FINAL ASSIGNMENT: A STUDY ON THE READING SKILLS OF EFL UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

BRASTHA SETYA R.

THURSDAY, 401-402

FINAL ASSIGNMENT

The research entittled “A Study on The Reading Skills of EFL University Students” by Flora Debora Floris and Marsha Divina tried to reveal reading ability of university students. They used reading tests containing seventeen kinds of reading skills to ten students of batch 2003 studying at English Department of a private university in Surabaya. The reading test consists of thirty four items as the representatives of seventeen kinds of reading skills. The writers conducted two reading tests so they could get more informations.

METHOD

To get the data, the researchers use some steps:

1. analyze the kinds of reading skills

2. develop two reading tests

3. piloting two reading tests

4. distribute the reading tests

5. check and count the results of both reading tests.

After analyzing the result of the tests, the writer list the seventeen skills which were tested in the tests. Finally they got this findings:

No.	Kinds of Reading Skills	The Difficulty Level (percentage)
1	Recognizing text organization	72,5%
2	Paraphrasing	65%
3	Inference from context	57,5%
4	Summarizing	47,5%
5	Skimming	42,5%
6	Structural clues: Morphology (compound Words)	40%
7	Prediction	40%
8	Intrpreting pro-forms	37,5%
9	Interpreting elliptical expression	37,5%
10	Structural Clues : Morphology (words parts)	35%
11	Using a dictionary	30%
12	Interpreting lexical cohesion	27,5%
13	Recognizing implications and making inferences	22,5%
14	Distingishing between fact and opinion	17,5%
15	Improving reading speed	10%
16	Recognizing presupposition underlying the text	10%
17	Scanning	7,5%

 

From the findings, we know that the most difficult skill for these students was recognizing text organization (72,5%). The second was paraphrasing (65%) because they had not fully understood the ideas of the original passage or sentence. And it related to the vocabulary skill which became the third most difficult (57.5%). Inference from context was also the important skill that was needed by respondents. It was found that the percentage was 57.5%.

On the other hand, there are skill that categorized into easy, the first was scanning (7.5%). It could be assumed that they had already trained to use this skill. The other reading skill which had low difficulty level were improving reading speed (10%) and recognizing presupposition underlying text (10%).

 

Comment

This reserach is useful for teachers as one of considerations in designing teaching activity. Teacher should understand the level of difficulty in each reading skill and the students’ competence so that he can select and apply the teaching reading method . We can know the difficulty level of each reading skills. Moreover, the researchers discuss the definition and example of each reading skill and the reasons why the test-takers have difficulty in some skills. It is a very useful information, so we can know the students’ competence in reading generally, and we can select appropriate skills to be applied in our test.

 

Benefit for Teachers

1. This research is very beneficial for teachers because we are given various kinds of reading skills with its definition and example, also its difficulty level.
2. If the teacher knows the difficulties, the teacher will try to find the solutions for the problems.
3. In finding the solutions, teachers will improve their teaching better. They will emphasize in what skills the students have difficulty most. So, teachers will drill in those areas.

 

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