Analyzing Students' Barriers in Reading Comprehension among the First Grade Students of Sekolah Menengah Negeri 3 Rangkasbitung.

djauhari noor; prof. dr. hadjid harnawidagda; h.ujang suparman, ma, ph.d.;

The purpose of this research is to analyze students’ barriers in reading
comprehension in their classroom. Specifically, this research tries to answer the
questions “What barriers do the students encounter in comprehending English texts?
Why did they find those as barriers? And, what strategies do they use to overcome those barriers? In this research, the data was gathered by doing the classroom observations and interviews. There were nine students and two English teachers chosen purposively as participants involved in this research. Classroom observations were the main technique used by the researcher to collect the data needed; while the data from interviews were used as the supporting data. The data obtained from classroom observations and interviews were than analyzed qualitatively by grouping them into categories based on the errors the students made in comprehending the English text. The major findings of the research are that most students’ respondents being observed and interviewed faced two problems categories: vocabulary, and sentence and paragraph reading. In vocabulary they had problem in meaning, synonym, and antonym. In sentence and paragraph reading they found difficulties in dealing with topic noun, connector, inference, reference, and main idea. And in solving those barriers, the students applied some strategies such as translating the text by having discussions with their friends, teacher, or consulting any difficult words with their dictionary.