A study on difficulties in reading skills of second year English major students at Thuongmai University

A study on difficulties in reading skills of second year English major students at Thuongmai University A study on difficulties in reading skills of second year English major students at Thuongmai University A study on difficulties in reading skills of second year English major students at Thuongmai University A study on difficulties in reading skills of second year English major students at Thuongmai University A study on difficulties in reading skills of second year English major students at Thuongmai University A study on difficulties in reading skills of second year English major students at Thuongmai University A study on difficulties in reading skills of second year English major students at Thuongmai University A study on difficulties in reading skills of second year English major students at Thuongmai University A study on difficulties in reading skills of second year English major students at Thuongmai University A study on difficulties in reading skills of second year English major students at Thuongmai University A study on difficulties in reading skills of second year English major students at Thuongmai University A study on difficulties in reading skills of second year English major students at Thuongmai University A study on difficulties in reading skills of second year English major students at Thuongmai University A study on difficulties in reading skills of second year English major students at Thuongmai University A study on difficulties in reading skills of second year English major students at Thuongmai University

Reading is one of the four important skills in learning English However, thestudents have faced a lot of difficulties in reading skill and, therefore, failed tobecome successful readers What, then, are the difficulties that the second- yearstudents at Thuongmai University encounter in reading skill? And what factorsinfluence their difficulties?

Therefore, " A study on difficulties in reading skills of second year English major students at Thuongmai University" is an essential and useful study for

clarifying the above problem The study will focus major difficulties in reading skillfor second- year English Faculty students and suggest some solutions for students todeal with their reading difficulties Participants in the study are second- yearstudents of English Faculty, Thuongmai University The research also will point outand analyze the common difficulties faced by second- year students of ThuongmaiUniversity through data obtained from the questionnaire Research has obviouslyshown that second- year students have many difficulties in the fields such as readingskill, language, decoding and background knowledge Based on the research results,the research will propose some solutions to improve English reading skill so as tohelp students in general and students of the English Faculty at ThuongmaiUniversity in particular easily overcome those difficulties to become efficientreaders

of implementation and completion of the thesis.

I would like to express my sincere thanks to the teachers in the EnglishFaculty, Thuongmai University, the second- year students from ThuongmaiUniversity who participated in my survey questionnaire enthusiastically Thanks totheir support and help in the course of doing the thesis, I have useful information forthe analysis of this study

Thank you to all my friends and family who have always encouraged me toovercome difficulties in the process of study and research

Due to my limited time and capacity, I could not avoid mistakes beyondexpectation I hope to receive the comments from teachers and friends in order toenhance my experience and make this research more perfect

Finally, I wish you good health, happiness, and success in your life

Thank you sincerely!

Hanoi, 16th April, 2021

KimPham Thi Kim

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY

1.1. Rationale

In the trend of globalization today along with the strong development ofscience, technology, education, health, English has become an indispensablecommunication tool in the world Policies for exchange and trade with foreigncountries have boosted the demand for learning foreign languages If you know alanguage in addition to your mother tongue, you will have many opportunities towork in large foreign organized companies with attractive salaries

The number of businesses associating with foreign partners in Vietnam isincreasing, meaning that using English at work and daily communication is aneffective and necessary tool for each individual Therefore, learning English well isconsidered an opportunity to promote our work, in which the skill that we need tofocus on and practice regularly is reading skill

Dr Suess (1978) once had a famous quote about the importance of readingskill that the more you read, the more things you know The more that you learn, themore locations you’ll go

Reading is the window to help us explore all nooks and crannies of everything

in the world Reading skills help us to select useful information and apply it in lifeand work With a modern society like today, reading skills are more focused andnecessary than ever Although learning English is considered compulsory for allEnglish faculty students; students' English ability to meet proficiency requirements

is not high, including reading skills

At TMU, the second- year students will learn a subject of The Business thatincludes specialized knowledge from basic to complex In the past, students onlyread basically English texts on a certain topic in life, the accumulated range andvocabulary were only normal Because of the lack of specialized academicvocabulary and the difficulty of accessing other resources, the second- year students

of the English Faculty have some difficulties when studying the subjects related totheir major So, students' reading skills become difficult and limited Furthermore,the teaching method at university is far different from the previous one, which is

also a barrier This requires students to pay more attention to reading skills to have acertain amount of vocabulary to meet study and work.

It is obvious that good reading comprehension not only helps us to have adeeper understanding of the knowledge we are learning, but also promotes ourcareers in the future If we want to learn a language well, we must practice andmaster the four skills: listening-speaking-reading-writing, in which reading skill isclosely related and important to the remaining skills

Identifying difficulties and reasons that prevent students from improvingreading skills, and giving out solutions is very necessary With all of the above

reasons, I decided to do “A study on difficulties in reading skills of second- year English major students at Thuongmai University” Therefore, there are some

suggested solutions to improve reading skills for them It is hoped that this studywill provide contributions to improve learning English in general, as well as readingskills in particular of second year English major students at Thuongmai University.1.2. Previous research

In this part, the previous studies related to this study will be selected forreference

Firstly, the study “Difficulties in Reading of Quy Nhon Second-Year

Non-English Majors” written by 4 students of Foreign Language departments (Đoan

Tran Thuy Van, Doan Thi Thanh Hieu, Bui Thi Huynh Hoa, Nguyen Thi ThanhTam), (2017) is a meaningful and helpful study that the researcher has used as asource of reference In this study, researchers pointed out a number of difficultiesfaced by second- year students in reading, they are: (1) vocabulary difficulty; (2)grammar difficulty; (3) discourse difficulty; (4) difficulty in reading comprehensionskills Besides the above difficulties, the researchers also have found out a number

of reasons that make reading comprehension ineffective and difficult for students,which are: consciousness and attitude of students learning English; curriculum;learning methods; teaching methods With the aim of overcoming students'difficulties in reading skills, researchers pay more attention to difficulties in readingcomprehension skills suitable for students To help students develop effectivereading skills, teachers must teach students to be aware of basic reading skills

including 3 steps as follows: pre-reading, while- reading and after reading activities.

At the end of the study, after clearly identifying the basic difficulties and the causesleading to those difficulties, researchers have proposed remedial measures for bothstudents and teachers

The second study has the title: “A study on the causes of difficulties in reading

skill experienced by first year English majors at Haiphong Private University and some suggested solutions (Nguyen Thi Huong Nga, 2019) This study is intended to

point out the major causes of difficulties in reading skill experienced by first-yearEnglish majors at Haiphong Private University and provide solutions for bothteachers and students to solve problems related to reading skills, etc The researcherexpressed concern about students spending less time practicing reading skills,which is the reason why students are prevented from improving their reading skills

Finally, “A study of reading comprehension problems in English in English

encountered by first year students of faculty of Vietnamese Studies at HNUE” was

conducted by Ho Van Chung (2012) The researcher focused on two main researchquestions: the main reading comprehension problems encountered by first year non-major English students at HUE and the strategies students use in processing a textand solving their comprehension problems The result of the study indicated thedegrees of difficulties as well as showed that the two most serious problemspreventing the students ‘s reading were: (1) insufficient vocabulary; (2) the need toreread

All the studies mentioned above have helped researchers point out the keydifficulties in students' reading skills, and then find solutions to overcome thosedifficulties Previous studies on this topic not only bring the researcher useful

knowledge, but also contribute significantly to the researcher to carry out the “A study on difficulties in reading skills of second year English major students at Thuongmai University” to collect a variety of students' opinions on reading skills,

find out difficulties and offer suggested solutions to improve English reading skills

of students

✔ Suggesting some solutions for students to deal with their reading difficulties

The researcher finds that study on difficulties in reading skills of students isnecessary, helping them find out the difficulties in reading skills and its causes inorder to improve the quality of reading skills for the English learning process

The researcher hopes fully this study will help students to better understandthe importance of reading skills, solve problems to become more professional whileworking at the company

In order to achieve the goals mentioned above, the study will focus on thefollowing questions:

✔ What are the attitudes of second- year English major students at ThuongmaiUniversity toward reading skill?

✔ What are common reading difficulties of second-year English major students atThuongmai University?

✔ What factors affect the difficulty in reading skill of second- year English majorstudents at Thuongmai University?

✔ What are possible solutions to student’s reading difficulties?

1.4. Research subjects

Study subjects are second-year students of the English Faculty at ThuongmaiUniversity in the academic year 2021-2022 The researcher studies about 80students from the English Faculty Furthermore, these study subjects were randomlyselected and not based on their English reading proficiency

1.5. Scope of the study

The article only focuses on the difficulties that second- year students of theEnglish Faculty at Thuongmai University face in learning to read English, thecauses and factors that affect reading skills, and suitable solutions for them toimprove their English In addition, due to the limitations of time, funding, facilities

and experience of the researcher, the study is only conducted based on 80 year students of the English Faculty (2021-2022) at Thuongmai University.Hopefully the study will help students have an overview of common difficulties inreading skills and necessary solutions in improving English reading skills

second-1.6. Research methodology

In order to complete this study, with the help of teachers and students in theEnglish department of Thuongmai University, the researcher conducted a surveyquestionnaire for 80 second-year students of the English Faculty who are selected atrandom To obtain accurate information and data, the study must include thecollection, classification and analysis of the data, as well as the description of theresults

The questionnaire was used as a primary research tool to collect data as

Dornyei (2007: 101) states that: “The popularity of questionnaires is due to the fact

that they are relatively easy to construct, extremely versatile and uniquely capable

of gathering a large amount of information quickly in a form that is readily accessible” The questionnaire was considered a means of presenting more

objective research results from each student's point of view to identify somedifficulties in reading skills of second year students, English Faculty at ThuongmaiUniversity

Based on the questionnaire data collected from 80 students, the researchercalculated and converted to the percentage related form corresponding to each chart

of the question After collecting results from the questionnaire, the researcher gavesome suggestions to improve English reading ability

1.7. Organization of the study

My graduation thesis includes four chapters:

Chapter 1 (Overview of the study): In this part, the researcher will explain thereason for choosing this topic as well as Rationale, Previous research, Aims of thestudy, Research subjects, Scope of the study, Research methodology andOrganization of the study

Chapter 2 (Literature review): The researcher provides theories related to thestudy such as overview of reading, difficulties in learning reading skill and factorsaffecting reading difficulties.

Chapter 3 (Research findings): In this chapter, the researcher details thereasons why to choose the combination of quantitative method and qualitativemethod

Specifically, the researcher expresses how to provide a way to collect andprocess data, thereby giving results and analyzing them

Chapter 4 (Recommendations and suggestions): From the results of chapter 3,the researcher gives some recommendations to solve this problem At the sametime, the researcher must identify difficulties of second- year English majorstudents at Thuongmai University in reading skill and some suggested solutions aswell as implications for teaching and learning reading skill at ThuongmaiUniversity

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

In this chapter, the researcher will present theoretical backgrounds related tothe study The chapter focuses on introducing definitions of reading skill as well asreading comprehension, discussions on the importance of reading skill and theoriesfor types of reading skill The researcher will also provide difficulties in learning thereading skill and factors affecting reading difficulties To make the point clear, wewill explore each of the important theories below

2.1 Theoretical background of reading

2.1.1 Definition of reading

Reading skill is crucial in every field For example, in the import-export andlogistics sectors, employees need to read industry-related terms and understand it inorder to do their job well In high schools, students must equip themselves withgood reading comprehension skills to be able to solve the questions in the test Inthe translation course of students of English Faculty, Thuongmai University,students also need to have good text reading comprehension skills to be able tounderstand and translate all the meaning of the text Nearly every field requiresgood reading skills Therefore, reading is valued and important in the workplace,and people with good reading skills often solve problems quickly and are perceived

as more trustworthy Many people ignore the importance of good reading, yet it is

an important career factor and the basis for successful communication

There are many definitions from the dictionary given by many writers andresearchers These following ones are basic theoretical background of reading forthis study:

First and foremost, the term reading has been defined by the Cambridgedictionary as the skill or activity of getting information from books Other definition

by Collins English Learner’s Dictionary (2003), reading is an act of looking at andunderstanding points

In Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistic (1985):

1. Perceiving a written text in order to understand its contents This can be donesilently (silent reading) The understanding that result is called readingcomprehension

2. Saying a written text aloud (oral reading) This can be done with or withoutunderstanding of the content.

Besides, many researchers have also written about reading and led to a largenumber of its definitions

According to Diane Henry Leipzig (2001), reading is defined from thetraditional point of view as follows:

Reading is a multifaceted process involved in word recognition,comprehension, fluency, and motivation Learn how readers integrate these aspects

to make meaning from print To - make meaning out of print, we must: Identify thewords in print – a process called word recognition; Construct an understanding fromthem – a process called comprehension; Coordinate identifying words and creatingmeaning so that reading is automatic and accurate – an achievement called fluency.Козак (2017:7) pointed out that the student also feels complication learning toread:

"Reading is a complex activity that involves both perception and thought.

Perception is a way of regarding, understanding, or interpreting something; a mental impression Thought is an idea or opinion produced by thinking or occurring suddenly in mind Reading consists of two related processes: word recognition and comprehension Word recognition refers to the process of perceiving how written symbols correspond to one’s spoken language Comprehension is the process of making sense of words, sentences and connected text Readers typically make use of background knowledge, vocabulary, grammatical knowledge, experience with text and other strategies to help them understand text"

To sum up, from all these opinions above, researchers reflect the readingdefinition from their own point of view, a definition of reading skill can beobtained Reading is a complex process consisting of many stages where the readercan recognize the entire message of the text and understand the implications ofthose messages, and can finally decode them

2.1.2 The importance of reading skill

Reading skill plays an important role for students and greatly influences theirfuture job success, as well as background knowledge for other language skill.Reading is the fastest and simplest way to raise people’s educational level (Hung &Tzeng, 2001) In other words, reading is the best and only way of enabling humans

to absorb new experience and replace old views Reading is one of the basic skillsfor students and everyone in today's society Reading skills help develop our brain.For example, when we read a word, sentence or even a text, we will first take overthe word and start coding to understand its meaning This also helps us to developlanguage skills and is a basic foundation for improving the remaining skills

Lado (1977:233) stated that “Reading is an active thinking process where a

reader uses both important textual information and prior understanding of that information to comprehend the passage Reading in the content is not just reading

as kind of transfer for written symbols to a sound like reading aloud, but reading established with understand the meaning of the words, sentence and paragraph sensing relationship among the ideas” Through reading can be a piece of news, a

story or an article, etc the reader perceives new things, new information andcultivates ourselves with new approaches from different perspectives Withcountless new things, reading skills play an important role in helping us to selectuseful knowledge for study and future success

In addition, reading also helps open a new world and fosters the imagination

of students, especially second- year students in the English Faculty at TMU to learn

in an environment exposed to English-related subjects and must use a lot of readingskills Learning to read helps students improve their vocabulary every day, andimprove their understanding of listening, which is very important in finding a goodjob Many jobs require good reading as a baseline for salary assessment Studentsneed to read to summarize the main ideas in order to fully understand the lessoncontent, or the boss needs to read the full worksheet to convey to the staff We need

to read the ingredients and usage of certain products written in English Poorreading skills increase the time to absorb and react more slowly than others

Without good reading comprehension skills, a person will be limited in the progress

of completing the work that they set, meaning that their rights are less than others.Finally, why is reading so important? It is obvious that students who read tounderstand the text each day score higher and accumulate more knowledge thanother students Reading helps us learn more about new and improved things in ourown lives Moreover, according to the above opinion of the experts it is related withthis study that reading is a simple process to think about the message to comprehendthe text and simplest way to get education

2.1.3 Classification of reading skills

For reading effectively, depending on the specific text, students need to definethe purpose of reading On that basis, students apply appropriate reading skills toachieve their goals quickly and effectively If you apply wrong reading skills, thetext acquisition will take time and be ineffective

According to purpose, Grellet (1981:12): skimming, scanning, intensive

reading and extensive reading.

✔ Skimming: read quickly for the main ideas

✔ Scanning: look quickly to search a specific piece of information

✔ Intensive reading: read short texts to find specific information

✔ Extensive reading: reading longer texts for pleasure and for an overallunderstanding

2.1.3.1 Skimming

Skim is a quick reading to find the main ideas or “gist” of the text, not go deepinto the content of any paragraph With this skill, students do not need to read thewhole text but still grasp the overall content and the general idea, thus increasingreading speed and saving time

According to Leo (1994), he states that skimming is one of the readingtechniques that are aimed at getting quickly the main ideas and the purpose of areading selection Skimming is a very important aid to help students find out theinformation wished quickly In skimming, readers just see the text at a glance;readers just survey the text without carefully reading it They only use the clues that

are in the book to receive the information needed Before skimming, readers have toremember the most important parts of a chapter, article, or paragraph.

Grellet, F (1981) claimed that when skimming, we go through the readingmaterial quickly in order to get its gist, to know how it is organized, or to get anidea of the tone or the intention of the writer

When should skimming apply?

When we encounter too long text with limited time, it is appropriate to useskim skill by skimming for key content that helps you quickly locate information,making sure you are spending your time wisely and deciding if this is the mainparagraph of the essay?

2.1.3.2 Scanning

Scanning is another effective technique for speeding up reading Unlikeskimming, when using scanning, you just need to quickly read the article to find thenecessary information or partial information for answering the question withoutreading the entire text

Another definition made by Leo (1994: 39), he states that “scanning is one of

the reading techniques that is aimed at looking for and getting the details, facts, numbers, and specific bits of information that are in the text Readers apply scanning in reading to locate specific information and get an initial impression of whether the text is suitable for a given purpose When scanning, readers do not follow the linearity of the passage to get the information wished”.

When scanning, we just try to locate specific information and often we don'teven track the linearity of the passage to do so We simply scan the text until we

find what we're looking for, whether it's a name, a date or a less specific piece ofinformation Therefore, skimming is a more thorough activity that requires anoverview of the text and implies a definite readability On the contrary, scanning ismuch more limited because it only means retrieving any information relevant to ourpurposes However, it is common to use these two operations together when reading

a given text In actual read performance, it is difficult to distinguish between scansand scans because the scan inevitably involves a number of scans and scans mustinclude some scan operations (Nunan, 1999)

When should skimming apply?

Scanning is used when you need to find important data related to the articlesuch as names, numbers, dates, facts or phrases without having to read the entirearticle to grasp the content of the text Scanning allows you to find lots ofinformation with limited time

How to scan?

Analyze how text is organized before scanning

Always remember and guide the type of information you need to find in aspecific and accurate way The more you define specific data, the easier it is to findinformation and avoid wasting time

You need to determine which part of the article the information is in, read therelevant questions to easily identify the question and find the answer

Both skimming and scanning can help you find specific information in no timeand get an overview of the main content of the article

Using intensive reading technique, you must understand the structure of thetext in order to absorb the many meanings of the words as easily as findinginformation.

Intensive reading activities include skimming a text for specific information

to answer true or false sentences or filling gaps in a summary, scanning a text tomatch headings with paragraphs, and scanning jumbled paragraphs and then readingthem carefully to put them into the correct order

This is one of the reading skills that require great concentration and analyticaleffort Therefore, if you want to read a text with intensive reading skills, you shouldchoose the text with short, attractive and attractive content to read in a short time Ifthe content is not interesting, you will run the risk of boredom, exhaustion andquickly forget the content of the text The ultimate goal of intensive reading is tounderstand text to the smallest detail The material on News articles, Wikipediaarticles, Short stories, Blog posts, etc is an ideal resource for intensive reading ofstudents, especially second year students in the English Faculty at TMU to enhancevocabulary for their study

2.1.3.4 Extensive reading

A definition given by Grellet, F (1981) that extensive reading means readinglonger texts, usually for one’s pleasure and interest This is a fluent activity, mainlyinvolving global understanding

While intensive reading requires high concentration and effort from students,extensive reading requires low mental effort and provides enjoyable experiences forthem The more extensive reading you do, the more exposed you to many differentsources of knowledge, the faster your knowledge and reflexes will increase.Specifically, if you wish to read a text extensively, you have to read interesting text

of content, of moderate length, suitable for your current level so that you can relaxand motivate reading

In addition to the books according to the classroom program, students areallowed to choose books according to their preferences They can encouragereading for joy, enjoyment and more effective reading The ultimate goal of reading

is to help students enjoy and increase reading fluency

2.2 Difficulties in reading skill of students

No one can deny the important role of reading skills to the development in thefields of economics, politics, education, academic research and professionalsuccess In this skill, students apply suitable reading methods to find out keyinformation, analyze the content of questions to find suitable answers As a result,students have good reading skill, they can understand the entire text and findinformation quickly In fact, students without good reading skill, they may beapprehensive about the classroom reading lessons, or it could be a major barrier totheir lack of concentration in learning the skill well

After those class discussions, they feel they do not get enough of the text and

of course their level of knowledge is less acquired than other students in the class.This situation is prolonged, they will be left behind in the common ground of theclass or not experience interesting reading, as well as limited opportunities toacquire more knowledge However, it will be more difficult to learn a languageother than a first language well and so is learning reading skills Therefore, thisstudy is designed to identify the difficulties that second- year students in the EnglishFaculty at TMU face in their classroom learning to decide which learning methodsare used to improve students' reading skills

2.2.1 Background knowledge problem

The main purpose of students going to school is to learn, but if students do nothave necessary background knowledge, reading comprehension is considered abarrier Background knowledge plays an important role in students' reading skills

In fact, second- year students with a good background will read comprehensionbetter and save time than students with poor background

Some studies have shown that background knowledge problems also affectstudents' reading ability Researcher Tenaha O'Reilly of Educational Testing Service(ETS)'s Center for Research on Human Capital in Education (2019) claimed thatbackground knowledge plays a virtual role in students' reading comprehension - ourstudy show that if students don't have sufficient related knowledge, they'll probablyhave difficulties understanding text We also found that it's important to measurestudents' knowledge quickly by using natural language processing techniques If a

student scores below the knowledge threshold, they'll probably face the difficulty inthe reading skill.

Previous studies have shown that students with poor reading skills,including decoding vocabulary, perform worse than other students But research byO'Reilly and colleagues Zuowei Wang and John Sabatini of ETS have differentopinions about difficulty in reading, they argue that background knowledge is also

an important factor influencing reading ability of students

Students often associate what they read with what they know Therefore, it isvery important to have background knowledge of the topic they are reading beforestarting to understand Essential background knowledge helps students extract dataand grasp content quickly

2.2.2 Language problem

Previous studies reported by Alderson (1984) and Yorio (1971) have givenviews on language in reading problem that L2 reading comprehension may be moreclearly associated with L2 proficiency than with L2 reading comprehension”.Specifically, Alderson (1984) pointed out that reading ability is related to or indeedpart of the cognitive/academic language proficiency dimension and students whoare proficient readers in their L1 are more likely to become efficient readers in theL2 than are poor L1 readers Yorio (1971) claimed that a successful reader is largelyattributed to second language proficiency and L1 interference

2.2.2.1 Difficulties related to vocabulary

Students who read the text in their L2 will have a slower reading speed thantheir L1 Moreover, students do not know what meaning is used in the text withmultiple meanings They tend to look at each word and read slowly from beginning

to end without grasping the main information of the text Therefore, whenencountering a long document with a lot of new words, they still apply “word-by-word” reading, not focusing on memorizing key points in the text As a result, thestored information is left very little at the end of the reading, it is difficult for them

to remember what they just read in the previous paragraphs

If students have to encounter too much unfamiliar vocabulary, they will havedifficulty to grasp the overall concept conveyed in the sentence They are alsochallenged when reading idiomatic expressions and phrasal verbs (get back to, runthis by, count on, etc.)

Students with large vocabulary, they do not have difficulty in understandingthe content of the text These students tend to prefer reading a lot to absorbvocabulary every day rather than students with little vocabulary

2.2.2.2 Difficulties with grammar

Lack of processing ability or grammatical knowledge interferes with higherlevel text comprehension First, Perfetti (1999) pointed that grammar is a difficultproblem mainly due to the overlap between grammatical knowledge andvocabulary Therefore, it’s necessary to isolate the contribution made by grammarfrom that of vocabulary and create a clear grammar

In addition to the above problems, students also face many differentdifficulties when they start reading skills The problem most students face is thatthey have to deal with unfamiliar and difficult reading topics This issue is alsoknown as "text problem" It happens when learning to read a rather strange contenttext along with many new grammatical structures Students will begin to find itdifficult and not interested to continue reading it Therefore, they cannot understandthe meaning of long sentences and even the entire text They are not familiar withsome of the strategies for dealing with the grammatical structures used in the text.They may encounter the difficulty in a story "grammar" or the organizational model

of informational text They may not be familiar with the structures used in the text.Moreover, students cannot remember all the grammatical structures they learnedand understand the meaning of the new grammar structure that just appeared Evenlong sentences are also a great difficulty in the student's reading process

During the reading process, students will analyze the organization of theparagraph and the entire text to make reading easy and find the sentence containingthe important information of the text in the fastest way Students do not understand

" How is the text organized?” and “How the sentences are linked together? "is one

of the difficulties of students when reading

2.2.3 Reading method problem

Reading skills have long been a topic of interest to researchers According

to Alderson (2000), reading skills are divided into 8 essential skills such as:

- recalling word meanings

- drawing inferences about the meaning of a word in context

- finding answers to questions answered explicitly or in paraphrase

- weaving together ideas in the content

- drawing inferences from the content

- recognizing a write’s purpose, attitude, tone and mood

- identifying a writer’s technique

- following the structure of a passage

Reading well requires students to use all of the above methods In practice,however, students do not know how to use appropriate reading methods or use them

in the wrong way In other words, they cannot summarize the main ideas of readingtext through each paragraph, and of course the reading is very difficult for them Reading is an active skill, practiced repeatedly, and involves judging andpredicting words and meanings of text In the long text, students cannot predict themeaning of new words used in the text The students' limited reading methods alsocreate many problems For example, students must encounter some problems inreading skills such as slow reading, not understanding the content of the article tosummarize the main ideas, not predicting the vocabulary meaning used in the text.Students can be trapped in the following vicious circle:

Figure 2.2 The vicious circle of the weak readers (Nuttall, 1982)

In addition, Farshad farzami (2016:10) pointed out that “Lack of

concentration during reading” and “Inability to connect ideas in a passage”are the main causes leading to barriers in reading method

2.3 Factors leading to students’ difficulties in reading skill

2.3.1 Lack of motivation

There have existed many definitions from researchers about motivation inL2 learning However, all the researchers share the same opinion that motivationcombines effort and desire along with a favorable attitude and happens as a result of

a combination of internal and external influences According to William and Burdendefine motivation as:

“ motivation may be construed as a state of cognitive and emotional arousal, which leads to a conscious decision to act, and which gives rise to period ofsustained intellectual and/or physical effort in order to attain a previous set goal or

goals”

(William and Burden, 1997:120)

Saville- Troike (2006:85) claimed that motivation is a significant factor that

explains L2 learners’ success “it largely determines the level of effort which

learners expend at various stages in their L2 development, often a key to ultimate level of proficiency”

Motivation plays an important role not only in L2 learning but also in readingskill Motivation influences reading behaviors across cultures and languages (Lorch

& van den Broek, 1997; Oldfather, 2002; Wigfield, 1997) Indeed, if skillful readerslack motivation, they can feel difficult to become effective readers (Watkins &Coffey, 2004)

It is said that students’ motivation has an effect on both the result of reading skilland the process of understanding If the students have no interest in the text, thereading activity will become a pressure on them It makes them unwilling to readand the reading may not even happen This is also one of the factors causingdifficulties for students in reading skills

In case the students are motivated to read, they will try to read with the desire tofind information, ideas and find specific answers to the questions they are interested

in

2.3.2 Poor concentration

It is obvious that poor concentration leads to difficulty and ineffectiveness inreading skills as well This skill requires a highly concentrated effort to retrieve allthe data, so your brain is always thinking about the reading and ignoring any