READING STRATEGY/ STRATEGI MEMBACA

Muhammad Supardi

A lecturer at English Letters Departement,

Bina Sarana Informatika Jakarta

Jl. Raya Fatmawati Pondok Labu Jakarta

ABSTRACT

For most English learners, reading still becomes one of difficult language skill to master. There are two main factors causing them unable to read. First, they usually have very limited vocabulary so that they can not understad even short paragraph; and second they focus too much on word meaing rather than sentence meaning. This article introduces an effective strategy to develop their reading ability.

Key Words : characteristic,effective, strategy, Context clues.

Many students of english as a foreign language considerreading english is very difficult. They also find that reading lesson in class is boring. In order to see how students of english as foreign language can understand well a reading lesson and find it easy and interesting , we need to look more detail in what reading suppose to be for the foreign learner.

Reading is a proses that discusses not only decoding the texts. But it olso needs internal translation, in other word; studens needs to interpret the writher’s words, so that they understand not only their surfase meaning but also what the words suggest beyond. For passive reader , reading only learns to interact with texts. But for the active reader , reading means enter into to relationship whit the writer, a two-way prosses of communication between reader and whriter. Although the writer is phisically absent, the word on the page are to be analized, interpreted,questioned, and even challenged . There fore , the active reader involve into silent, dialogue with the writer.

Reading is skill like playing , some one read better than oher some people play footbaall better than others. And those who are good in reading are those who understand how phrases, sintences, and pharagraphs. Those who are good in playing footbaall are those who understand all the possible ways. Those who are successful in football, in reading and in other skills are those who always practice.

Characteristics of a Good Reader

Becoming a good reader is difficult if we want to be skill ful inbour college lack confidence bicouses they do not know what to look for when thay read , or thay aren’t sure wat their instructors want when they prepare reading assignment. To understand about technique in reading , we need to know the caracteristic of a good reader first.

According to spears (1999:11-13), a good readers reads carefully and thoughfully. This needs keeping ones’s attention on the material , keeping the authors’ discussion , and then goes on reading actively. If the introduction to an essay invites us to the author’s world, we are engaged whith the text and fully participate in this world. The reading process itself begins whith decoding words. That is the readers recognizes and pronounces the words and looks up any unfamiliar words from dictionary and guesses the writer’s main poins. When we find many difficult word and then ignore their meaning and connotation, we may think that they are not really problems. In fact they will seriously bother our comprehension.

Althougt the meaning of individual words are inportant, however, the real meaning of text is depended on the relationship of the whole words. A good reader looks for these relationships and asks questions throgh out reading process. Two most important questions are, what is the principal idea of what the outhor is saying and what is the author saying about the main point.

A reader then can evaluate main edias and supporting avidence by asking question : does the information seem reasonable? Has the writer offered suffisient support? Is there any significant information missing? Is the author biased ? does she or he seem to have an “agenda”? Is there an underlying but unstated motive ? What believes or assumptions underlie the author’s statements ? what other information does the need to make aintelgent appraisal, to accept or reject the key ideas? How does the writer’s thinking accord with the reader’s own experience, values, observation, or though ?

Failure in Reading Comprehenson

There are several factor for students who fail in reading. Same students find difficult to comprehend certain expression such as; see the wood for the trees. They may read slowly and carefully paying a lot of attention to individual points but whithout succeeding in getting a clear idea of the over all meaning of a text. Other students especially those who read quickly do not always pay attention to detail. They may have a good idea of the general meaning of the time by overlooking an important small word, for instance a conjunction, a negotiation, a modal verb.they may get a completely false impression of the meaning of a part of the passage. some students are imaginative reader especially if they know something about it, they may interpret the text in the light of their own experience and ideas, so that they find it difficult to separate what the writer say from what they feel themselves.

Other Problems Arising from the Text `
Some writer favor a word and repetitive style. Practice is needed to be able to see through the words to the ideas wich underlie them. Word and expression which the students do not know usually present a problem (unless he is working with dictionary) however, students do not always realize how easy it is to guess mani unknown words simply by studing contex. Some students often disturbed by unfamiliar vocabulary that will affec comprehension of the whole passage as result ( Departemen of Education, Papua New Guinea, 1987:155).

Therefore, good readers heve to possess mmany different skills which they can apply actively to the reading of the text:

a. They read in phrases, not in single words and actually skip over words if they are not needed for general understanding.

b. They can predict from syntacsic and semantic clues from their existing knowledge of a subject described and explored in the text.

c. They learn to read ‘ between the lines” and work and the meaning of the text at different levels, understanding information, making inferences and critically evaluating ideas.

d. They can guess the meaning of new words from contextual clues of by applying knowledge of how words can be formed from others.

e. They can distinguish fact from opinion and statement from example.

f. They follow meaning through a paragraph by recognizing a signals like ‘however’ and ‘on the other hand’ and by understanding how words and phrases like it, this, the letter, and ‘these matters’ refer back to something earlier in the text (Alderson and Urgu, 1984: 3-5)

Techniques of Reading

According to Swan (1971: 1-3), there are many techniques that can help students to be a good reader. Students have to think and questions all the way through the text. Reading is not just looking at words. Reading is receiving and sorting out information from the words.

SQ3R (Survey, Question, Read, Recite, and Review)

Survey,

Survey means to get an overview before reading intensively. The first thing to do by a reader is to look at the title, subheading, illustration, and graphs to get an overview of the article. This will help the reader determines the author’s direction. If the writer is going to write about the world economy, will he discuss general theory? Will he discuss economics from historical perspective ? By the knowing what the author want to discuss will prepare a reader to understand the passage.

Quetion,

After making survey, a reader should have a general idea of what a reading passage is about. Then a reader needs to have purpose for reading. When a reader reads with specific purpose, a reader will understand and remember of what he / she reads. A reader should make question based on his ? her observation, and the read to see if a reader can answer his / her own question.

Read,

When a reader reads on the article, a reader should try to read all the way to the end without stopping, not to stop and look up unfamiliar words, and try to understand such word from the context. When he stops to look up a word in the dictionary, he looses continuity in his reading. He may look up the world later if he is uncertain to confirm. A reader should try to read the article as fast as possible. And push to read faster, the average college educated, native – reader of English reads 350 words a minute. To find out the rate of reading, and count the number of words and divide by ten. A reader should try to improve the score in every reading.

Recall,

After reading, a reader should try to answer the question. If she / he is not able to answer. She / he has scan or skim the reading passage to find them. Scanning means to look over a reading passage very quickly to find specific information (a date, a name, an explanation etc); skimming means to read the text slighty to get the intended general message. Skimming and scanning will help to complete undrestanding of the entire passage.

Review,

Finally, a reader should look over the material, and remember of what the article was obut. The more frequently to review the article, the longer information will stay and keep (Maxwell, 1977: 3-5)

Improving Vocabulary.

A good vocabulary is probably the most important requirements for good reading. Every other skill such as; comprehension, retention, making inferences, drawing appropriate conclusion, evaluating, depends on whether we knows what the words on the page mean in relation to each other and according to the context. After all, if we aren’t sure what the words on the page mean, we cannot fully understand the texts.

it is possible to “wing it”, getting the general description even if some word and ideas still not clear. Often in critical reading we will be asked to do in this course, our understanding of a passage may depend on the meaning of a single word, a guessing in such situation may cause a problem. If the task of improvng vocabulary is unvailable a college students is expected to know more than this way, because the level of difficulty of college reading assignments is greater than in high school assignment.

Learning New Words

The very best way to learn a new words to read a lot; most of the words we recognize in our reading because we often read them. Memorizing list of words separately is one of many ways but inefficient, we won’t remember many of them, not will understand their nuances, their subtleties in meaning, or their meaning in various contexts. We’d better learn a new words, when we encounter them in our reading.

Here are some suggestions to start on an active program to learn new words. First, use proper dictionaries, such as shortened edition for class, compete edtition to use at home. Besides, there are several excelent dictionaries on the book stores such as; the American Heritage Dictionary, the random house webster college dictionary, webster new world dictionary, merriam webster’s dictionary, the shorted Oxford English Dictionary (2 volumes) and many more.

Because the language is constantly changing, be sure that our dictionary is a current edition. Second, develop an interst in language. When we look words up in a dictionary, look at their etymology, or history, because so many English words have unusual origins. The etymology of a word have is allways printed in brackets[] following the devinitions. It explains and traces the derivation of the wordand gives the original meaning in the language or languages the word is derived from.

Try to think of word thaat share similar meaning and origin as belonging to group families. For example , the latin roof spacer meaning “ to look “ gives us the inglish word spectacle, spectacular, intrrospective ( to look into) inspect, speculate, spectrum, spectograph, and co on.

Finally , make a plan of a system for leaning important new words. We might try to write new word a special notebook or on index card. Adding both the original contex and brief devinition and reviewing the list will ensure our mastery.

Using Context Clues

Although a good dictionary is very necessary, it is unreasonable if we must look up every unfamiliar word we find in our deading. Besides looking at the roots, prefixes , and suffixes of word, onother way to look the meaning of a new word is to look carefully at the context, in othe words, the way a word is used in a particular instance. Relying on context cleus in not a substitute for looking up exact meanings in the dictionary , or in every sentence whit unfamiliar words necessarily provides us whit clue. But if a clue is present, it is a useful shortcut toward more efficient reading, especially when the word is not absolutely crucial to our understanding the text.There are four kinds of context clues: synonyms, antonims, example, & illustration and opinion & tone.

a. Synonims.

A synonym is probably the most frequently used in context clue . the writer may provide a words similar in one. Although it may not have the exact meaning, it may be close enough to give us an approximate definition.

For example:

“The politician was clarly in the wrong occupation. When called upon to give a campign speech, he was so reticent that his long silences made everyone uncomportble”.

Fromthe example abouve, the unfamiliar word is the word “reticent”. The prase, “long sillences” is the context clue that comes after the “ unknown woerd (reticent)”, and from that a reader can probably guess that the word reticent means “unwilling to speak” it is called guessing the meaning from the context through synonym .

Another example :

“When Sarah Smith discovered that her husban had cheated on her, she filed for divorce, citing infidelity as the reason .”

From the example above , the unfamiliar word is the word “infidenlity” the phrase“had cheated on” is the context clue that come bifore the word the “unknown word (infidelity)”, means “unloyal” it is also called guessing the unknown word from the context though synonim.

b. Antonyms.

If a sentence suggests a contrast or a contradiction , the context clue may be in the form of an antonym, a word that means the opposite of the word in question. If we know the antonym. Than we may be able to figure out the new word.

For example :

“Although Professor Rivera wants his writing students to develop a concise writing style , Melvin’s papers are always returned with lower grades than he would like becouse his style is too verbose.”

From the example above ,

The unfamiliar word is the word “verbose”. Becouse it is obviously being contrasted whit the word “ concise” , is probably familiar to the reader. So, a reader buildingcan guess that the word “ verbose” means “overly wordy” that contradiction with the word “concise “ which has meaning ” simple”. It is called guessing the meaning from context through antonym.

“ A well-know writer wes most upset when he learned that his publisher planned to release his new novel, which contained profanity and steamy sex scenes, in an expurgated version. Instead, he canceled the contract and found a company that whould publish the book whithout removing any of the objectionable part.”

From the example above, the unfamiliar word is a word “ expurgated”. The reader can guess that the word “expurgated” is contrast to “objectionable”. It is olso called geussing the unknown word from the context through antonym.