REVIEW JOURNAL

1. Title : Reading Journal: Its Benefits for Extensive Reading

2. Author : Jonathan Aliponga
1. Journal : International Journal Of Humanities Social Saince
2. Volume : Volume 03, Number 12, June 2013
3. Year : 2013
4. Introduction:

In journal this writer discuss about the Reading Journal is It Benefits for Extensive
Reading . This is a preliminary study, which aimed to investigate EFL students’ opinions on
the benefits of the reading journal.It was limited only to finding out students’ opinions
onwhether or not the reading journal could and how it could motivate students to read,
enable them to understand the main idea and important details of the reading materials, and
enable them to think critically. It was assumed that if all of these were achieved, students
would be able to get better scores in the TOEFL test.

5. Summary

Learning how to effectively use the reading journal is like learning how to
effectively acquire and use a skill. The process of learning a skill by means of a course of
instruction has been defined as a three-stage process: verbalization, automatization and
autonomy (Ur, 2002). Verbalization, also known as presentation, requires teachers to mediate
new materials or skills to be learned so they appear in an accessible form and thus can easily
be perceived and understood. In this study, the reading journal as the learning strategy was
presented. Ur further explains that in order for effective verbalization to take place, the
following six guidelines for giving explanations and instructions should be taken account:

1. Explicit explanations and instructions must be given,

2. Ensurefull attention,

3. Present explanations and instructions more than once,

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4. Bebriefbut clear,

5.Illustrate with examples relating these as faras possibl et othe learners’own live sand
experiences, and

6. Get feed back from the learners. These six guidelines were observed when presenting
the reading journal.

After verbalization, learners need to practice repetitively, usually in meaningful exercises or

activities until they achieve mastery. This is referred to as automatization. This is exactly
what was done with the reading journal. It was made sure that the students had a good
preliminary grasp of how to use the reading journal through engaging themselves in more
practice until they achieved mastery of how to accomplish the reading journal.Once materials
or skills are automatized, learners begin to improve on their own through further meaningful
practice activities. Learners begin to speed up performance, to perceive or create new
combinations, and to ‘do their own thing’. At this stage learners are autonomous. They have
little need of a teacher except perhaps as a supportive or challenging colleague and are ready,
or nearly ready, to perform as masters of the skills, or as teachers themselves. It is believed
that almost all students became autonomous in using the reading journal. The successful
implementation of the three-stage of skill or strategy learning is thought to have contributed
to the other positive responses of the students, that is,the reading journal enabled to increase
their reading speed, enabled them to concentrate, and aided them when they had trouble
understanding the content.Again, these resulted in students’ motivation to read more.

Bandura (1986) explains that motivation (or a lack thereof) is the result of an
individual's self-efficacy related to a task. He defines self-efficacy as the beliefs we have
about ourselves that cause us to make choices, put forth effort, and persist in the face of
difficulty. It is believed that the reading journal provided students with a learning strategy
that developed their self-efficacy to be motivated to read as revealed in their response. This
finding finds support in the results from the survey studies, which suggested that the use of
strategies is significantly related to self-efficacy beliefs. Specifically, the results of the study
ofMagogwe and Oliver (2007) using 480 Botswana students who were learning English as a
second language showed that there was a significant relationship between Botswana ESL
learners’ strategy use and their self-efficacy beliefs. In another context, Su and Duo’s (2012)
study of 200 Taiwanese students revealed that learning strategies were significantly
associated with self-efficacy beliefs. The same is true with the study of Wong (2005) who

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interviewed 6 Malaysian participants to explore their language learning strategies and self-
efficacy beliefs. The results showed that high-self-efficacy learners used more language
learning strategies. As far as reading is concerned, Wang and Li (2010) discovered that
reading self-efficacy was positively correlated to reading strategies, namely, metacognitive,
social/affective and cognitive strategies. Readers who had high efficacy used more reading
strategies than reader who had low self-efficacy.

As far as understanding the main idea is concerned, writing the summary in the reading
journal helped the students. Summary writing gave students an overview of the text's whole
meaning. It requiredstudents to pay careful attention to the meaning and shape of the entire
text. Writing summary did not only help students understand the main idea of a reading
material, but also its important details. This is because students had to select the important
details and summarize them. Working in groups also enabled students to understand
important details of their reading materials. During the group work, each student had to talk
about what they read using their reading journal as a guide. All members of the group had to
pay attention and were encouraged to ask questions. It is possible that the sharing and
question and answer part of the group activity reinforced students’ understanding of the
important details of the reading materials.

The results also revealed that the reading journal enabled students to think critically. One
source of critical thinking, which is taking control of our conscious thought processes, is the
summary writing. It is possible that when students wrote the summary of their readings, they
had to analyze, synthesize and evaluate what they read, which are essential steps in critical
thinking process. Another source of critical thinking is finding an intriguing sentence or
passage then interpreting the idea or situation by writing extended comments. As Facione
(1990) explains, when we think critically, we make purposeful, self-regulatory judgment,
which results in interpretation. Students had to interpret what they read in order to write
extended comments about intriguing sentences and passages. They had to formulate
inferential or critical questions and had to write the possible answers to those questions. They
had to express opinions, specifically what they liked and did not like about the readings and
had provide explanations for such response.

The end-goal of utilizing the reading journal was to prepare students for the TOEFL test.
Except for two students, all students thought that the reading journal could help them prepare
to get better scores in the said test because it motivated them read more, enabled them to

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learn more vocabulary, aided them to understand the main ideas as well as important details
of the reading materials, were among the reasons.

Finally, based on the results, it can be assumed that the two students, who did not find
the reading journal useful for preparing them for the TOEFL test, did not have time to
accomplish the reading journal. This lack of time, which may be due to busy schedule or
part-time job, affected their motivation to accomplish the reading journal. This in turn
resulted in their negative perceptions of the benefits of the reading journal as far as
developing reading abilities is concerned.

6. Weakness

• weakness journal is use language that chaotic.

• journal this explain about Benefits for Extensive Reading.

7. CONCLUSIONS

can concluded that journal this can help we make journal when we will finish study in
university and journal this peachy for read because this explain that we should know many
benefits for extensive reading journal. Based on the findings, it can be concluded that the
reading journal motivated students to read more, enabled them to understand the main idea
and important details of the reading materials of their choice, and enabled them to think
critically