dc.description.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 | en_US |