There are four-primer skills in language learning. They are speaking, listening, writing, and reading. One of the skill is reading which reading its self has so many purposes. Everyone has their own reason when they read something. Experts differentiate the purpose of reading according to their own theory. Here, I share purpose of reading according to Grabe and Stoller.
The Purpose of Reading
Grabe and Stoller (2002:13) state the purpose of reding as follow:
1. Reading to search for simple information
In reading to search, we typically scan the text for a specific piece of information or a specific word.
2. Reading to skim quickly
Reading to skim (i.e. sampling segments of the text for a general understanding) is a common part of many reading task and a useful skill it is own right. It involves, in essence, a combination of strategies for guessing where important information might be in the text, and than using basic reading comprehension skills on those segments of the text until a general idea is formed.
3. Reading to learn from texts
Reading to learn typically occurs in academic and professional contexts in which a person need to learn a considerable amount of information from a text.
4. Reading to integrate information, write and critiques texts.
Reading to integrate information requires additional decisions about the relative importance of complementary, mutually supporting or conflicting information and the likely restructuring of a rhetorical frame to accommodate information from multiple sources. These skills inevitably require critical evaluation of the information being read so that the reader can decide what information to integrate and how to integrate it for the reader’s goal. In this respect, both reading to write and reading to critique text may be task variants of reading to integrate information.
5. Reading for general comprehension .
The nation of general reading comprehension has been intentionally saved for last in this discussion for two reasons. First, it is the most basic purpose of reading, underlying and supporting most other purpose for reading. Second, general reading comprehension is actually more complex than commonly assumed.
tag: reading purpose, reason in reading,