READING II

CRITICAL BOOK REVIEW

BY

ANDIKA PRAWIRA
2143321003

ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

FACULTY OF LANGUAGES AND ARTS
STATE UNIVERSITY OF MEDAN
2017
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 CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

1.1. Identity of Book:

Title : Reading II Course Book

Author : Rita Suswati, S.Pd,M.Hum

ISBN : 978-602-1313-31-2
Publisher : UNIMED PRESS
Years of Pulication : 2014
Edition : First Edition
Number of Pages : 128 Pages
1.2. Introduction
Reading is a essential skills in language learning, there are many kinds/types of text that
student must comprehend to increase their proficiency. Reading II Course Book offers
valuable information related to reading material such as genre in reading. The Author of
this book wanted to boost students knowledge & assest every studens needs. Provided
with example and exercises for students to work individually or in a group it is a proof
that Author objectives is to make students improved to the level where they will
understand the book without seeking help using dictionary. Author put high hopes that the
student in State University of Medan speacially on Reading II course would pass with
satisfying result and able to compete and using their reading abilities in daily life.

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 CHAPTER II
SUMMARY OF THE BOOK

The book titled Reading II Course generally speaks about on how many types of genres in
reading, each chapters fully loaded with great explanations, example and exercise to guide
university level student to comprehend the book material.

On the first chapter, the book Reading II Course discuss about essay, author objectives in
this chapter is the students able to understand about text, essay, steps on how to organize the
essay and knowing how to organize a good essay. An essay itself is a piece of writing that
methodically analyses and evaluates a topic or issue. Fundamentally, an essay is designed to
get your academic opinion on a particular matters. Many students get confused about this
word opinion in academic writing, and think that academic writing should just stick to
reporting the facts and forget about opinion altogether. However, there are important
differences between an academic opinion and a personal opinion. Writing a great essay is not
about simply surveying and re-telling the existing ideas. Instead, a good essay takes into
account various opinions and points of view and puts forward an argument that reflects the
writers informed opinion. Currently there are only two types of essay, and both of them
oppositing from each another, these two types are formal and informal. To be clear, the
formal one used on academic environtment where there are certain criteria to met and the
informal types would be less bounded with certain criteria. But both of them share the same
ideas and main points of view. It is to delivers writers thought and opinion with writing
pieces.

Chapter II, mainly discuss on how reading process works, author hopes that students would
be able to identifying topic, main ideas, supporting ideas and last the author want students
would be able to organize a good paragraph. Understanding the topic, gist or the larger
conceptual framework of a textbook chapter, an article or any writing pieces is a
sophisticaded reading task. Being able to draw conclusion, evaluate, and critically interpret
articles or chapters is important for overall reading comprehension in college. These writing
pieces all have topics and main ideas. The topic itself is the broad, general theme or message
to deliver. where the main idea itself is a key concept to be expressed implicitly. Generally
the books offers SQ3R methods invented in late 60s to identifying topic, main ideas and the
supporting details.

Chapter III, is about understanding graphic and visual aids, in this chapters student must be
able to tell something from a picture, or graphical pieces. It is quite interesting, it would boost
student critical review ability toward certain matters. Then the books guides on how to
present a good presentation using media Power Point to deliver his/her ideas without using
reading pieces.

Chapter IV, is discussing heavy matters. It is a tones. Tones itself is a references to the
emotional attitude expressed by it. A texts tone can be happy, sad, angry and so on. Perhaps
the most interesting tonal features of a text is when the tones becomes harder to grasp. Your

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behavior while attending church is different from your behavior while hanging out with our
friends. And part of that difference is the difference in language. A difference itself we called
it tones. The tone, in turn, conveys our attitude toward our audience and our subject matter.
Often more complex tones involve some form of verbal irony of saying one thing and
meaning another. One difficuly in writing for a course is that its hard to think of the reader of
our essay as an audience. Why do you think the author wrote the article? To persuade to
enterain? To inform? To express? Authors purpose is the reason or reasons an author has for
writing a selection. If readers enjoyed what they read, one of the authors purpose may have
been for entertain. If students learn while they are reading, one of the authors purposes may
have been to inform, and so on. Reflectivce readers are able to anaylize information more
thoughtfully when they know an authors purpose. Identifying an authors purpose may give
clues to a reader gor how to pace their reading. Students need to adjust their reading rate for
various selections. Informational articles may require a reader to slow down in order to fully
understand ideas described.

Chapter V, aims to understand about analytical exposition text. Student expected to be able to
determine the purposes, generic structures and language of text on certain writing pieces, last
but not least they also must able to analyze a journal. Exposition is a text that elaborates the
writers idea about the phenomenon surrounding. Simply says, it has social function to
persuade the reader that his/her idea is important matters. Moving on, the books explain the
generic sturctures of analytical exposition, here are the generic structures:
1. Thesis : Introducing the topic and indicating the writer position
2. Argument I : Explanation to support writers position
3. Argument II : Also Explanation but with more fact to strengthen writers position
4. Reiteration : Restating the writers position

And also, student must be able to understand language features of analytical exposition:
1. Using Relational Process
2. Using Internal Conjunction
3. Using Causal Conjunction
4. Using Simple Present Tense

Chapter VI, discuss about hortatory exposition text. In this chapter, student must be able to
understand the objective like in Chapter V (Analytical Exposition Text). A Hortatory
Exposition is a type of spoken or written text that is intended to explain the listeners or
readers that something should or shouldnt happen or be done. To strengthen the explanation,
speaker or writer needs some arguments as the fundamental reasons of the given idea. In
other words, this kind of text can be called as an argumentation text. Moving on, on this book
contain the generic structure of Hortatory Exposition:
1. Thesis : Statement or announcement of issues concern
2. Arguments : Reason for concern that will lead to recommendation
3. Recommendation : Statement of what should/shouldnt be done based on
Argument

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A Hortatory exposition focuses on generic human and non-human participants, expect for
speaker or writer referring to self, it is uses mental processes, which means it is used state
what the writer/speaker thinks or feel about particular matter it often needs material
processes. It is used to state what happen.

Chapter VII, mainly about discussion text. Author objectives is to makes students able to
determine the purpose, generics structures and language features on discussion text from the
noews or journal. Discussion is a text which present a problematic discourse. This problem
will be discusses from different point of view. This kind of text is commonly found in
philosophical, historic, and social text. Discussion is a process to find the meet point between
two different ideas. It is important to get the understanding between the two differences. The
generic stuctures of discussion text is :
1. Starting the Issue : A brief explanation on a phenomenon
2. Supporting Point : Supporting ideas on the phenomenon
3. Contrasive Point : Contrasive ideas on the phenomenon
4. Reccomendation : An ideas based the friction on Supporting & Contrasive.

Chapet VIII, is about critical judgement. Student expetected to be able create a critical
judegement toward writing pieces. Making a critical judgement implies an attempt at
objective judging so as to determine both merits and faults. Critical reading is thoughtful
reading because it requires the reader recoqnize not only what is being said at the literary
level but also facrs, opinions, attitudes, inferences and bias. To evaluate or to judge what you
read, you must attempt to answer such question like:
1. Does author telling the truth as far as he knows it?
2. Is he prejudice?
3. Is his idea and claims are worth to me?

In order to become a good critical judge, student must be able to be a one-side presentation of
detail, which mean student must be able to make a judge based on two different ideas and
claims which one is a good one.

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 CHAPTER III
CRITICAL BOOK REVIEW

3.1. Background of the Study

Book titled Reading II is a good academic materials to improve students reading
proficieny. This proficieny itself would help their career in the future. It is a common
knowledge that today most of job vacancies requires their new employers to write an essay
about themselves in informal types of essay. Therefore, it is quite interesting to raise a
question regarding this matter, here I prepared several sets of question that would help me to
review this book:
1. What are the factors that affect students reading proficieny?
2. How to improve students critical thinking?
3. Is it Reading comprehension would help students career?
3.2. Theory & Concept
Reading is a complex "cognitive process" of decoding symbols in order to construct
or derive meaning (reading comprehension). Reading is a means of language acquisition,
communication, and of sharing information and ideas. Like all languages, it is a complex
interaction between the text and the reader which is shaped by the readers prior knowledge,
experiences, attitude, and language community which is culturally and socially situated. The
reading process requires continuous practice, development, and refinement. In addition,
reading requires creativity and critical analysis. Consumers of literature make ventures with
each piece, innately deviating from literal words to create images that make sense to them in
the unfamiliar places the texts describe. Because reading is such a complex process, it cannot
be controlled or restricted to one or two interpretations. There are no concrete laws in
reading, but rather allows readers an escape to produce their own products introspectively.
This promotes deep exploration of texts during interpretation.(De Certeau, Michel 1984. 165-
176)
An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument but the
definition is vague, overlapping with those of an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays
have traditionally been sub-classified as formal and informal. Formal essays are characterized
by "serious purpose, dignity, logical organization, length," whereas the informal essay is
characterized by "the personal element (self-revelation, individual tastes and experiences,
confidential manner), humor, graceful style, rambling structure, unconventionality or novelty
of theme," etc (Holman, William 2003. 193)
An essay has been defined in a variety of ways. One definition is a "prose composition with a
focused subject of discussion" or a "long, systematic discourse". It is difficult to define the
genre into which essays fall. Aldous Huxley, a leading essayist, gives guidance on the
subject. He notes that "the essay is a literary device for saying almost everything about almost
anything", and adds that "by tradition, almost by definition, the essay is a short piece".

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Furthermore, Huxley argues that "essays belong to a literary species whose extreme
variability can be studied most effectively within a three-poled frame of reference".

These three poles (or worlds in which the essay may exist) are:
The personal and the autobiographical: The essayists that feel most comfortable in
this pole "write fragments of reflective autobiography and look at the world through
the keyhole of anecdote and description".
The objective, the factual, and the concrete particular: The essayists that write from
this pole "do not speak directly of themselves, but turn their attention outward to some
literary or scientific or political theme. Their art consists of setting forth, passing
judgment upon, and drawing general conclusions from the relevant data".
The abstract-universal: In this pole "we find those essayists who do their work in the
world of high abstractions", who are never personal and who seldom mention the
particular facts of experience.
Huxley adds that the most satisfying essays "...make the best not of one, not of two, but of all
the three worlds in which it is possible for the essay to exist."

A statement by Michael Scriven & Richard Paul, presented at the 8th Annual International
Conference on Critical Thinking and Education Reform, Summer 1987.
Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully
conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered
from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a
guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values
that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance,
sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness.
It entails the examination of those structures or elements of thought implicit in all reasoning:
purpose, problem, or question-at-issue; assumptions; concepts; empirical grounding;
reasoning leading to conclusions; implications and consequences; objections from alternative
viewpoints; and frame of reference. Critical thinking in being responsive to variable
subject matter, issues, and purposes is incorporated in a family of interwoven modes of
thinking, among them: scientific thinking, mathematical thinking, historical thinking,
anthropological thinking, economic thinking, moral thinking, and philosophical thinking.
Critical thinking can be seen as having two components: 1) a set of information and belief
generating and processing skills, and 2) the habit, based on intellectual commitment, of using
those skills to guide behavior. It is thus to be contrasted with: 1) the mere acquisition and
retention of information alone, because it involves a particular way in which information is
sought and treated; 2) the mere possession of a set of skills, because it involves the continual

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use of them; and 3) the mere use of those skills ("as an exercise") without acceptance of their
results.

Critical thinking varies according to the motivation underlying it. When grounded in selfish
motives, it is often manifested in the skillful manipulation of ideas in service of ones own, or
one's groups, vested interest. As such it is typically intellectually flawed, however
pragmatically successful it might be. When grounded in fairmindedness and intellectual
integrity, it is typically of a higher order intellectually, though subject to the charge of
"idealism" by those habituated to its selfish use.
Critical thinking of any kind is never universal in any individual; everyone is subject to
episodes of undisciplined or irrational thought. Its quality is therefore typically a matter of
degree and dependent on, among other things, the quality and depth of experience in a given
domain of thinking or with respect to a particular class of questions. No one is a critical
thinker through-and-through, but only to such-and-such a degree, with such-and-such insights
and blind spots, subject to such-and-such tendencies towards self-delusion. For this reason,
the development of critical thinking skills and dispositions is a life-long endeavor.

3.3 Research Methodology

This degree project presents qualitative study. One of the three chosen research methods
consists of qualitative in-depth interviews. The interviews were carried out together with
teachers of English in order to attain their subjective thoughts and beliefs concerning the
matter. The research use more than one survey method was to increase the trustworthiness of
the study as a whole as well as its conclusions.
3.4. Strength & Weakness of the Book
A. Strenght of the Book
Book titled Reading II is a good example on how to teach English for
Foreign Language without any difficulties. The author of this book carefully organize
the content in this book to help students can easily comprehend it. Therefore, it is
suitable for referencing and researches material

B. Weakness of the Book

This book is well-writen and informative for students on university level,
infact it is used as Reading II subject textbook, but some of the information inside the
book is lack referencing. As the Author explained it on simple but understandable to
every students whose reading it. Overall, it is still good book. But in order to obtain
more information further reading is needed.

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 CHAPTER IV
CONCLUSION & SUGGESTION
A. Conclusion
Book titled Reading II objectives is to make students in university level to
understand, masterize and comprehend every subject inside Reading II. Author put
high hopes that her pupils would pass Reading II with satisfying result and able to
apply their abilities outside academic environtment.

B. Suggestion
Overall, the book titled Reading II is great textbook for university level
students, the content in this book really helps student from understanding an essay to
how to make a critical judgement on writing material. Therefore, it would be great to
use this book as an references and researches purpose.