Factors Affecting EFL College Students Reading Comprehension

RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Submitted to fulfill one of the requirements for conducting research to write a thesis
in the English Teaching Study Program, Faculty of Education and Teacher Training,
Christian University of Indonesia

By :
Name
Student Reg. No.
Department

: Ahmad Mujib
: 111 215 0057
: English Teaching Study Program

ENGLISH TEACHING STUDY PROGRAM

FACULTY OF EDUCATION AND TEACHERS TRAINING
CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY OF INDONESIA
JAKARTA
2014

Table of Contents

Table of Contents..............................................................................................................................

Chapter I: INTRODUCTION
A. Background...........................................................................................................................
B. Problem Statements..............................................................................................................
C. Objective of the Study..........................................................................................................
D. Significances of the Study....................................................................................................
E. Scope of the Study................................................................................................................

Chapter II: LITERATURE REVIEW, CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK AND

HYPOTHESIS
A. Literature Review.................................................................................................................
a.

Nature of Reading Comprehension...................................................................................

b.

Reading Comprehension Process......................................................................................

c.

Reading Problems for English Foreign Language Learners.............................................

B. Conceptual Framework.........................................................................................................
C. Hypothesis..........................................................................................................................

Chapter III : RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

A. Research Method................................................................................................................
B. Place and Time....................................................................................................................
C. Population and Sample.......................................................................................................
D. Data Collection Techniques, Instruments and Procedure...................................................
E. Data Analysis Technique....................................................................................................

References.....................................................................................................................................
Chapter I
INTRODUCTION

A. Background
Learning foreign language means we have to master the four skills of the
language which are listening, speaking, reading and writing. Of all the skills,
reading is essential because not only we can gather knowledge through the
activity but also we can develop other language skills at the same time. While
reading activity takes place we can also learn to speak and listen by reading the
text loudly.
However, reading is not an easy task, readers need to comprehend the
meaning of the text being read otherwise reading will be meaningless.
Comprehending a text means the readers should engage with the text. There have
to be connection and interaction between the reader and the text. Readers should
activate their prior knowledge related to the text being read. So it will help
readers comprehension toward the text.
Moreover, there are many reading strategies that can be applied while
reading. Readers have to be wise in applying the strategies because there are

many text types. Different text types required different strategies to be applied.
Academic reading will need different approach than job related reading or
personal reading. The successful of using strategies in reading will assure
readers comprehension toward the text.
Reading strategies is one of the cognitive factors that affect students
reading comprehension. There are many other cognitives factors that have great
influence on how the students engaged with the text. These reader factors
included background knowledge, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension skills.
What about other factors that related with readers affective intelligent. Do they
have great influence also?
Kenneth J. Rowe (1995) had conducted the research about reading factors
that affect students progress in reading. The research resulted Finally, the
present study has identified that the large variation in students reading
achievement is due to significant between-class/teacher differences. The fact that
such teacher level factors have strong positive effects on students attitudes,
behaviors in classroom, and achievement outcomes is of vital importance, with
profound implications. It was proven that students perception toward their
English teacher somehow affect their motivation to read and to try to understand
the text.
Other than that, Andrejs Geske, Antra ozola (2008) stated that there are
also socioeconomic factors that influence students reading ability. Other internal
factors need to be considered related with the reader, such as age, sex, and reader

interest. Do these internal factors have significant effect on students reading

comprehension?
Therefore, this research aims to investigate the internal factors such as
age, sex, and interest; and external factors such as teacher method and strategies;
that affect EFL College Students Reading Comprehension at the English
Teaching Study Program Faculty of Education and Teachers Training, Christian
University of Indonesia.

B. Problem Statements
The main concern of this study is the factors that influence college
students reading comprehension. Specifically the study sought to answer the
following questions:
1. Is there any correlation between students age, gender, and interest towards
their reading comprehension?
2. Is there any correlation between teacher methods and strategies, and
English language competence towards students reading comprehension?

C. Objective of the Study

This study will be conducted to achieve the followings:
1. To see whether students profile, students interest, and students reading
comprehension are correlated or not.

2. To see students perception on teachers methods and strategies, and

English language competence and how it is correlated with students
reading comprehension.

D. Significances of the Study

This study will hopefully be beneficial to the followings:
1. To the lecturers, this study expected to give encouragement for the lecturers
so they could employ the best strategy in teaching reading to EFL Learners.
2. To the students, this study expected to motivate students so they could find
the best way to improve and to make reading interesting to them.
3. To other researchers, the result of this study can provide a basis for
conducting researches on the same area.

E. Scope of the Study

To make the study focused, the population of the study will be limited
only to the whole students of the English Study Program of UKI. The sample will
be chosen randomly from Executive class. In addition, the data will be collected
through questionnaire and reading examination.

Chapter II
LITERATURE REVIEW, CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK AND
HYPOTHESIS

A. Literature Review
a. Nature of Reading Comprehension
It is believed that reading is a significant and essential area of
development in a native language and foreign language. Reading skill will play
as media to develop the other three skills. Reading may be developed to improve
pronunciation, vocabulary, conversational skill, grammar, and listening skill.
Reading is a complex cognitive process of decoding symbols in order to
construct or derive meaning (reading comprehension). It is a means of language
acquisition, of communication, and of sharing information and ideas (Wikipedia).
English learners, in order to be able to construct the meaning of the text, they
need to develop their reading skill by practicing it and apply some strategies
according to the text they read. In addition, reading is an active act instead of
passive. It means that readers not only do the reading but at the same time also
think creatively and analyze the content of the text.
Reading comprehension has broader meaning than just regular reading.
We define reading comprehension as the process of simultaneously extracting
and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with written

language. We use the words extracting and constructing to emphasize both the
importance and the insufficiency of the text as a determinant of reading
comprehension (www.rand.org). Learners must have the skill and knowledge,
understand vocabulary, and applying some strategies in order to be able to extract
and construct meaning from the text.

b. Reading Comprehension Process

The reading comprehension factors and process can be seen below (as
adapted from UK Department for Education and Skills):

Source : UK Department for Education and Skills

The processes consist of 6 essential parts. First, learners should
understand what the text is about. This can be taken from general themes or main
idea of the text. Next, they have to activate their prior knowledge and see if there
are connections between. Learners will easily relate to a text if they have basic
knowledge about that matter. Learners can also reflect upon responses from text.
In addition, to have deeper understanding of the text, they have to be engaged
with it. Last, learners have to apply reading comprehension strategy to clarify
their understanding.

c. Reading Problems for English Foreign Language Learners

Reading is important for learners to gather knowledge and information
whether the text is on our native language or on foreign language. However
sometimes learners face some problem in comprehending a text, even it is on our
native language. The problems become bigger when it is on foreign language.
Learners do not really understand the vocabulary and the grammar of the
language. It takes some time to comprehend a text in foreign language.
There are also many related factors that affect EFL learners to master the
skill. The issue of age was first addressed with the critical period hypothesis. The
strict version of this hypothesis states that there is a cut-off age at about 12, after
which learners lose the ability to fully learn a language. This strict version has

since been rejected for second-language acquisition, as adult learners have been
observed who reach native-like levels of pronunciation and general fluency.
However, in general, adult learners of a second-language rarely achieve the
native-like fluency that children display, despite often progressing faster in the
initial stages (Wikipedia).
Ellis (1994) stated: sex is, of course, likely to interact with other variables
in determining L2 proficiency. It will not always be the case, therefore, that
females outperform males. Asian men in Britain generally attain higher levels of
proficiency in L2 English than do Asian women for the simple reason that their
jobs bring them into contact with the majority English speaking group, while
women are often "enclosed" in the home. Sex interacts with such factors as age,
ethnicity, and, in particular social class as cited by Shakouri and Saligheh (2012).
Other than that students interest towards reading also affect their eagerness to
learn the language.
More related factors that affect students are teachers methods and
strategies, and their English language capability. Good teaching strategies will
help students to grasp the point of the subject. Moreover, it will make the
teaching learning process more interesting both for the students and teachers.
Last is the text material given by the teachers interesting? Students need to be
comfortable with the material in order to have maximum gain during learning
process.

B. Conceptual Framework
Based on the discussion, the need of reading skill mastery is essential to
learners. Through reading learners can broaden their study into other language
skills such as writing, speaking and listening. However, learning reading
especially in second language is not an easy task. There are many factors
affecting it. Therefore, researcher interested to do this research to find out the
correlation between students reading comprehension and their internal factors
such as age, gender, and interest. Moreover, we also need to know the correlation
between students reading comprehension and their external factors such as
teachers methods and strategies, and their English Language competence. Last,
we need to know the correlation between students reading comprehension and
both of the factors that influence it. Hopefully the result of the research can
improve students reading comprehension and also encourage teachers to apply
the best strategies in teaching reading to English Foreign Learner.

C. Hypothesis
The hypothesis to test in this study is formulated as follow:
Ho: There is no significant correlation between 1) students Age, Gender, and
Interest; 2) teachers methods and strategies, and English Language
Competence; and students reading comprehension

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Ha: There is significant correlation between 1) students Age, Gender, and

Interest; 2) teachers methods and strategies, and English Language
Competence; and students reading comprehension

Chapter III
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

A. Research Method
This study is a case study using the descriptive correlation type of
research. In order to obtain the data the researcher made use of a self-made
questionnaire regarding their profile, the perception of the respondents towards
their English teachers, the text material and its connection to their reading
comprehension level. In addition, to obtain their current reading comprehension
level in English the researcher conducted an English reading comprehension
exam from http://www.examenglish.com/IELTS/index.html.

B. Place and Time

This study will be conducted in the English Study Program of the Faculty
of Education and Teachers Training, Christian University of Indonesia (FKIPUKI) Jakarta in the even semester of the 2014/2015 Academic Year.

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C. Population and Sample

The population of the study is the whole students of the English Study
Program who were active at the time this study will be conducted. The sample
will be taken randomly among all executive class students.

D. Data Collection Techniques, Instruments and Procedure

Data collection will be employed by conducting a survey and an English
reading comprehension examination. The survey will be conducted using a
questionnaire and the exam will be conducted on paper by taking from the online
material.
The questionnaire will be divided into three sections. The first one is
aimed to collect participants demographic variables, such as age, gender,
academic year and interest toward reading English text. The second section is
aimed to gather students perceptions toward English Reading Teachers methods
and strategies, and their English language competence. The last section will be
aimed to gauge participants interest toward some kind of reading genre. These
data will be gauged by asking the participants to indicate their agreement or
disagreement to each statement on a 5-point Likert scale that ranged from
strongly disagree, score 1, to strongly agree, score 5.

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Both instruments will be distributed at the same time on the reading class
activities. It will take 75 minutes to finish both the questionnaire and the reading
comprehension test including the preparation and directions for the participants.

E. Data Analysis Technique

The qualitative data obtained through the questionnaire and quantitative
data obtained through examination will be analyzed using descriptive statistical
operation in the form of table and graphs. SPSS will be administered to
determine the correlation between 1) students Age, Gender, and Interest; 2)
teachers methods and strategies, and English Language Competence; and 3) Text
materials; and students reading comprehension.

References
Aslan, Y. (t.thn.). A Study on the Factors That Affect Turkish Students' Reading
Comprehension Skills. Khazar Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences , 3847.
Education.com. (t.thn.). Reading comprehension factors. Dipetik January 01, 2015,
dari Education.com: http://www.education.com/reference/article/readingcomprehension-factors/
Geske, A., & Ozola, A. (2008). Factors Influencing Reading Literacy at the Primary
School Level. Problems of Education in the 21st Century , 71-77.
Limited, E. E. (t.thn.). IELTS - Exam English. Dipetik April 30, 2014, dari Exam
English Limited.

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NA. (t.thn.). Reading comprehension report. Dipetik April 30, 2014, dari RAND
Corporation.
Rowe, K. J. (1995). Factors Affecting Students' Progress in Reading: Key Findings
from a Longitudinal Study. An International Journal of Early Literacy .
Shakouri, N., & Saligheh, M. (2012). Revisiting Age and Gender Influence in Second
Language Acquisition. Advances in English Linguistics (AEL) .
Skills, U. D. (2005). Understanding Reading Comprehension. DFES Publications.
Wikipedia. (t.thn.). Reading comprehension - Wikipedia. Dipetik April 30, 2014, dari
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_comprehension