| dc.description.abstract | Reading in another language is more difficult than reading in the first
language (Nation, 2009:3). Even it will be a complex process if the students have
to read in another language with various different text genres. Besides, the reader
should recognize the words and sentences, and also understand the purpose of the
text genre. Narrative text is one of the genres studied by the secondary students,
but it is still difficult for some students. Al-khaleefah (2017:35) found that there
were various difficulties encountered in the narrative text because it posed not
only lexical difficulty but also rhetorical structuring of its action throughout the
story. Therefore, this study investigated students’ reading problems of narrative
text from the perception of students.
Students’ perception in this research refers to the process of how the
students recognize and interpret their problems in reading comprehension through
the questionnaire. This study used Gunning’s theory (2002:7-13) that divided the
reading problems into five, namely: (1) Problems of language knowledge, (2)
Problems of background knowledge, (3) Problems of motivation, (4) Problems of
reading strategies, and (5) Problems of reading knowledge. If the students’
perception toward reading comprehension problems is positive, it means they
agree that they are lack of language knowledge, inappropriate strategies, lack of
motivation, insufficient background knowledge and difficulty in reading process
can pose problems in reading comprehension. On the other hand, if the students’
perception toward reading comprehension problems is negative, it means that they
do not agree that they are lack of language knowledge, inappropriate strategies,
lack of motivation, insufficient background knowledge and difficulty in reading
process can pose problems in reading comprehension.
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The design of this research was survey study because it involved
collection of data by asking questions and recording participants’ answers to them
(Breakwell et al, 2013:58). Survey study used for various purposes to estimate
population characteristics. The goal of this survey study to determine the
percentage of senior high school students who have positive or negative
perception on reading problems. The area of the research was SMAN 2 Jember.
The participants of this research were the tenth grade students of SMAN 2 Jember
in academic year 2019/2020.
The data collection method using questionnaire adopted from the survey of
Xiubo Yi & Zhang (2006). The questionnaire was divided into two parts. The first
part consisted of data about personal information. The second part was
questionnaire that consisted of 20 items written in Indonesian in order to avoid
misunderstanding among the students. The students were asked to identify their
reading problems by responding to Likert scale (strongly agree, agree, strongly
disagree).
The result of data analysis showed that students’ positive perception on
reading comprehension problems proved that the students still faced some
problems in their reading narrative text. In other words, the students agreed that
they were lack of language knowledge, used inappropriate strategies, lack of
motivation, lack of background knowledge and difficulty in reading process.
Based on the result of the questionnaire the most problematic aspect that hinder
the students’ reading comprehension was “Motivation” (65.6%), then followed by
“Strategies” (63.7%), “Background Knowledge” (63.3%), “Reading Process
(60%)” and “Language Knowledge (55.4%)”. It was reasonable why the teacher
should be concern on those five aspects of reading problems. The teacher needs to
pay attention on students’ reading problems by considering the implications that
have been drawn from the result. | en_US |
