AN ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS' DIFFICULTIES IN READING COMPREHENSION OF DESCRIPTIVE TEXT AT EIGHTH GRADE SMPN 1 SINTOGA
ABSTRACT Wilda Fitri, 2316073. “An Analysis of Students’ Difficulties in Reading Comprehension of Descriptive Text at Eighth Grade SMPN 1 Sintoga’’. Thesis, State Islamic Institute (IAIN) Bukittinggi, 2022. This research was aimed to analyze the most difficult factor and the most difficult component that students experienced in reading comprehension of descriptive text at eighth grade of SMPN 1 Sintoga. This research was done because the researcher found some problems at the eighth grade students in learning descriptive text. The problems were the students’ comprehension was low so that, students got low reading scores. Then, they did not have a proper amount of vocabulary to support them to comprehend the reading material. The design of this research was a descriptive quantitative research. The population of the research was the eighth grade of SMPN 1 Sintoga. The researcher used cluster random sampling technique in taking the sample because the students were in the same grade and were taught by the same teacher with the same material. The sample was the eighth grade students of SMPN 1 Sintoga consisted of 30 students. The instrument of the research was questionaire and reading test. The researcher distributed questionnaire sheets which would be used to find out the factors of difficulties that students faced in comprehending descriptive text. Meanwhile the test would be used to find out the most difficult component that students got in reading comprehension on descriptive texts. Students’ questionnaire and test result would be gathered, categorized and analyzed until results were found. Each of the data from the test and questionnaire would be used to answer the research questions. The result of analysis showed that the eighth grade students of SMPN 1 Sintoga had factor of difficulties in comprehending descriptive text they were language (85.47%), topic and genre (27.73%), comprehension task (97.33%), negative expectation (27.87%), vocabulary (27.47%), reading strategies (56.93%). From the data related to the components of difficulty of students’ reading comprehension in descriptive text, it was found that 20.16 % of students’ difficulty on the topic, on the main idea was 13.18% of students’ difficulty, 14.73 % of students’ difficulty on word reference, 18.60 % of students’ difficulty on location of information, and the last on inference with 33.33% of students’ difficulty. From the data above it can be concluded that the most difficult factor was vocabulary and the most difficult component of students was main idea. Key Term: Reading Comprehension, Reading Difficulties, Descriptive Text