A DESCRIPTIVE STUDY OF THE ABILITIES TO COMPREHEND THE MAIN IDEAS OF ENGLISH READING TEXTS OF THE SECOND YEAR STUDENTS OF MAN II JEMBER IN THE 2001/2002 ACADEMIC YEAR

Abstract

Comprehending the main ideas is a difticult aspect of Reading Comprehension, but comprehending main ideas can help the readers comprehend the content of the texts. In relation to the idea, this thesis was intended to describe the students' abilities to comprehend the main ideas of English reading texts. The research was conducted at MAN II Jember on April 2002. The respondents were 30 students of the second year students. They were taken by proportional random sampling with lottery from the homogeneous population. The main data were collected by using Reading test, while the supporting data were collected by documentation and interview. The collected main data were analyzed by using descnptive statistics. The result showed that on the everage, the student's abilities in comprehending the main ideas were in the enough category (M: 59,16%). Specifically, their mean score for the explicit main ideas was higher (M: 71 %) than that of implicit main ideas (M: 47,33%).Based on the results, it is important for the English teacher to help their students comprehend the main ideas of English reading texts especially the implicit main ideas by giving more exercises