Final Task of Topic in Applied Linguistics

Name     : Abibah

NIM       : 2201409052

Rombel  : 03 (Thursday, 11 a.m.)

A STUDY ON THE READING SKILLS OF EFL UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Flora Debora Floris

Marsha Divina

Petra Christian University, Indonesia

SUMMARY

It is crucial for EFL students to have good reading proficiency. Having good reading proficiency means the reader has abilities to understand written statements or any type of written texts accurately and efficiently. And reading proficiency is determined by reading skills. Considering the importance of reading skills of EFL students, the study conducted by Flora Debora Floris and Marsha Divina was guided for ten university students in Surabaya 2003 by the following research questions:

1.      What are the types of reading skills that EFL students have difficulty with?

2.      What is the most difficult type of reading skills for these EFL students?

METHOD

In doing the data collection, the writers used some steps.

1.      Analyzing the kinds of reading skills. It was found the students did not learn all the reading skills. Considering it, they decided to focus on seventeen reading skills namely: scanning, skimming, improving reading speed, structural clues: morphology (word part), structural clues (compound words), inference from context, using a dictionary, interpreting pro-forms, interpreting elliptical expression, interpreting lexical cohesion, recognizing text organization, recognizing presupposition underlying the text, recognizing implications and making inference, prediction, distinguishing between fact and opinion, paraphrasing, and summarizing.

2.      Developing two reading tests.

3.      Piloting the two reading tests.

4.      Distributing the reading tests to ten students who had already passed all reading classes.

5.      Checking and counting the results of both reading tests.

FINDINGS

The research found the students’ difficulty in reading skill in percentage.

DISCUSSION

The most difficult reading skill for these students was recognizing text organization (72.5%). The writers predicted that it was because many Indonesian students were not trained to activate recognizing text organization after they read a passage.

The second most difficult reading skill was paraphrasing (65%). It could be because they had not fully understood the ideas of the original passage or sentence, they were not able to restate the ideas of the original passage or sentence in their own words although they understood the idea of the original passage.  And it was correlated with the third most difficult reading skill that was vocabulary skill because to restate the idea of the original passage the reader had to have good vocabulary skill. Then, inference from context skill (57.5%) was one of important word attack skill which was needed by the respondents to deal with new or difficult vocabularies. For scanning skill, there were only 7.5 % means that they didn’t have much difficulty with this skill. It might be because they had already been trained to use this skill in all reading class. The other reading skills which had low difficulty level were improving reading speed (10%) and recognizing presupposition the text (10%). It indicated that the respondents   were good readers because they were able to read fast and in meaningful chunks.

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

The findings from the small scale discussed in the study showed that each reading skill had different level of difficulty for the respondents. Further research could be conducted on a larger scale to produce wider results which could be used to make generalization.

COMMENT ABOUT THE ARTICLE

According to me, the study conducted by Flora Debora Floris and Marsha Divina about reading skills of EFL University students is very useful. From four language skills, reading skill is a skill that is complicated to be mastered especially for ones who don’t like reading. And the result of the study can be guidance as students have low level in some reading skills to know what reading skills the students have more difficulties also the reasons why they have difficulties in these skills.  

In doing the research, the writers used detail steps through reading tests to analyze the students’ difficulty in reading skills even analyzing seventeen reading skills. And I think it is one of the positive sides from the study. They could prove that students have difficulties in some reading skills and showed the causes of students’ low level in reading.

BENEFITS OF THE STUDY FOR THE TEACHER

The result of the study shows that ELT university students still have difficulty in mastering reading skills. For teachers, the study can give some benefits.

1. Knowing the students’ difficulty in reading skills, they will improve their teaching to help students mastering reading skills so the students can use and increase their English abilities and knowledge. To help students mastering reading skills, teacher will choose methods and techniques in giving reading lesson including all the reading skills mentioned in the study; scanning, skimming, improving reading speed, etc especially for some skills that students still lack in understanding and comprehending the skills so they need more exposure to reading materials in class to make much progress.
2.  There are still teachers that don’t include some reading skills in their lesson. Maybe because of the difficulty of the skills to be conveyed, the time limit, even because of the lack knowledge about the reading skills itself. From this study, remembering the importance of reading for students, teachers must master all reading skills so they can guide the students in mastering the reading skills.
3. From the study, teachers can conduct a research for the students to know their understanding in reading skills so teacher will know what difficulty students face in reading.