Sari, Lika Oktavianur. 2019. Investigating Reading Comprehension and Strategies Based on Reading Anxiety Levels of Vocational Students in Samarinda. Under Supervisors of Dyah Sunggingwati, Ph.D and Dr. Noor Rachmawaty, M.Ed. Samarinda: Mulawarman University.
Reading was viewed as an essential skill for foreign language students at improving their language ability and it was highlighted to be studied for Indonesian students as the items tests of the English national examination. The objectives of this study were; (1) to know the reading comprehension ability of vocational students with low and high reading anxiety levels; (2) to find out the reading strategy used by the vocational students with low and high reading anxiety levels; and (3) to investigate the reasons why the vocational students experienced reading anxiety in reading comprehension.
The design of this study was explanatory sequential of mixed method by involving 168 eleventh grade vocational students of SMKN 17 Samarinda in the academic year 2018/2019 as the research participants, in which 104 students grouped to low reading anxiety level and 64 students grouped to high reading anxiety level. The research instruments of Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale (FLRAS) of Saito, Horwitz, & Garza (1999), Reading Comprehension Test, Survey of Reading Strategy (SORS) of Mokhtari &Sheorey (2002), and interview guide were used in the data collection. The quantitative data of FLRAS and SORS questionnaire results were analyzed by using a 4-point Likert Scale and reading comprehension test result was analyzed by using mean score, frequency, and percentage. Meanwhile, the qualitative data of interview transcript was analyzed using the flow model of Miles and Huberman.
The research findings showed that; (1) the reading comprehension ability of the vocational students with low reading anxiety level was fair (79.76). Meanwhile, the reading comprehension ability of the vocational students with high reading anxiety level was also fair (72.11). It indicated that the reading comprehension ability of the vocational students with low reading anxiety level was greater than the vocational students with high reading anxiety level; (2). The most of reading strategy used by the vocational students with low and high reading anxiety levels was global reading strategy followed by support reading strategy, and then problem-solving reading strategy. They used different frequent of reading strategies in reading comprehension. (3) The reasons of vocational students with low and high reading anxiety levels in perceiving the anxiety in reading comprehension were classified into two; personal factors and text feature factors. Concerning the research findings of this study, the vocational students’ reading anxiety should be solved by enhancing their self-confidence that dealt with personal factor and improve their reading comprehension ability by reading practice and applying reading strategy that accorded with text feature factors.
Keywords: reading comprehension, reading anxiety and reading strategy.