Ika Kurniawati Khasanah / 2201409032
Rombel 405-406
Rombel 405-406
Summary
A
Study on the Reading Skills EFL University Students
This article discusses about reading skills and
their difficulty levels. Realizing the important of reading for EFL students,
it is then very crucial for EFL students to have good reading proficiency.
Having good reading proficiency means that the reader has abilities to understand
written statements or any type of written texts accurately and efficiently
(Mahfoodh, 2007, p. 1).
Reading
proficiency is determined by reading skills. Nutall (1996, pp. 44-124) suggests that there are three major
categories of reading skills. They are as follows:
1. Efficient
reading skills are divided into five sub-skills, i.e.
identifying the reason for reading, choosing the right materials, using the
text effectively, making use of all resources in the text and improving reading
speed.
2.
Word
attack skills consist of three sub-skills: the
interpretation of structural clues (both syntactical and morphological);
inference from context; and the use of the dictionary.
3. Text
attack skills are comprised of eight sub-skills:
understanding syntax, recognizing and interpreting cohesive devices,
interpreting discourse markers, recognizing functional value, recognizing text
organization, recognizing the presuppositions underlying the text, recognizing
implications and making inference, and prediction.
Mcwhorter
(2002, pp. 386-387, 397-398, 418-419) adds other importanta reading skills
namely distinguishing between fact and opinion, paraphrasing and summarizing.
In this study the writer investigated the reading
skills of ten batch-2003-students studying at English Department of a private
university in Surabaya and passing all levels of reading classes. In doing the
data collection, the writer used some steps, as follows:
1. Analyze
the kinds of reading skills which were taught in Reading One,Two, Three and
Four classess at the department.
2. Develop
two reading tests: adopting reading texts entitled Learning to be Funny is No
Joke and The Birth of Rock by Maker and Lenier for reading test one and other
two reading texts entitled Using the Creative Imagination and Power of the
Press by Talok for reading test two.
Each reading test consisted of thirty fouy items as
the representatives of seventeen kinds of reading skills, not all reading
skills proposed by Nutall and Mcwhorter before.
3. Pilot
two reading tests. The piloting was aimed to help the writers to see whether
the two reading tests had clear and good instructions and items.
4. Distribute
the reading tests to ten students of English Department Batch 2003 who had
already passed all reading classes.
5. Check
and count the results of both reading tests.
After
that, the writer did the data analysis.
In
this study:
- Recognizing text organization skill
means perceiving the pattern of how ideas hang together in a reading text.
- Paraphrase skill means paraphrasing or
restating the sentences’ original ideas into students’ own words.
- Inference from context skill means
learning words by hearing or seeing the words in the context
-
Summarizing means restatement of the
important points of a passage.
- Skimming is glancing rapidly through a
text to determine its gist or main idea.
- Compound words are those formed by two
normally indepent words, such as software, spoon-fed.
- Predicting skill means responding the
text by having expectations and ideas about the purpose of the text, as well as
ideas about possible outcomes.
- Drawing the meanings of some pro-forms such as them, their by
refering to a particular reading text.
- Interpreting elliptical expression skill
means a skill to recognize what elements which are omitted from a sentence or a
passage.
- Morphology (word part) skill means
dividing some words into suitable parts: prefix, root an suffix.
- Using a dictionary is by selecting, from
several meanings offered in the dictionary, the one that is relevant to the
given sentence or text in which a particular word occurs.
- Interpreting lexical cohesion skill
means interpreting different words which refer to a similar thing.
- Recognizing implications and making
inferences skill is by infereing the message which is conveyed by a reading
text.
- Distinguish fact from opinion is by
deciding whether a particular statement which was taken from the reading text was true or false.
- Improving reading speed means reading in
meaningful chunks.
- Recognizing presupposition underlying
the text means an ability to identify the presupposition, i.e. knowledge,
experience, opinions, attitudes or emotions which the author of the reading
text expect the readers to have, share, or at least understand.
- Scanning skill is define as a quick
reading focusing on locating specific information.
The result of the writer’s study is that it has been
found that the most difficult reading skill was recognizing text or
organization; the second most difficult was paraphrasing; and the third was
inferencing from context skill. In addition, it has also been found that
scanning skill and improving reading speed skill had low difficulty level.
Comment
The content of this research article provides some information
about reading skills which exist. It helps the readers know about some reading
skills. As the title ‘A Study on the Reading Skills EFL University Students’,
this article provides a study in determining which reading skill has high
difficulty level and low difficulty level to college students who have passed
all levels of reading classes. So, as the conclusion, the findings of this
study shows that every reading skill has different levels of difficulty for the
students. It is useful to help in constructing reading tests in any level.
This article can also be appropriate for those who
are studying or working in language education, especially English education and
English as ESL, to be read. It is because the intention of the study shows that
having good reading proficiency is very crucial by considering reading as one
of four language skills to be mastered.
The Benefit
In my opinion, this study is useful for teachers. Teachers
can get information about difficulty levels of the reading skills mentioned in
the study. The findings can also be used to contsruct an appropriate reading
test in what level they teach. In other words, they can distribute each reading
skill in their reading test items appropriately. As the result, teachers can
know how their students’ reading proficiency, how their students accomplish the
reading test. The result can be used to determine students’ progress in
learning process.
To develop or improve their ability, teachers can
also conduct further research with larger number of respondents, with a help
from their students, so that wider result for English education can be
produced. It is like the writer stated in conclusion and suggestion. As a
consequence, perhaps later teachers can successfully teach students in
achieving good reading proficiency.