Identifying Students’ Reading Comprehension Constraints of 4th Semester English Department Students at University of Islam Malang

Abstract

Reading is a cognitive process of interpreting written language in order to understand its message, and the purpose is to connect reader’s background knowledge to writer’s idea. Reading comprehension is having the ability to accurately read text, to decode it, and to perceive the meaning. In different words, it suggests that however well you perceive what you're reading. The process of comprehending text by the students is not instantly at ease. The students find difficulties in processing written text, such as lack of vocabulary, lack of prior knowledge, limited time, and obstacles in concluding the passage. This study aimed to investigate the students’ reading constraints from two aspects; constraints in major reading skill and difficult text type for the students. The participants of this study is 4th semester English department students at University of Islam Malang. For research design, this study used descriptive quantitative method. The researcher took 30 participants randomly. The procedure of the research involved two steps; administering a questionnaire and taking students’ score from reading test. To analyze the data, the researcher followed the framework of descriptive quantitative analysis developed by Surakhmad; searching, collecting, classifying, analyzing, interpreting, and describing conclusion. The finding of the study is that the reading comprehension constraints faced by the students are getting the detailed information and understanding the reading text. These constraints seem inseparable since each constraint would affect the other. Then, narrative text is actually considered as the most difficult text in questionnaire result, and descriptive text is found as difficult text based on reading test result. The result is different because of the students might pay more attention on the difficult text that they have admitted in questionnaire. Therefore, the most difficult English text type is descriptive text, followed by narrative text. Key Words: Reading Comprehension, Reading Constraints