In order to clarify research findings collected from the questionnaire, focus group was performed with 12 students who were coded from S1 to S12.
12 students chosen at random were interviewed through two focus groups with six students for each group. After the interview, the researcher collected all answers from the recordings and compared them with answers from the questionnaires. Areas of focus in the interview referred to difficulties in reading comprehension tasks and the factors leading to these difficulties.
Regarding the difficulties in reading comprehension tasks, the emerging themes reported by the majority of the interviewed students included vocabulary issues and grammar issues (complex and unknown grammatical structures). Firstly, among 12 interviewed students more than a half of students affirmed a large number of unknown vocabulary found in the reading texts as their reading difficulty. S1 stated, “There are too many new words in the reading comprehension tasks that prevented me from understanding the text meaning”. In the same view, S2, S4, S6, S9, S10, S11, and S11 admitted that they got problems with unknown words in reading comprehension tasks. Specifically, S3 claimed, “I often found unknown words that have not been taught before in reading comprehension tasks; therefore, I cannot understand the text meaning.”
Multiple meaning words were also considered as the major difficulties that students had to deal with when taking reading comprehension tasks. S2 explained, “Some words in the reading texts have different meaning in different contexts or grammatical structures; therefore, it is difficult for me to capture the right meaning of these words”. Accordingly, S11 also mentioned multiple meaning words as one of the major challenges in their reading comprehension tasks, she said, “Words with different meanings caused a
number of difficulties for me when dealing with English reading comprehension tasks. I am usually confused with these multiple meaning words”.
Regarding the second identified theme concerning difficulties in reading comprehension tasks, the lack of grammatical knowledge was recognized by all students in the interview. Through the semi-structured interviews, the participants shared unknown and complex grammatical structures as their difficulties in reading comprehension tasks. S3 explained,
“There are many complex grammatical structures that I have not been taught before; therefore, it is difficult for me to understand the texts.” Meanwhile in the second group S8 also listed the failure to apply grammar structure in their reading comprehension tasks by stating that “I cannot recall grammar structures learnt before to apply them in reading comprehension tasks for text understanding and interpretation.”
Particularly, among 12 interviewed students, only one student mentioned unfamiliar topics as his major reading difficulty. S10 mentioned,
“It is difficult for me to deal with reading tasks with unfamiliar topics”.
In the interview, the students were also asked about their perceptions towards the factors causing their difficulties in reading tasks. Several groups of factors identified in the current study included lack of vocabulary, lack of grammar knowledge, lack of background and content knowledge, lack of reading strategies, institutional factors, and psychological factors.
Among these identified causes of reading difficulties, lack of vocabulary and lack of grammar knowledge were mentioned by the majority of students; this result was similar to those identified in the questionnaire.
Concerning lack of vocabulary, S2 claimed, “Because of my limited vocabulary knowledge, I cannot guess the meanings of unknown words in the
reading texts. As a result, I cannot understand what the texts mean”. Other students such as S1, S3, S4, S6, S7, S8, S9, S10, S11, and S12 also emphasized their limited vocabulary knowledge as the cause leading to their difficulties in understanding English texts in reading comprehension tasks.
Referring to the lack of grammatical knowledge, S1 also pointed out,
“Different grammatical structures used in a reading text; however, the majority of structures are unfamiliar to me. Hence, I cannot interpret these structures for my text understanding”. Sharing the same perspective, S3, S8 and S9 also highlighted how they struggled with the reading comprehension tasks because of the lack of grammatical knowledge. S3 affirmed, “Grammar is varied and complex; my limited knowledge of grammar hinders me from understanding English texts”. Accordingly, S8 stated, “There are several reasons attributed to my difficulties during my reading comprehension tasks;
among these reasons the lack of grammar knowledge is the most influencing factor.”
Accordingly, S10 and S11 also blamed the lack of background and content knowledge for their challenges they encountered in their reading comprehension tasks. Other minor reasons listed by the students in the interview included lack of reading strategies, institutional factors, and psychological factors. Regarding lack of reading strategies as the cause of reading difficulties, S6 admitted that she did not know which reading strategy was suitable for each type of reading comprehension tasks. In terms of institutional factors, both S7 and S9 complaint about lack of authentic reading materials in their reading lessons as one of the major causes leading to their difficulties in reading tasks. Accordingly, S12 said, ““My teacher’s teaching pedagogy is not appropriate for me to develop reading skills” when being asked about the influence of institutional factors. Finally, S8 mentioned the
pressure from teachers as a psychological factor posing their reading difficulties by stating “I suffered from the pressure from my teachers regarding the time set for comprehension tasks and their control over the process of reading.”
When being asked about the difficulties caused by physical factors such as classroom setting, or facilities, all the students emphasized that their performance with reading comprehension tasks was not influenced by the physical factors.
To sum up, results collected from the interview supported the findings from the questionnaire that affirmed how lack of vocabulary, lack of grammar knowledge, lack of background knowledge, lack of content knowledge, and lack of reading strategies caused difficulties for students in reading comprehension tasks. In both questionnaire and interviews, findings revealed no effect of physical factors on students‟ reading comprehension. However, although in the questionnaire the students held a neutral position towards the difficulties caused by psychological factors and institutional factors, in the interview these factors were reported as two among reasons attributed to students‟ difficulties in reading comprehension tasks.