Investigating Difficulties Encountered by EFL First Year University Students in Understanding Reading Texts

Abstract

This present research seeks to explore the problems first year undergraduates of ELT are likely to encounter in understanding reading passages. It further aims at demonstrating how students develop their reading skills. It is also inclined to highlight the various ways students can develop their critical analysis abilities. In this study the researcher applied the descriptive and analytical method to analyze the collected data. A questionnaire and a test have been the primary tools to assess the hypotheses. After analyzing and comparing the results with the main hypothesis, the significance indicates that there is highly significant difference among the students. In the light of what stated above, this indicates that first year undergraduate students do face reading comprehension in terms of inferring words meaning, summarizing and understanding discursive meaning of reading comprehension passage. Therefore, the researcher recommends that students should be trained in how they can infer meaning of words when reading, how they can summarize and paraphrase reading comprehension passages and understand discursive messages.