CHAPTER 2:

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.0 Definition of Reading

Reading is a mental process. There are many definitions of reading. Reading is when
someone looks into a written text and starts to absorb the information from the written
linguistic message. In Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistic, reading is said as:

1. "Perceiving a written text in order to understand its contents. This can be done silently
(silent reading). The understanding that result is called reading comprehension.
2. Saying a written text aloud (oral reading). This can be done with or without
understanding of the content."

Other definition by Collins English Learner's Dictionary is that reading is an act of looking at
and understanding point. This is very true because reading entails the use of vision to
understand several words in a sentence and make them meaningful. Same goes to each
sentence in order to understand the entire text.
Besides all the definitions from the dictionary there are also definitions made by several
people. According to William (1984), he defines reading as a process whereby one looks at
and understands what has been written. Rohani Ariffin (1992:1) in her book entitled
Anthropology of Poetry for Young People defines reading as a highly personal activity that is
mainly done silently, alone. There is a clear understanding that reading is something related
to the activity of acquiring information and it is done either silently or aloud.
Reading is an interactive process between the reader and the writer. Brunan W.K (1989) for
instance defines reading as a two way interaction in which information is exchange between
the reader and the author". Smith (1973) also shares the same attitude. This is proved by his
line:
"Reading is an act of communication in which information is transferred from a transmitter to
a receiver"
)Smith 1973:2(
Despite all the definitions given, there is also definition of reading given by teachers as well
as by students. According to Stallfter (1969), teachers define reading as:
"a complicated procedure. Readers read to get information from the printed pages. They
should be able to pronounce and comprehend the printed words, signs, letters, and symbols
by assigning meaning to them."

As for students, they define reading which cited from Jensen and Petty (1918) as:
"where words go into your eyes and out of your mouth. They said that books are written with
many adventures and time and time again there are spots where they say 'I know it!' it is
interesting to them as they open the book, words flow out and float across the mind"
In order for a person to be able to read, there is in need of other skill to support the reader
while reading. Reading is a mental process as mentioned earlier so it needs other skills to be
integrated with such as listening, speaking and writing. According to Chitravelu et. al (1995),
reading is not a single skill that we use all the time in the same way but it is multiple skill that
used differently with kind of test and fulfilling different purpose. This was earlier being
stated by Thomas and Loving (1979) where they alleged reading as a communicative skills
along with listening, speaking writing and thinking.

2.1 Purpose of Reading

Many or any people can read a text but hardly can understand what the writing was all about.
This is because the reading was not providing any information to the reader. Why is this
happen? This happened when the reader merely read the text without understanding the
content. So it defeats the purpose of reading as a means to gain information. According to
Mariam (1991) she proposed that a major avenue of learning is through reading. Yet, if we do
not understand what we are reading, we cannot learn or remember it. Comprehending is a
major concerned, then, of all teachers who use printed material in the classroom.
Since reading is very important in learning second language, a great effort has been given to
develop reading skill. Although many ways have been promoted in order to improve reading
skill among students, reading is still something that is seems problematic. Students can't
understand English text. These problems occurred because according to Noormah (2000) the
students are lacking of vocabulary, hardly understand the words and less interest to English
subject. Besides that, there are also several factors contributing to the diffident of this
particular skill. Based on Sivaguru (2000) those factors are home, school and social
environment. If the student is living in a family where English to them is a familiar language,
frequently spoken by the members of the family then the student will have the advantage of
being exposed to the language. Unlike student with no English familiarity in his family where
English is seen as a bizarre language to be spoken, this kind of environment demodulates his
motivation to learn the language.
Moreover, school is also one of the factors that contribute to the incompetence in reading.
This is where the role of teacher in promoting the language to the students. Some teacher just
might not fully use English during English class especially in the primary school. This is just
because the teacher intended to suit her level with the students and as a result a lot of code
switching is used. This early exposure to the lack of using English in class causes a serious
impact when they further their study in a higher education level. To them English is not
something important. Even if it does, they still can code switch as what their teacher did
during their schooling period.
Another factor is the environment factor. We are from what we come from. If the
environment around us allows us to speak English for example to have colleagues who are
willing to speak English, this would be a good drive. But what actually happen in the
Malaysian society is that people are hesitate to speak English in public among friends,
neighbors etceteras.
Although the factors discussed are concerning around the speaking skill, but as mentioned
earlier that all skills are related to each other. When the students are no longer interested to
speak in English, their passions for the language will also deteriorating. These will also
affecting their reading skills and their ability to understand English text.

2.2 Models of Reading

This study will be focusing on the students of a tertiary level. Students of tertiary level are
different from students of a secondary school in reading purpose. Secondary school students
read because they are forced to read by their teacher. It is hard to find students who do
extensive reading by themselves. Students of tertiary level on the other hand read because
they have to. They have to read to keep up with lectures and assignments. If they do not read,
they will be left behind.
There are three theories related and being use in this study. The first theory is the traditional
view of reading (Dole et al, 1991). According to this theory, novice reader's needs to acquire
a set of hierarchically ordered sub-skills that consecutively build toward comprehension
ability. Contained in this theory, the students have the ability to comprehend the texts by
making sense of the words within the context of the sentence. According to Nunan (1991),
being able to read using this view is being able to interpret a series of written symbols to the
auditory equivalents as a way for the readers to make sense of the text they are reading and to
reproduce the meaning of the reading itself. In other words, this process is called the "bottom-
up".
The bottom-up reading is done step by step as mentioned by Mariam Mohamed Nor and
Rahmad Sukor Abd. Samad (2006). The technique begins with the eyes identifying visual
information in the materials and this technique begins with the identification of the letter and
the sounds follows subsequently. Next, the identification of the lexical items is done through
grapheme-phoneme correspondence and being put in the short term memory (STM). This is
where the phrases, clauses and sentences are being constructed.
This model requires an accurate comprehension, sequential identification of letters, words,
phrases, clauses, sentences and the pronunciation. The other meaning of this view is that it is
also a process of "outside-in" as mentioned by McCarthy (1999). To make it simple, the
bottom-up model recommends that reading should begins from the low-level processing. The
printed texts that being read by the reader can only be interpreted and understood by the
reader himself. Apart from the definition given below, this traditional view of reading always
been under attack because of the insufficiency and lacking one or more of the usual forms of
grammatical inflection mainly the words and structure.
The second theory is the three major types of schemata. The types of schema mentioned by
Carrell (1984) are the linguistic schemata, formal schemata and content schemata which are
related to the reading comprehension. The linguistic schemata refer to the existing knowledge
that the readers have in vocabulary and grammar. It is the foundation for other schemata as it
is essential in helping the readers to grasp and decode the text they read. If the readers do not
have this schema, it will be hard for them to understand and to decode texts they read. The
more linguistic schema the readers have, the easier for them to understand and decode what
they are reading.
The second schema is the formal schema. This schema has been explained to be abstract,
encoded, internalized, and having coherent patterns of meta-linguistic, discourse and textual
organization that are being used to understand a text. The reader tries to use any information
that they have in order to understand and to comprehend the English text they are reading at
that particular of time. But the formal schema offers less power in the reading process as
mentioned by Carrell (1984). In this study, the formal schema helps the students to make
relations between the background knowledge that they have with the new one that they just
bumped into under the same topic. This is to help them in comprehending the reading English
texts in the possible way as they can.
The third schema in the schemata theory is called content schema. In other terms, this schema
explains about the reader having the information or background knowledge on the topic that
is being brought up in the texts they read. A language is not only the combination of
vocabulary or grammar but it also involves the culture of the language and this is where the
information came. With the content schema, it can complete the lack of language schemata
and thus helps the students in comprehending texts and to be able to put aside any
ambiguities and irrelevant words or sentences in the texts.
The third theory used in this study is the affective filter hypothesis by Stephen Krashen. This
theory involves the attitudes towards the target language and its relationship with the input
achieved by the students. It shows that how attitude is very important in learning language. If
the students have a very high or strong affective filter, they tend to have less input. If the
students do understand the input, the input will not reach part of the brain that takes charge of
the language acquisition. It is different to students who have low affective filter who will
have the tendency to obtain more information and because they have more positive attitudes
to the language they are learning, they are more open to the input they obtain.

According to Burhan (2012: 9), reading is a physic and mental activity to reveal the meaning
of the written texts, while in that activity there is a process of knowing letters. It says a physic
activity because the parts of the body, our eyes particularly, do it. And it says mental activity
because perception and memory as parts of though are involved in it. He then concludes that
the main goal of reading is a process of comprehending written texts.

Dealing of it, Cline et.al (2006: 2), states that reading is decoding and understanding written
texts. Decoding requires translating the symbols of writing system (including Braille) into the
spoken words which they represent. Understanding is determined by the purposes for reading,
the context, the nature of the text, and the readers’ strategies and knowledge. Further, Cline
et.al (2006: 2) in their second definition states that reading is the process of deriving meaning
from the text. For the majority of readers, this process involves decoding written text. Some
individuals require adaptation such as Braille or auditorization to support the decoding
process. Understanding is determined by the purposes for reading, the context, the nature of
the text, and the reader’s strategies and knowledge.

And based on the experts quotation above, I then define reading as the process of decoding
and understanding of a writing system into the spoken words they represent and at the same
time analyze the meaning or the messages of the text by paying attention to the intonation,
stressing and pronunciation.

Writer: Jupri Malino

References:
1. Fanani, B. E., (2012). Teknik Baca Cepat Trik Efektif Membaca 2 Detik 1
Halaman. Yogyakarta: Araska.

2. Cline, F., Johnstone, C., & King, T. (2006) Focus Group Reaction to Three Definition of
Reading (as Originally Developed in Support NARAP Goal 1). Minneapolis, M.N.: National
Accessible Reading Assesment Project.

3. Images Source: http://mirza3m.com/2011/07/01/cara-membaca-efektif/

Reading is one of the important skills which have to be learned by the students in order to
master English well. Reading is also included into receptive skill besides listening. Receptive
skill is the way in which people extract meaning from the discourse they see or hear (Harmer,
2001: 199). To achieve the purpose of reading, which is to get general or detail information
from the text, the students have to comprehend the text in order to understand the information
effectively. Gillet and Temple (in Ngadiso, 1998, 2) say, “Comprehension is the
understanding new information in light of what we have already known”. This thing will
make students be more successful in applying and improving everything that had been
learned and understood. Reading comprehension is the process of using syntactic, semantic,
and rhetorical information found in the printed texts to reconstruct in the reader’s mind, using
the knowledge of the world he or she possesses… (Ngadiso, 1998: 1).