AN ANALYSIS OF READING DIFFICULTIES IN STUDENT'S AT THE SECOND GRADE OF SMP 'AISYIYAH

TERPADU PAGARALAM

Proposal By :

ISTA OKTAVIA

1888203039

English Education Study Program

COLLEGE TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION OF MUHAMMADIYAH PAGAR ALAM

2021
A. Background

Reading is the basic skill to all learning. People gaun the information, knowledge, and some ideas by
reading. According to Braten & Stromso (2007:168) by reading, there is a constant

overflow of information from many sources; the traditional: books, newspapers and magazines, and
more modern, digital sources. Some sources will give the information to the reader depending on their
needs.

Reading has important role in teaching and learning processes. Nowadays teacher seldom teaches the
students for a while, teacher just gives the clue or material point related to the material. It's meant the
students will find the material by themselves and usually the materials are in written forms. Therefore,
the students need to improve their reading skill. Nassaji (2011) state that reading is an actually complex
cognitive skill, or to understand some text the reader need to understand or summary the meaning
briefly agreeable with their comprehension. Involving subskills, processing, and knowledge sources.
Reading ability is a very complex skill, to define or to understand some text the reader need to
understand or summary the meaning briefly agreeable with their comprehension.

Reading is the most main ability among the four language skills as it can improve the overall language
ability (Snow, Burns & Griffin, 1998; McDonough & Shaw, 1993; Krashen & Brown, 2007). It's good for
children who learn other language because by reading they will get new vocabulary, knowing structure
sentence, information, etc. Reading is the gateway to education and it must be reiterated that a child’s
ability to read and read well can make an enormous difference to both his/her school performance,
career potential and personal success. It has been recognized as an important discipline and a child’s
ability to read is the centre of the educational process.

Student's reading skills are important to their success in school as they will allow them to access the
breadth of the curriculum and improve their communication and language skills. Developing strong
reading skills in students is one of the key goals of every early education program. It is through reading
that students expand their vocabulary and learn about the world. Reading is also the key to success in
spelling and writing.It takes a cognitive process to understand the text in the reading process itself.basic
component in reading than others components such as vocabulary, background knowledge and reading
strategies are understanding the text is comprehending the text.

In Indonesia, the student's in junior high school get the difficulties in reading an English reading text. It's
because English is not their first language. For instance, students will get difficulties when the teacher
asking about some information related to the English reading text which they already read. The
difficulties happen from various factors, such as the students have lack of vocabulary, so they difficult to

comprehend the text.

Based on the description above, the researcher was interested to analyze the reading difficulties in
student. The researcher would like to conduct the research entitled AN ANALYSIS OF READING
DIFFICULTIES IN STUDENT'S AT SECOND GRADE OF JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL.

B. Research Problem

Based on the background above, the researcher decided some questions as the questions problem of
this research, they were:

1. What are student's difficulties in reading an English reading text at the second grade of SMP 'Aisyiyah
Terpadu Pagaralam ?
2. What are student's dominants difficulties in reading an English reading text at the second grade of
SMP 'Aisyiyah Terpadu Pagaralam ?

C. The Objectives of Study

The Objectives of the study are :

1. To know the students’ difficulties in reading an English reading text.

2. To know student's dominant difficulties in reading an English reading text.

D. Limitation of Study

This research limited the study focus on analyzing the student's difficulties in reading an English reading
text and the dominants difficulties that they faced. The subject of this study is The Second Grade of
Junior High School. The researchers will use reading test to know the student's difficulties in reading an
English reading text.

E. Significance of Study

The researcher needs to explain and clarify the term of the tittle to avoid the ambiguity perception of
this research, the research define some meaning of terms.

1. Student's Difficulty

In the oxford dictionary, difficulty means a thing that is hard to do or understand. Difficulties happen
when students get mistakes on learning process or in a teaching. almost every students faced the
difficulty on learning process because when students do not understand the material or the subjects
about, especially when they are reading English text or when the teacher taught.

Students' difficulties are connected with their behavior in the learning process. students tend to be
passive in the process of teaching and learning activities (Natsir & Anisati, 2016; Suryanto, 2014) so that
teachersneed to struggle so that students are more active in the learning process.Students also lack
reading strategies, making it difficult for students to read understand the text.

2. Comprehending English Reading Text

English reading text refers to the written or printed material that is to study by students in learning
reading on English subject. There are many kinds of reading text, such as : descriptive, narrative,
recount, report, spoof, news item, and procedure texts. In this research the researcher focuses on
student's difficulties in understanding English reading text which include the kinds of reading.) Reading is
an active cognitive process of interacting with print and monitoring comprehension to prove meaning
(Clark and Silberstrein,1987). It is a process cognitive that conduct by the reader to get the meaning and
understanding the text.

3. Reading Difficulties

There are many people struggle with reading. There are a wide range of reading difficulties from those
who are diagnosed with a reading disability such as dyslexia or learning disability to those who are just
lagging behind and can benefit from some focus reading assistance.

Reading difficulties will be seriously impact a child’s performance in school and if persisting into
adulthood, and also cause difficulties in the workplace. Reading difficulties are best addressed when
caught at a young age.

Signs of reading difficulty are :

a) Difficulty pronouncing
b) Trouble understanding/remembering what was read
c) Slow rate when reading aloud
d) Ignoring punctuation when reading
e) No intonation when reading
f) Confusing letters
F. Literature Review

1. Definition of Reading

Reading is a cognitive process that involves decoding symbols to arrive at meaning. Reading is an active
process of constructing the meaning of words. Skills to understand written text by extracting the
required information from them efficiently is called reading (Nuttal 2000:2)

Reading aims to help readers to direct information towards a goal and focus their attention.The main
purpose of reading is to understand the text. Reading is a thought process. This allows the reader to use
what he or she may already know, also called prior knowledge. During this information processing,
readers use strategies to understand what they are reading, use themes to organize ideas, and use
textual clues to find the meaning of new words.

2. Types of Reading

There are two types of reading include intensive reading and extensive reading.

a. Intensive Reading
Intensive reading involves learners reading in detail with specific learning aims and tasks. It can be
compared with extensive reading, which involves learners reading texts for enjoyment and to
develop general reading skills.In the classroom
Intensive reading activities include skimming a text for specific information to answer true or false
statements or filling gaps in a summary, scanning a text to match headings to paragraphs, and
scanning jumbled paragraphs and then reading them carefully to put them into the correct
order.Macleod (2011) state intensive reading practice can include looking at main ideas versus
details, understanding of what the text implies, making inferences, looking at the order of
information and how it affects the message, identifying words that connect one idea to another and
identifying words that indicate change from one section to another.

b. Extensive Reading
Extensive reading is opposing from intensive reading, if intensive reading do in form way or in a
classroom while extensive reading do in outside or away from classroom or school.
Extensive Reading will discourage the over- use of dictionary (Bell, 1998); on the contrary dictionary
is a must in Intensive Reading. By extensive reading the readers can enhance the vocabulary, get
more knowledge and lot of information. They also
expend their knowledge through books they read.

G. Hypothesis
 1. In general, second graders at SMP 'Aisyiyah Terpadu Pagaralam have difficulty pronouncing words,
have difficulty understanding the text they are reading, ignore punctuation marks, and often they
read with inaccurate intonation.
2. The most dominant difficulties experienced by students are difficulties in pronouncing words
correctly and difficulties in understanding an English text.

H. Research Methodology

The researcher used descriptive qualitative method, Arikonto (1990:309) state the research method that
only describes variable, indication or event, not rendering to examine some hypothesis.This research
uses descriptive qualitative, where the researcher presents the data in descriptive words and forms.In
other words, qualitative methods are used when the research want to describe a phenomenon; and the
data used are opinions (interviews), behavior, and documents that are not analyzed using statistical
patterns.

To conduct this research, the researcher used descriptive qualitative method. To carry out the data, the
researcher collected the data by do the reading test to the students. Then, the researcher checks the
student's test. After check the student's test, the researcher analyze the result and the last researcher
concluding the data.This research will conduct in the second grade of SMP 'Aisyiyah Terpadu in . While
the teacher start the class the researcher Will do an observation.

I. Population and Sample

a. Population
Population is the entire group that you want to draw conclusions about. A population doesn’t always
refer to people. It can mean a group containing elements of anything you want to study, such as
objects, events, organizations, countries, species, organisms, etc.
According to Arikunto (1998:114) population is the whole of subject
of the research. The population of this research is the second grade of SMP 'AISYIYAH TERPADU
PAGARALAM.

b. Sample
Sample is the specific group that you will collect data from. The size of the sample is always less than
the total size of the population. Sample is the specific group that you will collect data from. The size
of the sample is always less than the total size of the population.
In this research the sample is the second grade of junior high school. They consist of 25 Students.

J. Variabel of Study

Variables are any characteristics that can take on different values, such as height, age, species, or exam
score.The variables in a study of a cause-and-effect relationship are called the independent and
dependent variables.The independent variable is the cause. Its value is independent of other variables in
our study.The dependent variable is the effect. Its value depends on changes in the independent
variable.

For this research, the researcher use independent variable. The problem of this research is student's
difficulties in reading an English reading text, that's why the variable in this case is the ability of the
students prounciation and their understanding in reading an english reading text.

K. Techniques in Collecting Data

From this research, the researcher used two methods to collect the data, they are:

1. Test

According to Arikunto (1998:13)est is questions sequence or exercise and other tools that used to
measure the skill, intelligence, knowledge, ability or talent that own by individual or group.

Researcher will give a reading test to the students in individual work. In the test each students muat
read the text one by one. In this test the researcher will see the ability of the students in reading a text.

2. Documentation

Documentation is a method that used to find the data related, by using book, transcript,
newspaper, magazine, ancient inscription, notes of a meeting, agenda.Documentation which related for
this research is pictures and students’ individual test in print out form.

REFERENCES

Genesee,F., Savage,R., Erdos,C.,and Haigh,C.2013.Identification of Reading Difficulties in

Schooled in a Second Language. Researchgate.net

UKEssays.2018. Definition of Reading. Ukessays.com

Rafeedali,E. Population and Sample. Tophat.com

Surbhi,S.2020. Difference Between Extensive and Intensive Reading. Keydifferences.com