assignment 8

A STUDY ON THE READING SKILLS OF EFL UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Flora Debora Floris

Marsha Divina

Petra Christian University, Indonesia

A.    Summary

The writer had done a research of investigating kinds of reading skills that EFL (English as a Foreign Language) University students have difficult with. Based on the studies, it is shown that the students who read a lot seem more have ability in understanding English. So that, having good reading proficiency is very important for EFL students, whether understanding the written statements or any type of written texts accurately and effectively.

The writer focused on the ten batch-2003-students studying at an English Department of a private university in Surabaya. The students were selected from whom had passed all levels of reading class.

In doing the data collection, the writer used some steps which based on the reading class they had passed.

The first step was analyzing the kind of reading skill which were thought. Because the reading classes didn’t learn the learning skill based on Nuttal (1996, pp44-124) and Mc Whorter (2002), the writer focused on the seventeen skills which were already taught-scanning, skimming, improving reading speed, structural clues: morphology(word part), structural clues: morphology (compound words), inference from context, using a dictionary, interpreting pro-forms, interpreting elliptical expression, interpreting lexical cohesion, recognizing text organization, recognizing presupposition underlying the text, recognizing implications and making inference, prediction, distinguishing, between fact and opinion, paraphrasing, summarizing.

The second step was developing the test. There were two kinds of reading test in order to make the test more reliable. Each kind of the reading test covered the reading skill: twelve for first reading test and seven for the second. There were thirty four items for each test as the representatives of the seventeen reading skills. The writer preferred to use short answer types rather than multiple choices in order to avoid respondent’s guessing.

The third step was piloting the reading test in different times and similar ways as the real test. Three students of batch 2003 were chosen randomly to try doing the tests. After that the writer made some minor revision. Then the tests were distributed to ten students of English Department Batch 2003 and did it in two different times.

 The final step was check out and count the result of both the reading test. There were some steps in analyzing the results. They are:

·         Put the results into the table according to the column.

·         List the seventeen kinds of reading skills

·         Calculate the percentage of incorrect answer.

B.     Comment

It is very useful for EFL’s teacher to know the way to teach and test the students about reading English. The research or the study of the reading skill of EFL like this is very important to be known as a way to improve their ability to gain the objective of the learning, especially reading. The text chosen to the study was good, because it was an authentic text.

Is was held on the ten batch-2003-students studying at an English Department of a private university in Surabaya Unfortunately, the study is only done for a small sample. It will be better if the sample is bigger, so that the variation of the result will be more.

C.    Advantages of the research

The study on the reading skills of EFL university students gives some result. From the study we know at least in what skill of reading the students have difficult with, that is on the recognizing text organization. Even though this is only covers students of batch-2003-students. The other result is that we know in what skill the students have mastered or understand with, that is scanning skill.

The result must be very useful for the teacher. Teacher may know the progress of their students’ ability in reading skill. The other advantage is that the teacher may know in what skill they have to focus or teach more to the students. So, it can be a measurement or the evaluation of the learning process to gain the better result (objectives) of learning.