"Reading" ability of students in Nepal

Bangladesh Teacher Education Journal (BTEJ), volume -02, number-01, 2023

In Bangladesh, English is taught as a compulsory subject for twelve years before students can enroll in higher education, however most undergraduate students’ reading comprehension abilities are not satisfactory. They face difficulties in inferring meaning from the reading materials. Their low reading proficiency hampers their acquisition of other language skills and affects their academic performance also. A qualitative research design was followed to identify the difficulties that hinder English reading comprehension of second semester students of Education program and propose a feasible solution to improve this important skill. For this study, two online focus group interviews with eight students (4 male and 4 female) and one-on-one interviews with four English teachers from a teacher education college were conducted. Semi-structured interview protocols were used as research instruments in this study. The collected data was interpreted by thematic analysis. The findings of both student and teacher respondents revealed that the learners encountered a number of reading difficulties, like a lack of vocabulary and prior knowledge, while reading English texts. Besides these, some other factors like anxiety, an unsupportive environment, a lack of syntactic knowledge, a lack of family support, a lack of enthusiasm, semester-based exam systems, and a faulty teaching strategy impede reading skills. This study also proposed some effective teaching techniques to improve learners’ reading skills. Both extensive and intensive reading were highly emphasized to improve students’ reading proficiency. It is hoped that the findings will assist teachers, material developers, curriculum designers, and policy makers in understanding the barriers to learners’ English comprehension skills and in developing a pedagogical strategy to strengthen students’ fundamental reading skills, which can increase students’ interest in reading at the tertiary level.

Rangsit Journal of Educational Studies, 2020

The objectives of the current study were 1) to identify the most and the least affecting internal factors on the Thai EFL tertiary learners' reading comprehension ability, 2) to identify the most and the least affecting external factors on the Thai EFL tertiary learners' reading comprehension ability, and 3) to compare the affecting internal and external factors on the Thai EFL tertiary learners' reading comprehension ability. The participants of the study were 19 EFL tertiary students majoring in English for International Communication (EIC) in the Faculty of Business Administration and Liberal Arts at Rajamangala University of Technology Lanna Phitsanulok. The research instrument was a questionnaire with a three-point Likert scale. The gathered data were statistically analyzed to find the mean score and standard deviation. The results of the study revealed that considering the internal factors, the participants' linguistic knowledge (=2.74) had more impact on their reading comprehension ability than their perceptions (=2.54). The most affecting sub-internal factor was the participants' background knowledge of the reading content (=2.89), while the least affecting sub-internal factor was the participants' perception of reading difficulty (=2.26). Regarding the external factors, the three external factors, namely teacher influence (=2.54), family influence (=2.49), and environment (=2.32), did not show a significantly different impact on the participants' reading comprehension ability. The most affecting sub-external factor was family members' encouragement (=2.89), while the least affecting sub-external factor was family members' awareness of the importance of English reading and provision of English-writing books (=2.11). The comparison of the internal and external factors showed that the internal factors (=2.64) affected the participants' reading comprehension ability more than the external factors (=2.45).

This present study of article aims to the investigation of English reading comprehension problems faced by students of Shaheed Benazir Bhutto University, Shaheed Benazir Abad. The main aim of this research study is to find out the difficulties of the students in English reading comprehension. The research method was used in quantitative approach. The technique or an instrument of this study was a questionnaire for collecting data of the sample. The questionnaire was designed into Likert-scale with 15 items and provided to the 40 students of 2 nd year students from 21 Batch of BS English Department. According to the student's responses, the data was analyzed into SPSS version-21. The findings and results of this study shows that students were facing problems in reading comprehension, Such as, figuring out meanings of the new words, distinguishing the main ideas from supporting ideas in the reading text, they usually word to word translate when they do not understand the total meaning of the text, they have poor comprehension, they don't have mastery in vocabulary, they keep thinking that other students are better at language than us, they feel stressed when they read texts in English and they feel confused to understand the text. This research study aims to give the awareness of the reading strategies and the knowledge of reading comprehension for the students that can improve their problems in English reading comprehension.

2019

Few studies have ever been conducted to find out degree of contribution of L1 reading ability and L2 general linguistic proficiency to L2 reading regarding the context of learning. Two groups of students from the Indian ESL (English as a Second Language) and Iranian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) contexts attended this study. Measures of general English proficiency (GEP), reading comprehension (RC) in L2 and reading strategy awareness (RSA) in L1 were administered among the participants. Findings showed that RSA accounted for 41% and 10% of variance in L2 RC for the Iranian and Indian groups, respectively. It was also found regression weight for RSA is still significant for the Iranian group but not for the Indian group. In addition, for the Iranian group, both RSA and GEP are significant variables in prediction of RC in L2 but for the Indian group only GEP contributed significantly to the prediction of RC in L2. In addition, for both the high and low Iranian GEP groups only th...

Morales, J.G & Floris, F.D. (2017). A study of the reading comprehension strategies and reading proficiency levels of English Department graduates. Philippine ESL Journal, Vol. 18 (February 2017), 103-119. , 2017

This study explores the reading comprehension strategies and reading proficiency levels of 30 recent English Department (ED) graduates of a private university in Surabaya, Indonesia, whose reading proficiency levels were in Basic, Independent and Proficient levels..... Full free open-access article is available on http://www.elejournals.com/1533/2017/peslj/philippine-esl-journal-volume-18-february-2017/

PAKISTAN LANGUAGES AND HUMANITIES REVIEW

This mixed method research investigation was conducted to determine the differences in reading skills performance between the Federal Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (FBISE) and the Board of Intermediate Education Karachi (BIEK). Quantitative data were collected through reading comprehension tests, and qualitative data were collected through focus group interviews to achieve the study objective. Sample of this study consisted of 60 students-30 from each board and English faculty from the selected college. The reading tests were analyzed using SPSS (V.24), and Saldaña's (2013) thematic analysis was used for focus group interviews. The findings indicated that Federal Board (FBISE) students performed better than Karachi Board (BIEK) in reading comprehension tests. Student focus group interviews reveal that students' performance highly depends on the students' reading interest, prescribed course books reading, and teachers' guidelines. The English language teachers' focus group interviews conclude that students' performance relies on their urge to seek knowledge and their approach to reading books. The teahers also believe curriculum and assessment procedure at the HSSC/HSC level also play an important role in the learners' reading performance.

Students after passing of their Board Examinations are expected to have attained a minimum level of reading and writing efficiency. But the observations by the authors in the university term end examination have triggered the idea of this study. The study aimed to assess the reading competency level in Hindi of undergraduate students in Uttar Pradesh and the relation of their previous examination score in Hindi with the competency level. A reading module comprising of a text with 180 difficult words and 60 punctuation signs for proper intonations was administered. Three Level Scale (TLS) was constructed from the data collected to compute the level of reading competency. It was found that the minimum time taken to complete the text was 8.23 minutes and maximum time was 16.23 minutes with a mean of 11.56 minutes. The study revealed that achievement in Hindi did not have any impact on reading competency level of students. Students were found to have more difficulty in pronunciation of complex words. Students in the sample were more or less good in intonation of punctuation sign as compared to reading difficult words. Third year students were comparatively poor in reading competency than first year students.

Himalayan Journal of Social Sciences, 2013

The present study aimed to study the English Reading Comprehension of Seccondary Schol students of Assam in relation to their gender, Locale, School Management Typc, and Parental Education. A standardized test of Reading Comprchension was administered over a sample of 100 Class IX students of Assamese Medium Schools recognised by Sccondary Education Board of Assam (SEBA). Thc findings revealed that though there is no signilicant dilference in the Readinu Comprehension in English of the secondary students due to their locale variation, but significant difference was observed in the same in relation to their Gender, School Management Type and Parental Education.

The process of language learning is a complex process, associated with many factors. Due to the complexity of language learning process and its different dimensions, any elaboration should be narrowed down. Therefore, the present study aimed to see whether using reading comprehension tasks could significantly improve the students' reading comprehension ability or not. To this purpose, 72 English students were selected. After receiving the treatment and using reading comprehension tasks, their reading abilities were compared to those who had received the traditional teaching process. The results demonstrated that those students who had received the reading comprehension processing tasks performed significantly better than those who had received traditional reading approach in the control group. The findings of the study have some implications for language teachers as well as syllabus designers to improve reading ability of language learners.

2018

The aim sof this research are describing the students’ reading strategies in mastering English between Senior High Schools at Muara Rupit and describing the students’ reading comprehension in mastering English between SMA Negeri 1 Muara Rupit and SMA Plus Bina Satria. The researchers applied descriptive qualitative method. The subject of the research are 60 students from SMA Negeri 1 Muara Rupit of class X and XI and 60 students from SMA Plus Bina Satria of class X and XI in the academic year of 2015/2016. The data collected through questionnaire. Based on the research result, it could be concluded that both of the students at SMA Negeri 1 Muara Rupit and SMA Plus Bina Satria mayority used prior knowledge to think about the topic before reading, made predictions about the probable meaning of the text before reading, previewed the text by skimming and scanning to get a sense of the overall meaning before reading, Monitor understanding by questioning the ideas and information in the t...