Research · October 2015 doi: 10. 13140/RG

Reading Comprehension. It is better to define comprehension in terms of 
reading that it refers to be able to find meaning of what is read or the ability to 
understand what is being read, Gunning (2010) said that comprehension is a 
constructive process in which students create meaning based on their background 
knowledge. He further said that the more background knowledge you bring to an 
article or story, the better you will understand it. It indeed needs time to be being 
comprehension, Blachowicz & Ogle (2008) stated that comprehension does not 
happen in one point; rather, it is a process that takes place over time. It of course 
needs times to be able to comprehend what is read so it needs to read as a habit. 

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Language Testing & Evaluation 
Fernandes Arung 
2013 
15 
In testing reading comprehension, there are some tasks to assess as Snow 
(2002) stated that ...widely used comprehension assessments are heavily focused 
on only a few tasks: reading for immediate recall, reading for the gist of the 
meaning, and reading to infer or disambiguate word meaning. In doing these 
tasks, tester should prepare such as the followings as Mohamad (1999) 
recommended: 
1. Ensuring that we select an appropriate text. 
2. Making sure that the language used in the text is suitably pitched to our 
students' proficiency. 
3. Scrutinising carefully the text to ensure that the information in each 
paragraph is tested. 
After going through the preparation, it is then important to decide what level 
to assess. Mohamad (1999) said that there are actually three main levels or 
strands of comprehension as follow: 
1. Literal comprehension, is the most obvious. Comprehension at this 
level involves surface meanings. At this level, teachers can ask students 
to find information and ideas that are explicitly stated in the text. In 
addition, it is also appropriate to test vocabulary. 
2. Interpretive or referential comprehension. At this level, students go 
beyond what is said and read for deeper meanings. They must be able to 
read critically and analyse carefully what they have read. Students need 
to be able to see relationships among ideas, for exmple how ideas go 
together and also see the implied meanings of these ideas. It is also 
obvious that before our students can do this, they have to first 
understand the ideas that are stated (literal comprehension). Interpretive 
or referential comprehension includes thinking processes such as 
drawing conclusions, making generalizations and predicting outcomes. 

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Language Testing & Evaluation 
Fernandes Arung 
2013 
16 
At this level, teachers can ask more challenging questions such as 
asking students to do the following: 
 Re-arranging the ideas or topics discussed in the text. 
 Explaining the author's purpose of writing the text. 
 Summarizing the main idea when this is not explicitly stated in the 
text. 
 Selecting conclusions which can be deduced from the text t!hey have 
read. 
3. Critical reading whereby ideas and information are evaluated. Critical 
evaluation occurs only after our students have understood the ideas and 
information. At this level, students can be tested on the following skills: 
 The ability to differentiate between facts and opinions. 
 The ability to recognize persuasive statements . 
 The ability to judge the accuracy of the information given in the text. 
Tests used to measure the candidates’ reading comprehension should be 
based on candidates’ level and provide various techniques.