Strategi Menjawab Soal Bahasa Inggris Akademik: Literal Questions

Text comprehension is the prerequisite for students’ critical reading. From students’ responses, it can be seen as the proposed model helped them with their text comprehension, by identifying the main idea, the structure to understand the text as a whole before connecting the text with the context and the author to find out the message. In addition, it can be seen that the proposed model helps students with the “situational model” that Kintsch and Rawson (2005) mentioned. According to these authors, if readers’ comprehension only stops at what is explicitly transferred in the text, it will only be sufficient to reproduce the text but not deeply understand it. So as to have deeper comprehension, the text content must be applied to build a “situation model”, which is a mental model of the situation described by the text. This requires the integration of information provided by the text with readers’ prior knowledge and their goals of comprehension ( Kintsch & Rawson, 2005 ; Sanjose et al., 2006 ). In the students’ responses, some said that they have never thought of their reading purpose, the author and the context before delving into the details of the text. And the model helped them to pay attention to what is outside the text for their comprehension. Therefore, the model supported students to build the “situation model” by making them be aware of their reading purpose and connecting the context and their background knowledge with the content of the text.

Although the situation in South Africa is different from that in the USA, policy makers and homeschoolers may very well benefit from the research done in the USA, as well as the lessons learnt from the development of homeschooling in the USA. It is clear that homeschooling in South Africa, as elsewhere, is a rapidly growing phenomenon that will not disappear overnight. Although it presently is a legal option, a number of aspects regarding homeschooling in South Africa still need to be addressed. It will be in the best interest of children for education authorities and homeschoolers to develop a partnership-relation and become jointly involved in policy making with regard to homeschooling. Research in the USA has clearly indicated that homeschooling is to the benefit rather than to the disadvantage of children. Homeschooling does not in any way disadvantage home learners with regard to academic and social
emotional development or socialisation. Education authorities need to take note of this research and the opportunities that homeschooling as an alternative form of educational provision presents. The fact that children receive an education should be more important than the fact that they are attending formal schools. Education policy makers in South Africa should rather consider legislation with regard to compulsory education in favour of legislation for compulsory schooling. From the literature as well as the empirical research it is clear that homeschoolers are a diverse group of parents with only one aspect in common, namely a need to provide their children with the best education that they possibly can. These parents are actively involved in the education of their children. Internationally parental involvement is recognised as an important factor in the education of children and homeschooling provides an excellent opportunity for this. As homeschooling as an alternative form of educational provision in South Africa increases, new aspects to consider will progressively come to the fore, such as the admission of home learners to facilities and activities at public schools for which there is presently no uniform policy. Homeschoolers need to share these needs with education departments in a partnership-relation. Homeschoolers, on the other hand, need to accept that the state has an important role in assuring that all children, home learners as well, receive an adequate education. A spirit of cooperation is needed in which a situation is achieved that is to the advantage of all. Research on homeschooling in South Africa should furthermore be promoted. Although homeschooling will most probably never replace mainstream education, the fact that more than 4000 families opt for homeschooling in favour of formal schooling suggests that homeschooling deserves more research.