The Essence of Reading

There are four skills in English which should be mastered, they are: reading, speaking, listening and writing and it cannot be denied that reading is one of the most important. According to Harmer in The Practice of English Language Testing (1985:153) “Reading is an exercise dominated by the eyes and the brain”. Specifically, Nunan (1989:17) in his book also said that “Reading is a process of decoding written symbols, working from smaller units (individual letters) to larges ones (words, clauses and sentences)”.

Based on explanation above, the writer concludes that reading is a process to convey the message or information. By reading, the reader will know what they read and challenged to response the ideas of the author. In order to make the messages or information that comes from the author can be understood and comprehended easily by the reader.