Reading is one of important skills in English. One of reading goals is that students should be active during the teaching learning process. Josie said, “Good reader is an active reader who becomes involved in the reading process. This process involves three step sequences namely reading, understanding and remembering”. It means that good readers are able to comprehend and understand the context of the text. In addition, reading is not only spelling the word but also analyzing the information, drawing the conclusion and comprehending the context.
Josie also said, “Good reading texts, also provide good models for writing and provide opportunities to introduce new topics, to simulate discussion to study language (e.g. vocabulary, grammar and idiom). Before reading an assignment, basic frameworks which are included in the text should be pointed out such as cause-effect or problem-solution”. It can be beneficial to call attention to specific plans of paragraph or text organization such as signal words, main idea of sentences, highlighted phrases, headings and subtitles.
Reading has an important role in comprehending English text. Cangara said, “Sometimes on occasion a person will read out loud for the benefit of other listeners, reading for better comprehension is called by intrapersonal communication”. In order to reach the goal of understanding about reading text students should use their schemata to gets a point from a text.
Every student has different schemata in reading a text such as Biology and Physic department student. The way of reading is based on students’ ability and techniques. They should be able to analyze a text. Research shows that students’ schemata are very important, because by having a prior knowledge on reading comprehension it will help students to analyze the English reading text.
“Schemata about oneself are considered to be grounded in the present and based on past experiences. Memories, as mentioned, are framed in the light of one’s self-conception. There are three major implications of self-schemata. First, information about oneself is processed faster and more efficiently, especially consistent information. Second, one retrieves and remembers information that is relevant to one’s self-schema. Third, one will tend to resist information in the environment that is contradictory to one’s self-schema. This is also related to self-verification”.
New information that falls within an individual’s schema is easily remembered and incorporated into their worldview. However, when new information is perceived that does not fit a schema, many things can happen. The most common reaction is to simply ignore or quickly forget the new information. This can happen on a deep level frequently an individual does not become conscious of or even perceive the new information. However, when the new information cannot be ignored, existing schemata must be changed.
Goomes said “Schemata are the underlying connections that allow new experiences and information to be aligned with previous knowledge”. Almost all people in the world use their schemata when analyzes or reading something. The Schema theory was developed by R. C. Anderson, a respected educational psychologist. This learning theory views organized knowledge as an elaborate network of abstract mental structures which represent one understands of the world. Schemata for other classes of things, events, and situations are developed, this paper contents that knowledge of “what reading is” should have a potent influence on how and when a person utilizes reading skills and strategies to extract information from text. Many students when they read, or face English’s reading text absolutely they use their Schemata. Prior knowledge can help learner understand more English`s reading text.
