ARTICLE

READING DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED BY THE ELEVENTH GRADE

STUDENTS AT SMAN 1 TINAMBUNG IN POLMAN

ANDI MARNI

GRADUATE PROGRAM

STATE UNIVERSITY OF MAKASSAR

2017

READING DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED BY THE ELEVENTH GRADE STUDENTS AT SMAN 1 TINAMBUNG

Andi Marni

andimarni23@gmail.com

State University of Makassar, Indonesia

ABSTRACT

This research aimed to find out the kinds of reading difficulties encountered by the eleventh grade students at SMAN 1 Tinambung and the strategies used by the students to solve their difficulties in reading narrative text. In order to achieve the study objectives, the researcher used qualitative descriptive method and developed one data collection instrument semi structure interview. It consisted of seven questions. The researcher applied technique of data analysis based on Miles and Huberman. The researcher conducted this research on the eleventh grade students who was learning English as a foreign language and the researcher used purposive sampling technique. The whole population consisted of total number of the eleventh grade students at SMA Negeri 1 Tinambung is 257 that was divided into 7 classes which consist of 4 classes of sciences and 3 classes of social. The result of study showed that there were five reading difficulties encountered by students in reading English. Namely: limited vocabulary, slow reading rate, weakness in words attack, low comprehension of the text, low words recognition. The researcher found the most dominant reading difficulties encountered by the students is limited vocabulary. The researcher found the other reading difficulties encountered by the students namely: difficult to identify the unit of though and difficult to pronounce the words. The strategies used by students to solve their reading difficulties encountered by them, mostly students for the eleventh grade asked to their teacher, senior, friend, opening the dictionary, using mobile phone, always practice to read the text. The researcher strongly suggests that in learning reading students had to increase their vocabulary made them easy to understand the unit of thought about the text. The teacher had to increase teaching vocabulary in the classroom by using varieties and it can give a new atmosphere. It made students more attractive, enjoyable, effective and communicative. It was expected the students easy to get the meaning from the text.

Key words: Reading, Reading difficulties, EFL students

INTRODUCTION

There are four skills in English which was been taught to students. Reading is one of the four necessary and significant of language skills for learning English as a second or foreign language. Reading held the important rule because reading is an activity which was not be released in our life to search information or knowledge from

textbooks, articles, or magazine written in English. In reading comprehension, there were numbers of type reading texts that must be covered by the eleventh grade of EFL students at senior high school. Those were reading aloud, silent reading, speed reading.

Reading difficulties has many characteristics such as difficulties in single words reading, difficulties decoding or sounding out words, difficulties reading sight words, insufficient phonological processing, the understanding that sentences was been comprised of words, words were made up of syllable and syllable were made up individual sounds or phoneme.

However, many senior high school students made a lot of mistakes in English reading aloud. Most of their problems related to the element areas of English, namely poor phonology, poor vocabulary, poor grammatical, or long text which may cause the difficulty in reading comprehension. Reading difficulties had some problems were encountered by the students to get the main idea with other idea related the text. Further, Fike (2004) explained that there are three processes to get information when readers were reading a narrative text especially, comprehension of the text. They are semantic, syntactic and graph phonic process. In semantic process, the reader interpreted the reading text to get the meaning of the text and the main idea of the reading text. Thus, syntactic process is getting information by using connection between words. And Graph phonic process is getting information of the text by using visualization and decoding.

According to Nassaji (2003) reading is not single factor process. It is a multivariate skill involving a complex combination and integration of a variety of cognitive, linguistic and non linguistic skills ranging from low level processing abilities to high order knowledge of text representation and integration of ideas with global knowledge. Therefore, reading is an interactive and complex process, the process through which the dynamic interaction of the reader’s background knowledge, the information inferred by the written language, and the reading situation context in is constructing meaning (Dutcher,1990).Thus, students must active to do exercises prior to, during, and after the reading assignments to assist students to read more effectively.

Reading is the primary source of language input for most of EFL learners since they were living in a context in which English was not spoken. They mostly start learning English through reading books, texts, articles, etc.

Considering the great importance of reading for EFL learners, knowing about what constitute reading skills and what reading difficulty for EFL learners in the course of

reading a text deem to be crucial. The researcher was been trying to find the problematic areas of reading for EFL learners of varied proficiency levels. Reading is individual process, interactive cognitive process of extracting meaning from text which explained the different interpretations of different readers (Maarof & Yaacob, 2011). So, the students’ active participant, constructing meaning from clues of reading text and the students had to explore strategies that used to address reading difficulty among them of senior high school. The main factors such as poor met linguistic and cognitive awareness in reading based on narrative genre. Therefore, by reading so much, the readers could develop their ideas to write, has insight to communicate with others, and has background knowledge about the topic of the text. As most people knew, reading comprehension refers to the reading skills that the readers bring to the text. It is a basic skill for senior high school including foreign language learners. Reading comprehension generates learning power that helped students knew themselves and others better as well, beside in other achieved the students ability in comprehending reading text, there are number of reading texts that must be covered by the eleventh grade of EFL students at senior high school such are report, analytical exposition, spoof, descriptive, news items, narrative. Those texts are also designed on the syllabus based on the variability level of each learner.

Thus, the researcher focused the materials to narrative text, because narrative text is goes beyond to entertain and pleasure. The students enjoyable and happy when they were reading because it has relevant with their situation, background, and experience of the students. Narratives text is the big portion in process teaching and learning in the classroom, reading narrative text engaged the students to read the text, build motivation and interest to the students in learning English well. Furthermore, the researcher was been exploring more deeply the causes and the reason why the students have problem about reading narrative text and the researcher formulates research question as follows:

1. What kinds of reading difficulties encountered by the eleventh grade students at SMAN 1 Tinambung in reading narrative text?

2. What strategies used by the eleventh grade students at SMAN 1 Tinambung to solve their reading difficulties in narrative text?

METHOD

This research used descriptive qualitative method. The researcher applied semi structured interview in order to get information about reading difficulties encountered by the students and strategies used by students to solve their reading difficulties. The participants of this research were seven students at senior high school 1 Tinambung

were chosen by using purposive sampling. This research applied one instrument is semi structure interview. The data were collected through interview was held by the researcher. Furthermore, in analysing data from interview, the researcher used qualitative data analysis based on Miles and Hubermen’s theory (2014) which consist of four stages: data collection, data condensation, and data display and conclusion drawing/verification.

FINDING AND DISCUSSION

A. Findings

1. Reading difficulties encountered by the students at SMAN 1 Tinambung.

The findings of this research deals with the data obtained through audio recordings and interview. Being collected all the data recordings, and then the researcher transcribed all the data and gave labels to each inappropriate word. The researcher also carried out the interview sessions to the students. So that, the findings in this research describes that reading difficulties encountered by the students and strategies used by the students to solve their difficulties in reading narrative text.

A. Findings

a. Reading Difficulties Encountered by the Students at SMAN 1 Tinambung.

The data was gained from interview with EFL students at SMAN 1 Tinambung. There were seven students to be interviewed in order to gather deep information about reading difficulties encountered by students and strategies used by students to solve their problem in reading English. The interview was obtained from March,15 th, 2017 until April 15 rd, 2017 and it was done according to students’ free time. There are five reading difficulty encountered by the students are Limited vocabulary, slow reading rate, weakness in attack, low comprehension, low words recognition.

1. Limited vocabulary

R : When do you read the text, which the most difficult you have encountered in reading English text? Ketika anda membaca bacaan bahasa Inggris yang Paling susah anda hadapi dalam membaca bacaan Inggris? S : I difficult in vocabulary, because I am a student I am still learning about English because I am not English person but I Indonesian person who English Is not my English. I don’t know much about the vocabulary, so that when I read a text has much a vocabulary, it is my problem so that I don’t understand.

(The interview was held on March 9, 2017)

The student was asked about which the most difficult you have encountered in reading English text. She argued that she difficult to get the meaning of the text, because limited vocabulary. It indicated that he is not native speakers but he is foreign language learner need to study increasing their vocabulary. It was one of the factors that greatly affect or influence difficult to understand the meaning of the text when they are reading the text.

Slow Reading Rate

R: Apakah anda bisa membaca lancar dan jelas dalam bahasa Inggris ? Do you can read aloud and fluently in English? S: No, I can’t read aloud, because my pronunciation is very bad. S: No, I cannot read aloud. It is very difficult.

(The interview was held on March 9, 2017)

The students were asked about do you able to read aloud and fluently. One of the students argued that he did not able to read the text aloud and fluently, because her pronunciation is very bad. The researcher can concluded that there are many factors influenced regarding low to read the text such as lack of practice in reading English text, low decoding words, low vocalization, low self confidence.

2. Weakness in Words Attack

R : Anda telah katakan bahwa anda suka membaca narrative text and report text Apakah anda menemukan kesulitan ketika anda sedang membaca? You have said that you like to read narrative text and report text, do you find the difficulties when you are reading the text? S : The most difficult when I read the text is grammar and vocabulary. S : The biggest difficulty, I think grammar because my grammar very bad, Make me very stress. I can’t understand. (The interview was held on March 9, 2017)

The students were asked about do you find the difficulties when you are reading the text. One of the students argued that he difficult to get the meaning of the text because lack of grammar and grammar made him very stress. The researcher can conclude that how complicated and confused when they are reading the text because

they difficult to relate the words based on the context of the text. One of factor is weakness in grammar.

R : Kenapa tata bahasa dapat mempengaruhi ketika anda sedang membaca text bahasa Inggris? Does grammar can influence when do you read the text? S : Yes, because narrative text have grammatical, if I don’t know well about the grammar, of course I don’t know totally about the meaning of the text. Because grammar is the rule so if I don’t understand about grammar we don’t know what the meaning of the text is.

(The interview was held on March 9, 2017)

The student was asked about the influence of grammar in reading comprehension. He argued that grammar is the rule of the language and the most important and very necessary because it showed that the coherence and cohesive between the ideas of the paragraph. He realized that understand grammar well, helping the student to understand how to make a sentence and paragraph clear interesting and precise.

Low Comprehension

R : Ketika anda membaca bacaan bahasa inggris, dapatkah anda menangkap Ide text? When do you read the text, do you able to catch the meaning of the text?S : Sometimes, I can catch information from there usually no I can’t because there are many vocabularies I can’t know what the meaning of the text is.

(Interview was held on March 9, 2017) The student was asked about when do you read the text, do you able to catch the meaning of the text. The students argued that he difficult to comprehend of the text, because they found there many new words and he did not know what is the meaning of the words. It indicated that how complicated to catch the main idea and supporting idea when they were reading the text because they limited vocabulary and lack knowledge of grammar made them difficult to understand the message of the text.

(Interview was held on March 9, 2017)

3. Low Words Recognition

R : Ketika anda membaca text dan text itu terlalu panjang, kadang kadang anda menemukan kata yang baru atau phrase contohnya snow white, written book

apakah anda dapat memahami makna kata itu.? When do you read the text and the text is too long, sometimes you find new words or phrase for example, Snow White or written book do you able to understand the meaning of the words

S : I think is difficult for me when I read the text is too long because English language is terbalik balik (reversed) and Indonesian language is not. Contohnya snow white artinya dalam bahasa Indonesia salju putih tapi dalam bahasa inggris is putri salju atau written book (buku tulis) So it is problem for me dan saya tidak mengerti kenapa seperti itu. (I do not understand)

(Interview was held on March 9, 2017

The student was asked about whether he faced the difficulties along to recognize the new words of the text. The students revealed that he difficult to understand the meaning of the new words or phrase in English such as snow white and written book made her confused. She argued that English language is reversed language than Indonesian language. It was the biggest problem to obtain the meaning of the text. One of the factors is lack of knowledge of vocabulary, whether the text was short or long, she had no any interpretation in arranging the meaning that carried out by the text.

b. Strategy to solve reading difficulties encountered by the students at SMAN 1 Tinambung.

1. Strategy used by the students to solve their difficulties in limited vocabulary.

R : Strategy apa yang anda gunakan ketika anda mengalami kesulitan dalam vocabulary. What strategy do you use to solve your difficulties in vocabulary? S : I just say antonym of the word we can use simple word to substitute to easy our tongue and easy to memorize because in the day there are meaning of the word we can change. S : My strategies we must diligent opening the dictionary and read and read because in the dictionary there are many grammars.S: I always memorize the vocabulary. My strategy I use dictionary and mobile phone and ask to my senior and English teacher, and I more use mobile phone because I just type the word and we can know the meaning directly.

(Interview was held on March 9, 2017)

The students were asked about the strategies used by them to solve their difficulties in limited vocabulary. They revealed that they used varieties strategies to solve their reading difficulties such as opening the dictionary, trying to understand the meaning of the word, memorizing vocabulary every day, always try to make a sentence. The other students said that he look the synonym of the word to easy understand the meaning of the meaning of the text.

Strategy used by the students to solve their difficulties in slow reading rate. R : Strategy apa yang anda gunakan ketika mengalami kesulitan dalam membaca text bahasa Inggris? What strategy do you use in solving your difficulties to read English text?S : My strategy I use mobile phone and I always practice to read and learn song From TV, memorize and always watching TV because I more easy remember When I watching and listen

(Interview was held on March 9, 2017)

The student was asked about the strategies used by the student to solve their difficulties slow reading rate. He revealed that he used strategies such as always practice to read English text, memorizing the vocabulary, watching TV, listening the radio, checking by the mobile phone how to spell it, sometimes asked to the teacher and their friends.

2. Strategy to solve in reading difficulties of the weakness in words attack

skills.

a. Structure analysis

R : Strategy apa yang anda gunakan ketika mengalami kesulitan dalam memahami tata bahasa? what strategy do you use when you difficult to understand grammar?S1 : I ask to my teacher and my senior because she or he know well about the grammatical. For example: tense I have to understand about the pattern. And past tense always use past verb 2 and I always use it, and perfect continuous have + ing I always remember and understand and make me easy to learn a sentence and personal pronoun I always speaking English and my friend always remember if I have false and my friend always remember me.S2 : I have to know the rule the grammar I will study grammar and always train myself to use the grammar. (Interview was held on March 9, 2017)

The students were asked above what strategies they used to solve their difficulties in grammar. They argued that the strategy used by them to solve their problem such as asking to their teacher, asking their friend and their senior, using mobile phone with application grammar, opening the dictionary. The other students said that she always try to make a sentence.

b. Phonic analysis

R : Strategy apa yang anda gunakan ketika mengalami kesulitan dalam membaca khususnya mengucapkan kata? what strategies do you used when do you difficult to read the text particularly, to pronounce the words? S : I use about the mobile phone because there is a sound to explain how to speak well. I just click sound symbol and try to practice to read

(Interview was held on March 9, 2017)

The student was asked about the strategies they used to strategies to solve their difficulties in reading the text. The student used mobile phone to check how to read or pronounce the word and always to practice to read the text, asking to their teacher, friends, and group mathlish.

3. The strategies used by the students to solve their difficulties in low comprehension.

R : Strategy apa yang anda gunakan ketika mengalami kesulitan dalam Memahami bacaan? What strategy do you use when you difficult to catch the meaning of the text? S : My strategy we should understand the meaning and the word and try to Combine became sentences and try to implementations in our live and must Memorize vocabulary every day and always make in the word. (Interview was held on March 9, 2017)

The student was asked about what strategy you use to solve the difficulties to catch the meaning of the text. He argued that the strategy used by him to solve their problem to catch the meaning of the text namely, trying to understand the meaning of the text, always memorize the words every day, opening the dictionary, open the Google translation, asking to their teacher, friends, and groups mathlish.

4. The strategies used by the students to solve their difficulties in words recognition.

R : Strategy apa yang anda lakukan ketika mengalami kesulitan dalam mengartikan dan menggunakan kata kata itu sesuai dengan context kalimat?S : What strategy do you use when you find the text difficult to translate and use the words for the target language?S : I can see before the sentence and I try to connect the content of the text because there is a synonym absolutely and I imagination based on the text.

(Interview was held on March 9, 2017)

Based on the interview above, the strategies used by students to solve her difficulties in low words recognition especially, reading narrative text such as memorizing vocabularies, search the meaning of the new words by dictionary, asking to their teacher and friends and group mathlish.

Based on the findings, reading difficulties encountered by the eleventh grade students at SMAN 1 Tinambung were restricted limited vocabulary, low words recognition, weakness in words attacks skill, low comprehension, and slow reading rate. In this part, the researcher carried out what strategies they used by the students did when they had those kinds of reading difficulties. They used dictionary, asking for the teacher or friends if they did not know the meaning of the vocabulary or searching by the internet, guessing the words, and etc.

B.Discussion

The researcher described that there are five reading difficulties encountered by the students, namely. They are limited vocabulary, slow reading rate of the text, and weakness in words attack, low comprehension and low words recognition. The data above presented the reading difficulties taken from interview. The researcher found the kinds of reading difficulties which were experiencing by the eleventh grade students at SMAN 1 Tinambung. The students preferred to say that limited vocabulary is the most dominant. Based on the student’s interview, they restricted slow reading rate, and the third is weakness in words attack skills, thus, the four is low comprehension, and the fifth is low words recognition. Pronunciations, unknown vocabulary and translation played the main role making the students did not enjoy when reading the text. Almost half of students who participants interviewed said that comprehension of the text forced them to be lazy in reading English.

1. Reading Difficulties Eencountered by Students

a. Limited Vocabulary

Vocabulary is the based elements and the most important of the language. Vocabulary a is a fundamental tool for acquiring knowledge, fundamental for communication and acquiring extensive vocabulary is one of the largest challenges in learning English as a foreign language.

Based on the findings, the researcher found that some students who got low achievement in reading caused of their lack of vocabulary. Mostly words in the text were new for them. They did not have previous knowledge to what they were reading. They did not anything besides looking for those new words in dictionary and Google translation or they just asked their teacher or they friend who already knew about the words and the text. Vocabulary was the foundation of English sentences. The researcher found that most of the reading difficulties encountered of senior high school are limited vocabulary which may cause frustration in comprehension.

b. Slow Reading Rate

The researcher found that most of the students had problem in reading English text is difficult to read the text. There are many factors influence them, they are low decode of the words low vocalization, lack of practice in reading, low habitual reading.

c. Weakness in Words Attacks

1. Structure analysis

One of the most things in effective in reading comprehension is having enough English language knowledge and one of those important things is grammar. The lack of grammar could influence students in reading comprehension. Based on the student’s interview, they revealed that grammar is very difficult made them stress. They did not able to use the all of the tenses of the sentence and they did not able to understand the plural and singular.

2. Phonic analysis

One of the most important components in good reading is pronunciation. To have a good in reading, it is necessary to have it. In fact, most of the students made some mistake in pronouncing some English words. Based on the students utterance showed that the students had difficulty to pronounce the smallest unit of words. They were mostly influenced by the used of their mother tongue. In this case, the students frequently use a lot of mother tongue to pronounce the words.

d. Low Comprehension

Comprehension is the understanding and interpretation of what is read. One of the big parts of comprehension is having a sufficient vocabulary, or knowing the meaning of enough words. In fact, the researcher found that the students did not able to connect between what they read, what they have read and think deeply about what they have read.

e. Low Words Recognition

The researcher found that the students had much difficult recognizing words interrupt them used the new words in varying context.

2. Strategy to solve reading difficulties in nnarratives text

Based on the findings, reading difficulties encountered by the eleventh grade students at SMAN 1 Tinambung were restricted limit vocabulary, low words recognition, weakness in attacks skill, low comprehension, and slow reading rate. In this part, the researcher carried out what strategies that used by the students did when they had those kinds of reading difficulties. They used dictionary, asking for the teacher or friends if they did not know the meaning of the vocabulary or searching by the internet, guessing the words, and etc.

Conclusion and Suggestion

A. Conclusion

Reading difficulties encountered by the students, namely: limited vocabulary, slow reading rate of the text, weakness in words attack, low comprehension of the text, and low recognition of words. The researcher found that the most dominant reading difficulty encountered by the students is limited vocabulary.

The students used strategies to solve their reading difficulties, students used different strategies. 1. For limited vocabulary, the students memorize vocabularies, opening the dictionary, looking the meaning by mobile phone, asking to their friends, and always practice to speak with their friends. 2. For slow reading rate, the students always practice to read narrative text, hearing music, by using mobile phone to practice the words, asking to their teacher how to read the words. 3. For Weakness in words attack particularly, a. Structure analysis the students asked their teacher, asked to their friend and learning by the dictionary about tenses, trying to make sentences, using mobile phone. b. Phonic Analysis, the students tried open the mobile phone to check how to pronounce the words, asking to their teacher, friend and group mathlish. 4. For low comprehension of the text, the students increased their vocabulary, trying to understand the meaning of the text. 5. For low words recognition, the students tried to list unknown words, looking synonym unknown word.

B. Suggestion

The researcher was strongly suggested that in learning reading students had to increase their vocabulary made them easy to understand the unit of thought about the text. The teacher had to increase teaching vocabulary in the classroom by using varieties strategies in the classroom. It can give a new atmosphere in learning and teaching English to avoid the students’ boredom and misunderstanding. It made students more attractive, enjoyable, effective and communicative. The students were expected easy to get the meaning from the text. The researcher stated in the scopes of the research, focusing of this research was reading difficulties encountered by Students at SMAN 1 Tinambung. Thus, the researcher recommends that further researchers conduct a research in using similar learning reading strategies namely students’ learning reading with narrative text but in different English skills.

REFERENCE

Alfassi, M. 2004. Reading to learn: Effects of Combined Strategy Instruction on High School Students. Journal of educational research, 97(4), 171-184.

Alghail, A & Mahfood, O. H. A. 2016. Academic Reading Difficulties Encountered by International Graduate Students in a Malaysian University, Issues in Educational Research, 26(3), 2016 369. Sana’a University, Yamen University Sains Malaysia.

Chung, H.V. 2012. A Study of Reading Comprehension Problem in English Encountered by the Year the First of Students of Faculty of Vietnamese Studies at HNUE.

Carrillo, L. W. 1976. Teaching Reading Handbook. St.Martin’s press in New York.

Fike & Ellof. 2004. Keys to Educational Psychology, Cape Town: Vet Press.

Kheirzadeh, S. & Tavakol, E. 2012. The Cause of Difficulty: The Perception the Causes of Reading of Iranian EFL Postgraduate and Undergraduate Students. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 147-152

Maarof & Yaacob, 2011. Meaning-Making in the First and Second language: Reading Strategies of Malaysian Students. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 12, 211-223.

Medjahdi, W. B. 2015. Reading Comprehension Difficulties among EFL Learners: The Case of Third Year learners at Nehali Mohamed Secondary School. Ministry of Higher Education and Scientic Research University of Tlemcen Faculty of Liberal and Languages Department of English.

Miles, M.B & Huberman, A.M. 2014. Qualitative Data Analysis: An Expanded Sourcebook second edition. California: Sage Production.

Nassaji, H. 2003. Higher-level and lower-level Text Processing Skills in Advanced EFL Reading Comprehension. Modern Language Journal, 87(2), 261-276.

Qahtani, A.A. 2016. Why Do Saudi EFL Readers Exhibit Poor Reading Abilities? English Language and Literature Studies; Vol. 6, No. 1; 2016 ISSN 1925-4768 E-ISSN 1925-4776 Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education.

Sad, N. 2016. Reading Difficulties in English as a Foreign Language International. Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics.

Taylor, 1988. Reading Difficulties: Instruction and Assessment. New York: Random House.

Woolley, G. 2011. Assisting Children with Learning Difficulties. London New York

Walker, J. B. 2000. Diagnostic Teaching of Reading: Techniques for Instruction and Assessment (4th ed.). OH: Merril.

Yaseen, A. 2013. The Reading Difficulties in English and How to Dealt with them as Perceived by Teacher and Students in Nablus District. An Najah National University Faculty of Graduates Studies.