Considering
that people have their own purposes in
reading, each of them also has different strategies in reading.
Generally, there are two strategies used by readers to comprehend a text.
According to Silberstein (1994: p. 7) and Rumelhart (1980, in Mickulecky, 1990:
p. 2), the first strategy is top-down or
concept driven. In this strategy, readers focus primarily on what is
already known in trying to comprehend a text. The second is bottom-up or data
driven. It means that readers rely primarily on textual information to
comprehend.
Other strategies that someone uses
in reading are also stated by Grellet (1981, in Hadley 2001: p. 205). He
discusses four main ways that one can read a given text. The first way is
skimming. Skimming is an activity of quickly running one’s eyes over the text
to get the gist. The second is scanning or quickly searching for some
particular piece of information in the
text. The third is extensive reading, and the last is intensive reading.
According to Munby (1979, as cited in Hadley 2001: p. 205), in intensive
reading, students need to understand linguistic as well as semantic detail and
pay attention to the text to find out the information in the text. Meanwhile,
in extensive reading, students need not necessarily comprehend all details of
the text since the purpose of extensive
reading is often for pleasure.
In teaching reading, Brown (2001: p.
306) proposes the following ten
strategies that can be applied in the classroom setting. The first strategy is
identifying the purpose of reading. Teachers have to make sure that their
learners know the purpose of reading because by doing so, learners know what
they are looking for. The second strategy is using graphemic rules and patterns
to aid in bottom-up decoding. The third is using efficient silent reading
techniques for relatively rapid comprehension. It means that intermediate to
advance level students need not be speed readers but teachers can help them
increase efficiency by teaching a few silent reading rules.
The fourth is skimming the text for
main ideas. Skimming gives readers the advantage of being able to predict the
purpose of the passage, the main topic, or message, and possibly some of the
developing or supporting ideas. The fifth is scanning the text for specific
information. Scanning exercises may ask students to look for names or dates to
find a definition of a key concept, or to list a certain number of supporting
details. The purpose of scanning is to take out specific information without
reading through the whole text. The sixth is using semantic mapping or
clustering. The strategy of semantic mapping, or grouping ideas into meaningful
clusters, helps the reader to provide some order to the chaos.
The seventh strategy is guessing.
Learners can use guessing to their
advantage to guess the meaning of the word, guess a grammatical relationship,
guess a discourse relationship, infer implied meaning (“between the lines”),
guess about a cultural reference, and guess content messages. The eight is
analyzing vocabulary. Several techniques are useful in analyzing vocabulary.
The first is looking for prefixes that may give clues, the second is looking
for suffixes that may indicate what part of speech it is, the third is looking
for grammatical contexts that may signal information, and the last is looking at the semantic context (topic)
for clues. The ninth is distinguishing between literal and implied meaning.
This strategy requires the application of
sophisticated top-down processing skills. Last the tenth strategy is
capitalizing on discourse makes to process relationship. Many discourse markers
in English signal relationship among ideas as expressed through phrases,
clauses, and sentences. A clear
comprehension of such markers can greatly enhance learners’ reading efficiency.
Some principles for designing interactive reading techniques are also
recommended by Brown (2001: p. 313). These principles consist of composing
specific instruction in reading skill, using motivating techniques, balancing
authenticity and readability in choosing texts, encouraging the development of
reading strategies, including both bottom-up and top-down techniques, following
the “SQ3R” (Survey, Question, Read, Recite, and Review), subdividing the
techniques into pre-reading, and after reading
phases, and building some evaluate aspect to the techniques.
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