Reading is the most important skills in language acquisition and considers being an active action to connect between the prior knowledge. The goal of this study is to provide effective strategies for the KFU students to overcome their difficulties in reading exam. I use a quasi-experimental quantitative design among a focus group and experimental group includes of 12 students who study in King Faisal University. The students answer two sections of questionnaire and interview that focus on collecting information about the reading difficulties, overcoming the challenges and students recommendations. This study explains the students’ challenges in reading an English text in their exams for example new vocabulary, grammar, comprehension questions and etc. Students recommend that having enough vocabulary can help them to understand the text through attending more vocabulary classes and need for cognitive strategies.
Introduction:
One of the important language skills for students is reading. Reading is the primary curricular concern for the second and foreign language such as English for Saudi Students. It is very important to teach reading skill that has the goal to build the knowledge and ability of students. During the teaching of reading, there are many goals need to achieve by the students for example; reading a wide test in English, adapt in reading style associated with the reading goals such as scanning and skimming, build schematic knowledge, build knowledge of the English language, assume a critical perspective concerning with the texts and develop an awareness of the structure of written texts. Consequently, reading is beast developed in relation to speaking, writing and listening activities associated with a positive effect on the students’ language skills to help them to pick up words and use them in speaking and writing which reflected on their test marks. Students can build some vocabulary to develop their competence in reading the text especially in their English exam of any text. Majority of student faced challenges in their English exam due to the difficulties in reading a text that have many different vocabularies which differ between the questions and text. The majority of English texts in a giving exam are having several questions using an alternative word which made the students to feel confuse for the right answers due to the lack of vocabulary that can be avoided through various strategies for instant rereading the text, guessing, scanning and paraphrasing many times to answer the question correctly (Klinger et al. 2007).
Review of Literature
Reading is the most important skills in language achievement for people with a foreign language that has many strategies for learning and factors for reading comprehension. This skill is received a clear and significant interest for the students. Reading in English is taught in the Saudi Arabia schools and universities as additional material to the educated the language proficiency. During the reading comprehension, students in universities faced challenges to understand the reading materials that impeded for their understanding to a reading text. In a normal studying of reading skill, students were learning how to move into grammars, writing and vocabulary.
Reading in English:
The goal of reading is to get understanding about a text. It required for many strategies to learn any provided text and there are many factors affected the reading comprehension for students with a second language. Reading any text is required for making a connection between the comprehensions, questions, related to background knowledge and make inferences. Cain et al. (2001) indicated that students may fail to understand the knowledge within the text due to the inability of some students to comprehend the reading text that ended with weaknesses in vocabulary. Furthermore, the type of reading text can emphasize the students successful or fail in reading skills. For more illustration, Saudi students are unfamiliar with the English language structures and features of any reading text and can become more difficult when the students have a little experience and interest in reading, have poor background knowledge and inadequate vocabulary to connect the new ideas to learning. In addition, the students with more vocabularies are likely to use more meaning and make inferences in the text.
Reading in English exams:
In the giving exams, students have to make pronunciation, recognize the sentence and understand the new vocabularies. In other words, reading is consider being a process of recreating the writer’s ideas and get meaning about the words, previous reading, life experiences and knowledge of language. During the test, there are many kinds of texts associated with reading comprehension question. Before start reading, the students have to ask themselves some questions such as “what is the key for each paragraph?” and try to classify the idea into questions. This method of classification can develop a comprehension question based on the vocabulary in the questions. After that, the students have to determine the types of reading comprehension questions in the exam for instant main idea, communicative purpose, pronoun reference, inference, vocabulary in context, jumbled sentence and details stated and unstated questions.
Strategies:
It had been showed in previous study done by Cabaroglu and Yurdaisik (2008) that there are many effective strategies can be used by the students to understand a test which fall into three categories:
1- Pre-reading.
2- While-reading.
3- Post-reading.
By the same token, Alsamadani (2012) listed many effective methods used associated with the previous strategies:
1- Receive supportive instructions and practices from the teachers.
2- Previewing the text and title.
3- Practicing the strategies of skimming and scanning.
4- Trying to guess the meaning of words and put in examples.
5- Having information about the text before the reading exam.
6- Trying to paraphrase the text and questions.
Significance of Study:
This study is significant to identify the effective strategies used by the students in the KFU to be able to answer the reading text in English effectively. The important of this study is to identify the most common problems appears during the English exam for the students such as inability to make inferences and weakness of vocabulary. Spencer et al. (2008) showed that the great significance of unambiguous strategy in developing the reading skills that is effective to increase the student comprehension and developing their skilled readers. Therefore, this study can help the students in the future to use the useful strategies in reading exam by learning more vocabulary, scanning, make inferences, skimming and paraphrasing.
Research Questions:
1- What is the most difficult type of reading test faced the students in KFU?
2- What are the reasons for the students to face difficulties in reading test?
3- What are the strategies used by the students to overcome their difficulties in the reading test?
4- Did the students receive any support from their teachers?
This study uses the quasi-experimental quantitative design to administer a questionnaires and vocabulary test. 12 students divide in two groups by 6 students in a control group and 6 students in an experimental group. The focused group receives a traditional language learning session and the experimental group receives more instructions about the reading text and has more vocabulary. Both groups answer four parts of semi-structured questionnaire using closed-ended questions which are the demographic data and reading test with many questions and interview with them to collect information about the difficulties in reading, strategies to overcome difficulties. The students in both groups take 45 to 60 minutes to answers the paper and they have the chance to offer their recommendations.
Ethical consideration:
I take the approval from the dean of College to work to the study and collect the number of participation. Each student understands that aim of the study and why they supposed to participate. They have complete information about the process of the study. They sign the consent form of participation provided to them by their teachers and Dean of college. In addition, I explain that they have the right to withdraw from the study and their participation is voluntary. I assure them that their name is confidential as well as their answers to prevent them from any risks or harms. The interview is record and kept in a privet file. Moreover, I give the student a card to contact me at any time regarding the study.
Limitations of the study:
This study has a very little sample of students, so the results are not very truthful. Another limitation is the study includes of focus group and experimental group that needs for a large number of students to participate in the study. Addition, the questionnaire from in reading test part is only having one type of reading that is not too easy and not too difficult.
Expected result:
I expect from this study that the students in the experimental group have a higher mark in the reading exam than the focus group. I think that the strategies of instructions and session are effective in improving the students reading skills. I assure that the majority of students in both groups complain from the inference problems in connecting the reading text with the questions. Some students may say that the difficulties also due to the new vocabulary and different synonyms used in the text and questions. They state that they fail to find the correct answers to the vocabulary questions and they do not have enough knowledge about the comprehensive questions. Alongside with the lack of vocabulary, both groups may experience inadequate grammar comprehension that may change their understanding to read the text and fail to answer the questions. In addition, I guess that the students may complain from a long text and sentences that have different modifying phrases. Another reason is the poor knowledge for the students to understand the texts and they do not have read a similar text before. From the interview, students may illustrate that they prefer the pre-reading strategies in comparing with less practice of while-reading and post-reading strategies. I expect that the students may recommend their needs for adequate vocabulary in order to overcome their difficulties associated with the help providing from their teachers. They may assume that they need for cognitive strategies to practice in their classes such as:
1- Review the reading title, pictures and text.
2- Scan and Skim the text.
3- Guess the meaning of unclear words.
4- Ask several questions about the text before reading it.
5- Activate the students’ prior experiences and knowledge.
6- Paraphrase the sentence to understand the meaning of new words.
7- Use a context clue to help the students to get understanding about what they read.
8- Use some pictures to increase understanding.
Conclusion:
Reading is one of the important skills for the students in KFU to gain more understanding about the new words and develop other skills of writing, speaking and listening. This study talk about the most difficulties in English reading test and comprehension question that faced by the Saudi students in KFU. Lack of making inferences type questions, weakness in vocabulary, grammatical complexity, long text and having no previous knowledge about the text are the most common difficulties faced by the students in their reading exam. Therefore, it is very important for the teachers to help the student to overcome their difficulties during their reading test by offering a supportive strategy to understand the text.