Diagnosing Reading Comprehension Problems Encountered by Secondary School Students

Abstract

Reading comprehension is the mental process that the reader makes use of it so that he can understand the content of the reading text. This study aims for diagnosing the problems of reading comprehension encountered second grade secondary schools students in vocabulary and sentence structure, analyzing problems of reading comprehension, and measure students' reading progress in reading comprehension. The study adopted the descriptive analytic method. The population of the study was second grade students and English language teachers at Khartoum north secondary schools. The researcher used two instruments for data collection: two-hour tests that were given for (165) second grade students and a questionnaire which was distributed for (50) English language teachers. Both the tests and questionnaire were checked by supervisor and Khartoum north English language teachers. The obtained data from the questionnaire and test was entered and processed by using (SPSS) program. As result of the analysis, EFL learners show: problems of cohesion; limited word knowledge; teachers’ insufficient follow-up for improving students ’reading comprehension; reading as general is preferably done as home works; there is a problem of systematic classroom process in teaching comprehension. Teachers should give their students additional activities, divide them into groups in order to develop their reading comprehension abilities, correct their students' mistakes, motivate EFL learners to read coherent comprehension, and use different effective techniques to enhance reading comprehension.