Ayuningtyas, Rinda. 2019. The Difficult Aspects of Reading Comprehension Faced by Students of Eighth Grade in SMP Negeri 9 Samarinda. English Department, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education. Mulawarman University, Samarinda. Advisors: (1) Dra. Surya Sili, M.A.T., Ph.D and (2) Dian Anggriyani, M.A


This research was aimed to know the difficult aspects of reading comprehension and to know the solutions of difficult aspects in reading comprehension of eighth grade students in SMP Negeri 9 Samarinda. The design of this study was Mixed Method with sequential explanatory design. In this study
68 students were randomly selected from eighth grade of SMP Negeri 9
Samarinda as the sample of this research. In collecting the data, the researcher
used reading comprehension test on five aspects by Nuttal and interview as instrument. The results of this study showed that most students had difficulty in determining main idea and understanding the meaning of word. The finding was supported by descriptive statistical analysis, determining main idea was 36%, understanding the meaning of word was 30%, making reference was 24%, finding specific information was 19%, and identifying reference was 18%. These percentages were from the average of total frequency in each aspect of reading comprehension. Moreover, the strategies that students with the highest scores used to solve their difficulty were reading the question first before reading the text, knowing the key word of question, re-reading the information in certain paragraph, and guessing the meaning of word by reading the previous and next sentence which were affective to be used. On the other hand, the strategies of students with the lowest scores were reading the text first before reading the question, opening the dictionary, asking friends, and guessing the answers which could solve the difficulty. Therefore, it was suggested that students should learn steps to overcome the difficulty in determining main idea. They are kno wing the key word in sentence of paragraph, finding explicitly stated topic sentences at beginning, in the middle or at the end of paragraph, and the last is analysing inferences. They should improve their English vocabulary, the ways are playing vocabulary games, using vocabulary tree, learning synonym and antonym, and using specific vocabulary lists in reading comprehension and they can develop their vocabulary knowledge to determine main idea. Furthermore for the teacher was suggested to teach the strategies of determining main idea such as identifying the topic, summarizing the passage, reading the first and the last sentences of the passage, and looking for the repetition idea, and teachers should increase the effective practices in vocabulary instruction and apply various teaching method about reading comprehension to make students have more interest and understand the text easily.

Keywords: Difficult, Aspect, Reading Difficulty, Reading Comprehension, Solution