Reading and Writing Problem among B40 Students in Malay Language Learning

The study aims to identify the problems faced by among B40 students in reading and writing skills. This case study is conducted on 16 students from families that do not know B40 and substandard reading and writing in Malay Language. A total of 5 B40 Malay students, 7 B40 Chinese students and 4 B40 Indian students selected as study participants. All these students study in form 1 in two national secondary schools namely as SMKA and SMKB in Hulu Langat district, Kajang, Selangor. 8 B40 students from SMKA and 8 B40 students from SMKB. Structured interviews are used as a data collection tool. Interview data were analyzed narratively where the themes found were based on the analyzed transcripts. The findings of the study show that the main reading problem of B40 students is that they do not know how to read and do not understand what is being read. As for writing problems, B40 students do not know what is written. B40 Chinese students is the weakest students in reading and writing, followed by B40 Indian andB40 Malay students. Through the findings of this study, it can be concluded that the problem of reading and writing among B40 students is an issue that needs to be addressed by teachers, MOE and parents.

EFL Children’s Perception on Reading

Reading has a very significant effect towards individuals’ life. English in Indonesia as a foreign language, so there are many possibilities which the English language students get difficulties in understading reading text. EFL young learners are also still struggling to overcome their reading problems. This research was conducted to find out the EFL children’s reading problem. The data were collected through questionnare and explained descriptively. The questionnare consists of ten questions which is made based on the rubric of reading. The respondents of this research were the 20 students from the fourth grade. The results of the research that the EFL children’s reading problem are students seldom pay attention to punctuation in reading English, students always have difficulty to distinguish the pronunciation of words in English, students always need a long time to understand the reading text in English, students never look for the main idea of the reading text which they read, students have poor reading habit because they unusual read in English or seldom read in English, students seldom even never understand the grammar structures in English when reading, students never even seldom pay attention to the form or the content of the reading text which they read, students never apply any strategies in reading English, students lack of vocabulary when reading English so that they need a dictionary to comprehend the reading text in English, and students do not like or not interested reading English because they are seldom reading in English. Thus, the questionnare show the EFL children’ reading problem.

LITERACY PRACTICE: READING COMMUNITY AND ITS CONTRIBUTION TO SELF-READING

The reading community is the local group of Indonesian in urban area bear on reading. The member provides an opportunity for members to support literacy during the community day and extend reading out of the community day. The reading community activities are individual and grouping reading practice. Besides, the members’ background is in different age and study background. The present study designed to explain the reading members’ on reading motivation, problem and strategy. Furthermore, the researcher explained more about the literacy practice, such as self-reading to depict the reading activity of the member, in terms of time and frequency. The researcher used a mixed method. It is integrating between quantity and qualitative data. Observation applied to get a further background of the members’ reading motivation, problem as well as strategy. Besides, the one on one interview used for describing the self-reading. The respondents of the research are 20 members in a group of the reading community. The members were selected randomly. The result showed members’ reading motivation, reading problem and reading strategy. Those covers curiosity, aesthetic involvement, challenge, recognition, and grade. A reading problem consists of low memory to remember, progressive decline in visual sensitivity, a result of the normal process affect reading, poor reading skill and feel out of place in the conversation that moves quickly. Reading strategy such as using prior knowledge/previewing, predicting, identifying the main idea and summarization, questioning, making inferences, visualizing as well as their self-reading in terms of time and frequency.

READING COMPREHENSION PROBLEMS IN READING SECTION OF TOEFL TEST

This research aims to find out the reading comprehension problems faced by the eight semester English Education Study Program students of Universitas Bengkulu in Reading Section of TOEFL test. The subject of this research is eight semester students of English Education Study Program in academic year 2018/2019 who have taken TOEFL test in Language Laboratory, FKIP, Universitas Bengkulu. The subject of this research is 70 students of 79 students. This research was used descriptive quantitative as the methodology and the data was collected by using questionnaire as an instrument that distributed via Google-form. The questionnaire consisted of 20 statements which represent 5 aspects of reading comprehension problems by Wutthisingchai (2011). This research uses 4-point Likert Scale to measure students perception of reading problem, ranging from never (1 point), sometimes (2 point), often (3 point), always (4 point). The result shows that the majority of the students have problems in reading comprehension in 5 aspects. The percentage average of each aspect from highest to lowest was the reading comprehension problems related to the Reading Comprehension Process. Second problems is Motivation. Third problems related to Background Knowledge. Fourth related to Lack Reading Strategies. The last problems related to Language Knowledge. From the results, it can be concluded that students of the eight semester at English Education Study Program still have reading comprehension problems.Keywords: Reading comprehension problems, TOEFL Test