CHAPTER II

THEORETICAL REVIEW

A. Reading

1. Definition of Reading

Reading is one of four skills in language learning.1 Developing

reading skill as an important part. Foreign language textbook offer a

variety of reading texts but there is usually one-size fits all approach to the

way the text presented and the choice of reading comprehension exercises.

Almost everyday in our life we do it, as it is reading the book the

newspaper, the magazine or others. Reading is an active complex process

that includes physical and intellectual abilities. It is an active skill through

which oral, thought, and organ of seeing are working. This means that

several activities are done simultaneously.

Many experts point out that reading is an activity, which is done by

a person to build framework of messages that expressed by writers in their

reading. According to Anderson ―Reading is an activity that the reader

doesn‘t only involve understanding and interpreting the meaning, but the

reader can use information from their background knowledge or

experiences to again information as well as information from the texts.2 A

process reading is not only involve recognize alphabets and words, but it

1
Neil J. Anderson, Exploring Second Language Reading : Issue and Strategies,(Brigham
University: Heinle&Heinle Publisher, 1999).p.1
2
. Neil. Anderson, Exploring Second Language Reading,(Canada: International Thomson
Publishing, 1999)P.39

11
 12

more than that, that is the ability to know, understand and comprehend

what the writers want to say through the reading texts.

Based on the statements above, the writer can conclude that reading

comprehension is the reading where the reader able to understanding the

written text accurately with the minimum of misunderstanding.

Reading is basic skill in study.3 Reading is an actual information

seeking process in which readers relate information in the text to what they

already know.4

Comprehension is not always effortless and fast, of course. When

beginning readers struggle over individual words, reading is slowed to a

near halt and deeper levels of comprehension are seriously compromised. 5

This happens when proficient adult readers struggle with technical

expository text.

According to Naf‘an in ―Reading 1 Basic Reading Skills‖ Reading

is private. It is a mental, or cognitive, process which involves a reader in

trying to follow and respond to a message from a writer who is distant in

space and time. Because of this privacy, the process of reading and

responding to a writer is not directly observable. Therefore, before we

3
Ilzamudin Ma‘mur, Pijar-pijarPemikiranBahsadanBudaya,( Jakarta:Diadit Media Press,
2006 ), p.4
4
Joan Rubin & Irene Thompson, How To Be a More Successful Language Learner Toward
Learner Autonomy Second Edition. (Massachhusetts: Heinle&HeinlePubisher, 1994 ), p.91
5
Hilman, et, all, Principle and practice of teaching Reading, (Toronto:Chares E. Meriil
Publishing, Co, 1981) p.4
 13

discuss about reading, the first think that we must know is reading habits.

Your reading habits can make a big difference in your reading.6

Reading knowledge is broadened and well-informed by

[Link] is really crucial our knowledge is usually broadened and

informed by reading activities, and the activity of reading can be found in

the internet,book, etc.

Reading also has positive effect on students vocabulary knowlegde,

on their spelling and on their writing.7Students should practice their

reading more and more, so that theirreading ability and their reading

experience will be improved. They may finddifficulty and frustrating, but

if they keep practicing, they will have a goodsense of English and will help

them to grasp the total meaning of the [Link] thing should be

remembered in reading that students should not opena dictionary too often

because it will slow down their reading rate and canmake them bored. If

they find new words, they should try to guess themeanings by trying to

find out any clue words according to the context in thepassages.

There are a lot of definitions of reading. Linguists give

definitionsabout reading, their opinions about reading [Link] of them

say reading is the process to get, to understand, to catchthe content of the

reading. And also reading is a process to understand awritten text which

means extracting the required information from it asefficiently as possible.

6
Naf‘anTarihoran and MiftahulRahmat, op. cit, p.1
7
Jeremy Harmer, How to Teach English, New Edition (Essex: Pearson Education Limited,
2007), p. 99
 14

According to Walter R. Hill ―Reading is what the reader does to

getthe meaning he needs from textual sources.‖8Meanwhile Guy L. Bond

andEva Bond Wagner explained the meaning of reading as ―the process

ofacquiring and author.s meaning and of interpreting, evaluating, and

effectingupon those meanings.‖9

F. Dubin explained the meaning of reading as ―reading is primarily

a cognitive process, which means that the brain does most of the

work.‖10Those statements above show the various definitions of reading,

theymean generally. Reading means a complex process of thinking in

assigningmeaning from printed materials which involve most of the

reader‘s intellectual act such as pronunciation and comprehension in order

to receiveideas or information extended by the text. It can be seen that

reading is notonly looking at word in the form of graphic symbols but also

getting meaningfrom word to word or line to line to understand what we

read. It means thatreading is a process to understand the text content and to

get information.

According to Michael F. Opitz and James A. Erekson, ―A broad

definition is that reading is a dynamic, complex act that involves bringing

8
Walter R. Hill, Secondary School Reading: Process, Program, procedure, (Boston: Allyn
and Bacon), 1979, p.4
9
Guy L Bond and Eva Bond Wagner, Teaching The Child to Read, (New York: The
Macmillan Company,1969),p.4
10
F. Dubin, D.E. Eskey and W. Grabbe, Teaching Second Language Reading for Academic
Purposes (California: Edison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1986), p. 6
 15

to and getting meaning from the printed page‖11. While Peter Westwood

stated that, ―Reading is a process of getting meaning from print‖12

According to Grabe and Stoller (2002:9-10) reading is the ability

to draw meaning from the printed page and interpret the information

appropriately. There are four important reasons why this simple definition

is inadequate. Reading does not convey the idea that there are a number of

ways to engage in reading. A reader has several possible purposes for

reading, and each purpose emphasizes a somewhat different combination

of skills and strategies.

a. The Types of Reading

1) Scanning

Scanning is a part of reading strategy is presumed to help

students in overcoming difficulties in reading and improving their

reading comprehension. For English teacher, developing strategy

in the teaching reading will help students to increase their reading

skills and also to prevent the students to get bored easily.

Therefore, the teacher should give the trick to acquire the

scanning technique in reading a text to students, especially in

identifying the specific information. The students have to know

that it is not necessary to read the whole text.

11
Michael F. Opitz and James A. Erekson, Understanding, Assessing, and Teaching
Reading: A Diagnostic Approach, h. 8
12
Peter Westwood, Reading and Learning Difficulties, 2012, p. 9
 16

2) Skimming

Faster than canonical reading, traversal is still linear, but

comprehension is sacrificed for speed. The aim is to get the

gist of the text.

3) Glancing

Pages are turned very quickly, the reader spends almost as

much time turning pages as looking at them. The aim is to

detect important page elements (e.g. beginnings and endings of

articles, photos or figures, headings) until something holds

sufficient interest to transition to another type of reading.

4) Seeking

Reader scans quickly for particular page element (e.g.

proper nouns) with an aim orthogonal to full comprehension. A

study participant described looking for names in a magazine

article:‖I don‘t know anything about pop music. I should

because we‘re always stumped in The New York Time

crosswords by the pop music characters. I do know Beyonce is

an important character who appears in crosswords. So I may

get a few names out of it. But that‘s about it‖. (Marshall and

Bly 2005b).

5) Rereading

Rereading is a meta-type that is include in the table as a

reminderthat any type of reading may be occur multiple times.

 17

Based on the statements above, the writer can conclude that reading

comprehension is the reading where the reader able to understanding the

written text accurately by scanning.

2. Reading Comprehension

Reading comprehension has been described as ‗a complex

intellectual process involving a number of abilities. Readers must use

information already acquired to filter, interpret, organise, reflect upon and

establish relationships with the new incoming information on the page. In

order to understand text, a reader must be able to identify words rapidly,

know the meaning of almost all of the words and be able to combine units

of meaning into a coherent message13.

According to Kristi L. Santi, reading comprehension is a process

based information. -in which the reader constructs meaning from text

euring this process, the reader crerates a mental representation of the

meaning of the text by using features of the text and the reader‘s

knowledge of the world14.

Reading comprehension can be defined as the level of

understanding of a passageor text. For normal reading rates (round 200-

220 words per minute) an acceptable level of comprehension is above

75%.Proficient reading comprehension depends on the ability to recognize

13
Peter Westwood, Reading and Learning Difficulties, 2012, p. 10
14
Kristi L. Santi, e .K harobe DReed Improving Reading Comprehension of Middle and
High School Students, (New York: Springer, 2015), p. 100
 18

words quickly and effertlessly. If word recognition is difficult, students use

too much of their processing capacity to read individual words, which

interferes with their ability to comprehend what is read.

Reading comprehension can be improved by teaching students to

assess their own comprehension actively test comprehension using

questionnaires, and by improving linguistic knowledge is also

advantageous.

There is a problem about reading which could happen to everyone,

there is too much to read these days, and too little time to read every word

of it. There are hundreds of techniques you could learn to help you read

faster and there are three that are especially good.15

Reading with comprehension means to understand what has been

[Link] Rubin states that reading comprehension is a complex

intellectualprocess involving a number of abilities. The two major abilities

concern wordmeanings and reasoning with verbal [Link] has

been taught as aforeign language in our country, however, it does not mean

that the result ofteaching English in our school is satisfactory, despite the

fact that it is taughtcontinuously for six years at the high school, three

years at SMP, and threeyears at SMA. Ramelan say that most SMA

graduates are still very poor intheir reading comprehension, since they

cannot usually read or understandarticles in English dailies.

15
Naf‘an Tarihoran and Miftahul Rachmat, op. cit. p.53
 19

There are different lists of skills that they feel are basic to

understanding. The skills usually listed are as follows:16

a. React to the sensory images (visual, kinesthetic, taste, smell)

suggested bywords.

b. Interpret verbal connotations and denotations.

c. Recognize and understand the writer.s purpose.

d. Determine whether the text affirms, denies, or fails to express an

opinionabout a supposed fact or condition.

e. Identify the antecedents of such words as who, some, or they.

Meanwhile, levels of Reading Comprehension

Hibbard and Wagner, identified four level reading comprehension

as follow17:

1. Initial Understanding

Initial Understanding and refers to the degree to which students

"literally" understand the basic facts of a book. At this level the

students identify the main characters, describe the setting as shown in

the illustrations, and retell the story. For nonfiction, Initial

Understanding includes listing and describing facts from the text.

2. Developing an Interpretation

Developing an Interpretation, It refers to the degree to which

students can use thinking skills such as predicting what comes next in

the story, and finding evidence to show that a character exhibited an

16
Dorothy Rubin, op. cit, p.207
17
[Link] Hibbard and Elizabeth A. Wagner, .Assessing and teaching reading
comprehension, grades 3-5, (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2003), p. 6
 20

attribute such as friendship or bravery. For nonfiction, Developing an

Interpretation includes explaining the meaning of the text and making

predictions and generalizations from it.

3. Making Connections

Making Connections refers to the degree to which the students

can use thinking skills, such as comparing one story to another, or

comparing an event in a story to an event in their own lives. The

connections are "text-to-me," "text-to-text," and "text-to-world." For

nonfiction, Making Connections includes comparing and contrasting

two or more people, places, or things based on information from two

or more sources.

4. Critical Stance

Critical Stance refers to the degree to which students form an

opinion and support it. Here, the student judges or evaluates the

author's or illustrator's work. This is where a student may share

whether he liked or disliked the story, the characters, or the

illustrations and be able to explain why. Another use of Critical Stance

for fiction is for the student to evaluate or judge the soundness of the

author's ideas and messages. Still another use of Critical Stance for

fiction is for the student to extend the author's work through such

activities as writing a new chapter or writing a new story with the

same main character as in the original.

 21

3. Aims of Reading

A person may read for many purposes, and purpose helps

tounderstand more what is read by people. If he is reading for pleasure

orreading for pure recreation and enjoyment, he may read either quickly

orslowly based on the way he likes or feels. But if reads for studying or

settinginformation such news, science or same line, which are part of his

study orassignment he does it very slowly and carefully.

According to Paul S. Anderson, there are seven aims of reading,

reading for details and fact, reading for main ideas, reading for sequence

ororganization, reading for inference, reading for classifying, reading

forevaluating and reading for comparing of contest.18

a. Reading for details and fact is reading to know what is done by the

subject of the story.

b. Reading for main ideas is reading to get the problem statement.

c. Reading for sequence of organization is reading to know each part of

the reading.

d. Reading for inference is reading to know what is the writer meant by

its story.

e. Reading for classifying is reading to find unusual things.

f. Reading for evaluating is reading to know the value of the story.

g. Reading for comparing or contest is reading to compare the way of

life of the story with the way of lifeof the reader.

18
A Widyamartaya, Seni Membaca Untuk Studi (Yogyakarta: Kanisius, 1992) p.90
 22

Another author said that the aim of reading is:

a. Reading for pleasure.

b. Reading for information (in order to find out something or in order to

dosomething with the information you get).19

Meanwhile Lester and Allice Crow classified two general

[Link] purposes includes; Leisure-time reading and more serious

reading.20

a. Leisure-time reading. It is reading for enjoyment which may vary in

tofollow your favorite sport, comic, article, and movie program.

b. More serious reading. It is reading to study for a goal such as to

obtainfactual information and solve problems.

4. Kinds of Reading

a. Intensive Reading

According to Harmer ―the term intensive reading, on the other

hand, refers to the detailed focus on the construction of reading texts

which takes place usually (but not always ) in classrooms‖.21 Intensive

reading is usually accompanied by study activities. we may ask students

to work out what kind of text they are reading, tease our details of

meaning, look at particular uses of grammar and vocabulary, and then

19
Francoise Grellet, Developing Reading Skills, (Cambridge: Cambridge university Press,
1981) p. 4
20
Lester and Allice Crow, How to Study: to Learn Better, Pass Examination, Get better
Grades (USA: Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1976) p.53
21
Jeremy Harmer, How to Teach English, Pearson Education Limited 2007. p. 99.
 23

use the information in the text to move on to other learning activities. We

will also encourage them to reflect on different reading skills.

While according to Patel (2008) in English Language Teaching.

Intensive reading is text reading or passage reading. In this reading the

learner read the text to get knowledge or analysis. The goal of this

reading is to read shorter text. This reading is done to carry out to get

specific information. Learner reads book to acquire knowledge is the

kind of intensive reading. Intensive reading will provide a basis for

explaining difficulties of structure and for extending knowledge of

vocabulary and idioms. It will also provide material for developing

greater control of the language in speech abd writing.22

Naf‘an Tarihoran stated “Reading is used on shorter texts in order

to extract specific information.”23So, intensive reading is type in reading

can help the student to grasp the details of meaning the specific

paragraph in the text, it is help student understand the text and much

word of the consist in the texts.

b. Extensive Reading

Extensive reading refers to reading which students often (but not

exclusively) away from classroom. They may read novels, webPages,

newspaper, magazines or any other reference material. Where possible,

22
M. F. Patel and Praveen M. Jain, English Language Teaching, (Jaipur : Sunrise
Publishers, 2008), p. 116
23
Naf‘an Tarihoran and Miftahul Rachmat, Reading: Intermediate Reading Skill, (Serang
:Loquen Press, 2010), p. 3
 24

extensive reading should involve reading pleasure-what Richard day calls

joyful reading.24

From the definition above, the researcher conclude kinds of reading

there are intensive reading and extensive reading. Intensive reading is

read to goal of shorter text, extensive reading is for joyfull reading.

B. Concept of Repeated Reading Strategy

1. Definition of Repeated Reading Strategy

According to Schumm Repeated reading is a general term that

means just that—the reading of a text more than once25. While Harlacher,

Sakelaris , and Kattelman as reading and rereading a passage or section of

text until a sufficient level of fluency is reached.26.

Repeated reading is an activity that aimed at increasing students‘

reading as they read a short passage over and over again until they achieve

criterion levels of reading. Samuels (1997:377), stated that repeated

reading is a strategy that consists of rereading a short meaningful passage

several times. Moreover, he stated that the repeated reading strategy

consists of a non-fluent student orally reading a passage several times.

Repeated reading is effective because by reading the same passages over

and over the number of word recognition errors decreases, reading speed

increases and oral reading expression improves. As students reread and

24
Jeremy Harmer, op cit., p. 100
25
Jeanne Shay Schumm, Reading Assessment and Instruction for All Learners, (New York:
The Guilford Press, 2006), p. 213
26
Jason E. Harlacher, Tami L. Sakelaris , and Nicole M. Kattelman, Practitioner’s Guide
to Curriculum-Based Evaluation in Reading, (New York: Springer, 2014), h. 94
 25

rehearsed the text, they improve their fluency, add greater intonation and

expressiveness to their reading and began to process and derive meaning

from the text. Reading one time was not enough, repeated reading strategy

gave these students an opportunity to revisit, revise and improve their

reading and comprehension of the text.

As to a specific instructional reading strategy, Samuels asserted

repeated reading as a comprehension strategy was successful, which

affirms his earlier work regarding automatic word recognition‘s role in

smooth, fluid reading. As a pioneer for the idea of repeated readings,

Samuels said the notion of repeated reading involves a student ―rereading

a short, meaningful passage several times until a satisfactory level of

fluency is reached. Then the procedure is repeated with a new passage‖

(Samuels, 1997:376).

Reading strategies can be implemented with the goal of improving

comprehension for all students, but especially for those who struggle with

reading tasks as well as articles, place information, and social media.

Comprehension, the main goal in reading, can be enhanced through a

variety of instructional strategies. As part of classroom instruction,

teachers can focus on aspects of reading that will strengthen

comprehension. These include automatic word knowledge, vocabulary

words, background knowledge, focused attention through specific

purposes of reading, tasks that assist in processing information

encountered in the text, modeling comprehension strategies, integrating

 26

reading with writing, and including inferential and critical thinking

questions. Each of these components will strengthen the opportunity to

build a deeper understanding of the reading material and will add to

students‘ repertoire of strategies from which to choose when they are

reading independently.

The statement above also supported by Therrien (2006:156), he

states that repeated reading strategy requires a student to read a passage or

text a number of times. The student continues to read the same text

repeatedly until a desired goal or criterion is met. Research has

demonstrated that repeated reading can not only improve reading fluency

but is also effective in improving other facets of reading success such as

comprehension.

Based on the statements above, the researcher concluded that

repeated reading was strategy designed to increase reading fluency and

comprehension by reading the text more than one times.

2. Procedures of Repeated Reading Strategy

The repeated reading procedure emerged as a means for developing

automatic decoding with unskilled readers. This instructional procedure

includes the following steps: (Samuels, 1997:377-378).

1. The students read a short passage aloud.

2. The students practice rereading the passages silently or orally

several times.
 27

3. The students reread the passage aloud again.

However according to Westwood (2001:65) the procedure is as follow:

1. Teacher as a model read a paragraph aloud about fifty words, while

the child follows the print on the page.

2. The teacher and child together then read the same paragraph.

3. The child reads the paragraph unaided – twice or three times if

necessary.

Based on the statements above, the researcher concluded that the

procedures of repeated reading are: first teacher gives students an example

on how to read the text correctly while students look at on the printed text,

so the students practice together with teacher after practice it with teacher,

students practice it by their selves two or three times.

3. Repeated Reading Strategy for Fluency and Comprehension

The strategy of repeated reading may address the issue of

comprehension weakness for older struggling readers. By reading a short

passage out loud two to three times, students can focus less on pronouncing

the words and attend more to the overall meaning. With improvement in

word reading, more focus will be available for understanding the meaning

of the text.

More attention to expressive reading often occurs with the

introduction of the repeated reading strategy who came out strongly in favor

of repeated reading and similar techniques for promoting reading fluency,

 28

concluding that repeated reading procedures had a clear and positive effect

on fluency at a variety of grade levels. And on variables such as word

recognition, reading speed, and comprehension. This leads to essential

reading goals for all students, but especially for struggling readers:

improved fluency, better word recognition, improved reading speed, more

advanced word knowledge, increased range of vocabulary, and better

comprehension of words that are read.

Repeated reading of a passage of text not only helps to improve

fluency and comprehension but can also help convince a slower reader that,

with practice, he or she can actually read material at the same rate, and with

the same accuracy and expression, as other children. Most of the time poor

readers hear themselves reading very slowly, tripping over too many words

on the page and lacking any real expression.

Fluency is important because it is closely related to comprehension

(Kamil and Bernhardt, 2003:11). If students do not develop fluent reading in

the early grades, it can impact their reading speed, accuracy, comprehension

and enjoyment of printed text. These students are reluctant to read aloud or

read to others as their reading is slow and tedious to listen. When students

are unable to read fluently, it can result in poor comprehension, an essential

component of reading success.

Comprehension may be poor with the first reading of the text, but

with each additional rereading, the students is better able to comprehend

because the decoding barrier to comprehension is gradually overcome. As

 29

less attention is required for decoding, more attention becomes available for

comprehension. Thus rereading both builds fluency and enhances

comprehension (Samuels, 1997:378).

Based on the statements above, the researcher concluded that

reading comprehension and reading fluency are related to each other. When

students read the text more than one times, he has a chance to comprehend

the text and when the student has comprehend the text he get more easily in

reading the text because he know every word what he read. In this research

the researcher only focus on reading comprehension, whether repeated

reading strategy give any influence toward students‘ reading comprehension

or not.