Reading Activities

            As reading as well as writing is not Indonesian students’ most wanted activities, teachers teach English as a FL need to be well-prepared in conducting these teaching-learning activities. Understanding reading activities, therefore, is a requirement for teachers. Activity refers to any kind of teaching-learning process happens in the class that mainly consists of pre-, whilst-, and post-reading activity. It has two functions:

1.      Helping readers understand particular text they are reading

2.      Helping readers develop good reading strategies for reading other text

Classroom Action Research & Research and Development

Teachers, todays should be aware that they have multi-tasks not only as teachers but also as ‘researcher’ in the sense that they will investigate their own classes. Thus, teachers may implement Classroom Action Research (CAR) and Research and Development (RD).

1.      Classroom Action Research

CAR is conducted by or in cooperation with teachers for the purpose of gaining a better understanding of their educational environment and improving the effectiveness of their teaching.

There are some steps in designing CAR. Kemis and McTaggart mention four broad phases in a cycle of research. The first cycle may become a continuing, or iterative, spiral of cycles which recur until the action

Researcher has achieved a satisfactory outcome and feels it is time to stop.

1.      Planning

Strategies and Metacognitive Skills

There has been no a clear cut between reading skill and reading strategies. Skills are assumed to be an automatic information-processing technique and it applies unconsciously. In contrast, strategies are conscious actions selected to achieve particular goal. When a reader does reading strategies, she applies the metacognitive mechanism which aims to the particular goals of problem solving.

Reading strategies focus on creating meaning and maintaining meaning by facilitating comprehension processing which can be achieved prior to, during, and after reading. Metacognitive skills in reading help a reading understand and regulate the performance of the task. It represents the planning, monitoring, and evaluating. Flavel subdivide metacognitive knowledge into knowledge about persons, task, and strategies. Knowledge of persons include knowledge a reader has about how people operate cognitively, while knowledge of tasks involves being familiar with a new information and awareness of a certain task required. Knowledge of strategies involves knowing strategies for monitoring an individual’s cognitive progress and how to remedy comprehension failures. The researches have proved that there were no differences of strategies which were used by good readers and poor readers. However, they were different at the level of success. Further, each individual employs different strategies. Nevertheless, successful readers use more reading strategies than less successful readers. Thus, direct training of strategies and metacognitive skills which provide many exercises is useful for readers to gain success in making and maintaining meaning to bring comprehension.  

Content and Formal Schema and Background Knowledge

            There are two different types of schema, or background knowledge, that the readers bring on a text. The first is content schema, which is related with the content area and cultural knowledge. The other is formal schema which deals with syntax, cohesive relations, and rhetorical organization of different text types.

1.      Content Schema

Some experts have argued whether the existence of background knowledge affects reading comprehension or hinders comprehension. Reynolds et al. proved that cultural schema as well as personal knowledge influence reading comprehension. Further, prior knowledge affects memory performance that it supports short-term memory for reading ability. However, topic-related attitudes influence the long-term memory of a text, but play a minor role to change immediate recall of a text. In addition, Gaskin (1996) noted that a reader’s attitudes and affiliations affect the interpretation of the text.