer encodes message, ideas, or facts and also arguments he wants to convey. After providing the messages in the text through encoding process, the students can read to find messages from the text. This process means that reading is understanding meaning or sense from a printed material and a reader is considered to be successful in comprehending a text when he has the idea that the writer wants to share.

Smith (1985:10) stated that reading is identification of written words or reading is the apprehension of the author’s thought. Besides, Harris and Sipay (1980:8) state that reading is the meaningful of printed or written verbal symbols. It is believed that reading comprehension is a result of the interaction between the perception of graphic symbols that represent language and the reader’s language skills and knowledge of the world.

Furthermore, Richard, et al. (1992: 306) gives two different definitions of reading. The first definition is that reading is a perceiving of a written text in order to understanding contents. This can be done silently (silent reading). The understanding that results is called reading comprehension. The second one is that reading is saying a written text aloud (oral reading). This can be done with or without an understanding of the contents.

So, referring to the some definitions above, reading is process of communication between the reader and the written in the way of getting the message from the text. Reading can be done loudly or oral reading and silently or silent reading that is called reading comprehension. The main objective of reading activity is the understanding of the message trying to be delivered by the writer and to transfer what is written into our mind and resulting in the form of idea.

Regarding to the reading comprehension, McNeil (1992: 10) stated that reading comprehension is searching for meaning actively using the knowledge of the world and of text to understand each new thing. Then he stated that there are three components encompass this definition: (1) a reader needs knowledge of the world to understand new things; (2) a reader needs to be familiar with the variety structure he/she is likely to encounter; and (3) a reader needs to seek meaning and not passively for it to rise up from the page. In addition, Clarke and Silberstein (1987) stated that reading comprehension, which is done to master the total massage of the writer, requires a reader to find the main points and supporting ideas. Thus, to make sense what is read, readers should be able to not only understand the meaning of a text such as defining the printed word, relating the sentence and identifying the main idea and supporting details, but also incorporate the new information presented in the text with the existing knowledge stored in their minds.   

Meanwhile, Nunan (1991) stated that reading comprehension is a process that involves actively constructing meaning among the parts of the text, and between the text and personal experience. Then he stated that the reader comprehends the text by actively constructing meaning internally from interacting with the material that is read. In short the foundation of comprehension is the interaction between the reader and the text.