A study on difficulties in reading skills of second year English major students at Thuongmai University

ABSTRACT
Reading is one of the four important skills in learning English. However, the
students have faced a lot of difficulties in reading skill and, therefore, failed to
become successful readers. What, then, are the difficulties that the second- year
students at Thuongmai University encounter in reading skill? And what factors
influence their difficulties?
Therefore, " A study on difficulties in reading skills of second year English
major students at Thuongmai University" is an essential and useful study for
clarifying the above problem. The study will focus major difficulties in reading skill
for second- year English Faculty students and suggest some solutions for students to
deal with their reading difficulties. Participants in the study are second- year
students of English Faculty, Thuongmai University. The research also will point out
and analyze the common difficulties faced by second- year students of Thuongmai
University through data obtained from the questionnaire. Research has obviously
shown that second- year students have many difficulties in the fields such as reading
skill, language, decoding and background knowledge. Based on the research results,
the research will propose some solutions to improve English reading skill so as to
help students in general and students of the English Faculty at Thuongmai
University in particular easily overcome those difficulties to become efficient
readers.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
My graduation paper can be completed thanks to the enthusiastic support from
everyone.
First of all, I would like to express my deep respect and gratitude to my
supervisor Hoang Thi Anh Tho. MA, one of the enthusiastic lecturers of English
Faculty at Thuongmai University. Although her time and work are very busy, she
always assists and contributes to various drafts of my study throughout the process

of implementation and completion of the thesis.
I would like to express my sincere thanks to the teachers in the English
Faculty, Thuongmai University, the second- year students from Thuongmai
University who participated in my survey questionnaire enthusiastically. Thanks to
their support and help in the course of doing the thesis, I have useful information for
the analysis of this study.
Thank you to all my friends and family who have always encouraged me to
overcome difficulties in the process of study and research.
Due to my limited time and capacity, I could not avoid mistakes beyond
expectation. I hope to receive the comments from teachers and friends in order to
enhance my experience and make this research more perfect.
Finally, I wish you good health, happiness, and success in your life.
Thank you sincerely!
Hanoi, 16th April, 2021
Kim
Pham Thi Kim

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

4

TMU

: Thuongmai University

L1

: First language

L2

: Second language


LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

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CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY
1.1.

Rationale
In the trend of globalization today along with the strong development of
science, technology, education, health, English has become an indispensable
communication tool in the world. Policies for exchange and trade with foreign
countries have boosted the demand for learning foreign languages. If you know a
language in addition to your mother tongue, you will have many opportunities to
work in large foreign organized companies with attractive salaries.
The number of businesses associating with foreign partners in Vietnam is
increasing, meaning that using English at work and daily communication is an
effective and necessary tool for each individual. Therefore, learning English well is

considered an opportunity to promote our work, in which the skill that we need to
focus on and practice regularly is reading skill.
Dr. Suess (1978) once had a famous quote about the importance of reading
skill that the more you read, the more things you know. The more that you learn, the
more locations you’ll go.
Reading is the window to help us explore all nooks and crannies of everything
in the world. Reading skills help us to select useful information and apply it in life
and work. With a modern society like today, reading skills are more focused and
necessary than ever. Although learning English is considered compulsory for all
English faculty students; students' English ability to meet proficiency requirements
is not high, including reading skills.
At TMU, the second- year students will learn a subject of The Business that
includes specialized knowledge from basic to complex. In the past, students only
read basically English texts on a certain topic in life, the accumulated range and
vocabulary were only normal. Because of the lack of specialized academic
vocabulary and the difficulty of accessing other resources, the second- year students
of the English Faculty have some difficulties when studying the subjects related to
their major. So, students' reading skills become difficult and limited. Furthermore,
the teaching method at university is far different from the previous one, which is
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also a barrier. This requires students to pay more attention to reading skills to have a
certain amount of vocabulary to meet study and work.
It is obvious that good reading comprehension not only helps us to have a
deeper understanding of the knowledge we are learning, but also promotes our
careers in the future. If we want to learn a language well, we must practice and
master the four skills: listening-speaking-reading-writing, in which reading skill is
closely related and important to the remaining skills.
Identifying difficulties and reasons that prevent students from improving

reading skills, and giving out solutions is very necessary. With all of the above
reasons, I decided to do “A study on difficulties in reading skills of second- year
English major students at Thuongmai University”. Therefore, there are some
suggested solutions to improve reading skills for them. It is hoped that this study
will provide contributions to improve learning English in general, as well as reading
skills in particular of second year English major students at Thuongmai University.
1.2.

Previous research
In this part, the previous studies related to this study will be selected for
reference.
Firstly, the study “Difficulties in Reading of Quy Nhon Second-Year NonEnglish Majors” written by 4 students of Foreign Language departments (Đoan
Tran Thuy Van, Doan Thi Thanh Hieu, Bui Thi Huynh Hoa, Nguyen Thi Thanh
Tam), (2017) is a meaningful and helpful study that the researcher has used as a
source of reference. In this study, researchers pointed out a number of difficulties
faced by second- year students in reading, they are: (1) vocabulary difficulty; (2)
grammar difficulty; (3) discourse difficulty; (4) difficulty in reading comprehension
skills. Besides the above difficulties, the researchers also have found out a number
of reasons that make reading comprehension ineffective and difficult for students,
which are: consciousness and attitude of students learning English; curriculum;
learning methods; teaching methods. With the aim of overcoming students'
difficulties in reading skills, researchers pay more attention to difficulties in reading
comprehension skills suitable for students. To help students develop effective
reading skills, teachers must teach students to be aware of basic reading skills
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including 3 steps as follows: pre-reading, while- reading and after reading activities.
At the end of the study, after clearly identifying the basic difficulties and the causes
leading to those difficulties, researchers have proposed remedial measures for both

students and teachers.
The second study has the title: “A study on the causes of difficulties in reading
skill experienced by first year English majors at Haiphong Private University and
some suggested solutions (Nguyen Thi Huong Nga, 2019). This study is intended to
point out the major causes of difficulties in reading skill experienced by first-year
English majors at Haiphong Private University and provide solutions for both
teachers and students to solve problems related to reading skills, etc. The researcher
expressed concern about students spending less time practicing reading skills,
which is the reason why students are prevented from improving their reading skills.
Finally, “A study of reading comprehension problems in English in English
encountered by first year students of faculty of Vietnamese Studies at HNUE” was
conducted by Ho Van Chung (2012). The researcher focused on two main research
questions: the main reading comprehension problems encountered by first year nonmajor English students at HUE and the strategies students use in processing a text
and solving their comprehension problems. The result of the study indicated the
degrees of difficulties as well as showed that the two most serious problems
preventing the students ‘s reading were: (1) insufficient vocabulary; (2) the need to
reread.
All the studies mentioned above have helped researchers point out the key
difficulties in students' reading skills, and then find solutions to overcome those
difficulties. Previous studies on this topic not only bring the researcher useful
knowledge, but also contribute significantly to the researcher to carry out the “A
study on difficulties in reading skills of second year English major students at
Thuongmai University” to collect a variety of students' opinions on reading skills,
find out difficulties and offer suggested solutions to improve English reading skills
of students.

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1.3.

Aim of study
From all of causes mentioned in part 1.1 (Rationale), the general aim of this
study is:
✔ Finding out the major difficulties in reading skill by of second year English major

students at Thuongmai University
✔ Suggesting some solutions for students to deal with their reading difficulties

The researcher finds that study on difficulties in reading skills of students is
necessary, helping them find out the difficulties in reading skills and its causes in
order to improve the quality of reading skills for the English learning process.
The researcher hopes fully this study will help students to better understand
the importance of reading skills, solve problems to become more professional while
working at the company.
In order to achieve the goals mentioned above, the study will focus on the
following questions:
✔ What are the attitudes of second- year English major students at Thuongmai

University toward reading skill?
✔ What are common reading difficulties of second-year English major students at

Thuongmai University?
✔ What factors affect the difficulty in reading skill of second- year English major

students at Thuongmai University?
✔ What are possible solutions to student’s reading difficulties?
1.4.

Research subjects

Study subjects are second-year students of the English Faculty at Thuongmai
University in the academic year 2021-2022. The researcher studies about 80
students from the English Faculty. Furthermore, these study subjects were randomly
selected and not based on their English reading proficiency.

1.5.

Scope of the study
The article only focuses on the difficulties that second- year students of the
English Faculty at Thuongmai University face in learning to read English, the
causes and factors that affect reading skills, and suitable solutions for them to
improve their English. In addition, due to the limitations of time, funding, facilities
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and experience of the researcher, the study is only conducted based on 80 secondyear students of the English Faculty (2021-2022) at Thuongmai University.
Hopefully the study will help students have an overview of common difficulties in
reading skills and necessary solutions in improving English reading skills.
1.6.

Research methodology
In order to complete this study, with the help of teachers and students in the
English department of Thuongmai University, the researcher conducted a survey
questionnaire for 80 second-year students of the English Faculty who are selected at
random. To obtain accurate information and data, the study must include the
collection, classification and analysis of the data, as well as the description of the
results.
The questionnaire was used as a primary research tool to collect data as
Dornyei (2007: 101) states that: “The popularity of questionnaires is due to the fact
that they are relatively easy to construct, extremely versatile and uniquely capable

of gathering a large amount of information quickly in a form that is readily
accessible”. The questionnaire was considered a means of presenting more
objective research results from each student's point of view to identify some
difficulties in reading skills of second year students, English Faculty at Thuongmai
University.
Based on the questionnaire data collected from 80 students, the researcher
calculated and converted to the percentage related form corresponding to each chart
of the question. After collecting results from the questionnaire, the researcher gave
some suggestions to improve English reading ability.

1.7.

Organization of the study
My graduation thesis includes four chapters:
Chapter 1 (Overview of the study): In this part, the researcher will explain the
reason for choosing this topic as well as Rationale, Previous research, Aims of the
study, Research subjects, Scope of the study, Research methodology and
Organization of the study.

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Chapter 2 (Literature review): The researcher provides theories related to the
study such as overview of reading, difficulties in learning reading skill and factors
affecting reading difficulties.
Chapter 3 (Research findings): In this chapter, the researcher details the
reasons why to choose the combination of quantitative method and qualitative
method.
Specifically, the researcher expresses how to provide a way to collect and
process data, thereby giving results and analyzing them.

Chapter 4 (Recommendations and suggestions): From the results of chapter 3,
the researcher gives some recommendations to solve this problem. At the same
time, the researcher must identify difficulties of second- year English major
students at Thuongmai University in reading skill and some suggested solutions as
well as implications for teaching and learning reading skill at Thuongmai
University.

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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
In this chapter, the researcher will present theoretical backgrounds related to
the study. The chapter focuses on introducing definitions of reading skill as well as
reading comprehension, discussions on the importance of reading skill and theories
for types of reading skill. The researcher will also provide difficulties in learning the
reading skill and factors affecting reading difficulties. To make the point clear, we
will explore each of the important theories below.
2.1. Theoretical background of reading
2.1.1. Definition of reading
Reading skill is crucial in every field. For example, in the import-export and
logistics sectors, employees need to read industry-related terms and understand it in
order to do their job well. In high schools, students must equip themselves with
good reading comprehension skills to be able to solve the questions in the test. In
the translation course of students of English Faculty, Thuongmai University,
students also need to have good text reading comprehension skills to be able to
understand and translate all the meaning of the text. Nearly every field requires
good reading skills. Therefore, reading is valued and important in the workplace,
and people with good reading skills often solve problems quickly and are perceived
as more trustworthy. Many people ignore the importance of good reading, yet it is
an important career factor and the basis for successful communication.

There are many definitions from the dictionary given by many writers and
researchers. These following ones are basic theoretical background of reading for
this study:
First and foremost, the term reading has been defined by the Cambridge
dictionary as the skill or activity of getting information from books. Other definition
by Collins English Learner’s Dictionary (2003), reading is an act of looking at and
understanding points.
In Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistic (1985):
1. Perceiving a written text in order to understand its contents. This can be done

silently (silent reading). The understanding that result is called reading
comprehension.
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2. Saying a written text aloud (oral reading). This can be done with or without

understanding of the content.
Besides, many researchers have also written about reading and led to a large
number of its definitions.
According to Diane Henry Leipzig (2001), reading is defined from the
traditional point of view as follows:
Reading is a multifaceted process involved in word recognition,
comprehension, fluency, and motivation. Learn how readers integrate these aspects
to make meaning from print. To - make meaning out of print, we must: Identify the
words in print – a process called word recognition; Construct an understanding from
them – a process called comprehension; Coordinate identifying words and creating
meaning so that reading is automatic and accurate – an achievement called fluency.
Козак (2017:7) pointed out that the student also feels complication learning to
read:

"Reading is a complex activity that involves both perception and thought.
Perception is a way of regarding, understanding, or interpreting something; a
mental impression. Thought is an idea or opinion produced by thinking or
occurring suddenly in mind. Reading consists of two related processes: word
recognition and comprehension. Word recognition refers to the process of
perceiving how written symbols correspond to one’s spoken language.
Comprehension is the process of making sense of words, sentences and connected
text. Readers typically make use of background knowledge, vocabulary,
grammatical knowledge, experience with text and other strategies to help them
understand text".
To sum up, from all these opinions above, researchers reflect the reading
definition from their own point of view, a definition of reading skill can be
obtained. Reading is a complex process consisting of many stages where the reader
can recognize the entire message of the text and understand the implications of
those messages, and can finally decode them.

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2.1.2. The importance of reading skill
Reading skill plays an important role for students and greatly influences their
future job success, as well as background knowledge for other language skill.
Reading is the fastest and simplest way to raise people’s educational level (Hung &
Tzeng, 2001). In other words, reading is the best and only way of enabling humans
to absorb new experience and replace old views. Reading is one of the basic skills
for students and everyone in today's society. Reading skills help develop our brain.
For example, when we read a word, sentence or even a text, we will first take over
the word and start coding to understand its meaning. This also helps us to develop
language skills and is a basic foundation for improving the remaining skills.
Lado (1977:233) stated that “Reading is an active thinking process where a

reader uses both important textual information and prior understanding of that
information to comprehend the passage. Reading in the content is not just reading
as kind of transfer for written symbols to a sound like reading aloud, but reading
established with understand the meaning of the words, sentence and paragraph
sensing relationship among the ideas”. Through reading can be a piece of news, a
story or an article, etc. the reader perceives new things, new information and
cultivates ourselves with new approaches from different perspectives. With
countless new things, reading skills play an important role in helping us to select
useful knowledge for study and future success.
In addition, reading also helps open a new world and fosters the imagination
of students, especially second- year students in the English Faculty at TMU to learn
in an environment exposed to English-related subjects and must use a lot of reading
skills. Learning to read helps students improve their vocabulary every day, and
improve their understanding of listening, which is very important in finding a good
job. Many jobs require good reading as a baseline for salary assessment. Students
need to read to summarize the main ideas in order to fully understand the lesson
content, or the boss needs to read the full worksheet to convey to the staff. We need
to read the ingredients and usage of certain products written in English. Poor
reading skills increase the time to absorb and react more slowly than others.

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Without good reading comprehension skills, a person will be limited in the progress
of completing the work that they set, meaning that their rights are less than others.
Finally, why is reading so important? It is obvious that students who read to
understand the text each day score higher and accumulate more knowledge than
other students. Reading helps us learn more about new and improved things in our
own lives. Moreover, according to the above opinion of the experts it is related with
this study that reading is a simple process to think about the message to comprehend

the text and simplest way to get education.
2.1.3. Classification of reading skills
For reading effectively, depending on the specific text, students need to define
the purpose of reading. On that basis, students apply appropriate reading skills to
achieve their goals quickly and effectively. If you apply wrong reading skills, the
text acquisition will take time and be ineffective.
According to purpose, Grellet (1981:12): skimming, scanning, intensive
reading and extensive reading.
✔ Skimming: read quickly for the main ideas.
✔ Scanning: look quickly to search a specific piece of information.
✔ Intensive reading: read short texts to find specific information.
✔ Extensive reading: reading longer texts for pleasure and for an overall

understanding.
2.1.3.1. Skimming
Skim is a quick reading to find the main ideas or “gist” of the text, not go deep
into the content of any paragraph. With this skill, students do not need to read the
whole text but still grasp the overall content and the general idea, thus increasing
reading speed and saving time.
According to Leo (1994), he states that skimming is one of the reading
techniques that are aimed at getting quickly the main ideas and the purpose of a
reading selection. Skimming is a very important aid to help students find out the
information wished quickly. In skimming, readers just see the text at a glance;
readers just survey the text without carefully reading it. They only use the clues that

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are in the book to receive the information needed. Before skimming, readers have to
remember the most important parts of a chapter, article, or paragraph.

Grellet, F. (1981) claimed that when skimming, we go through the reading
material quickly in order to get its gist, to know how it is organized, or to get an
idea of the tone or the intention of the writer.
When should skimming apply?
When we encounter too long text with limited time, it is appropriate to use
skim skill by skimming for key content that helps you quickly locate information,
making sure you are spending your time wisely and deciding if this is the main
paragraph of the essay?
How to skim?
Read the title of the text, after reading the introduction attentively to identify
the main content throughout the text.
Read the topic sentences of each paragraph (usually the first sentence of the
paragraph and even the second sentence) to get the gist of the paragraph.
After that, you look down at the end of a paragraph looking for important
information regarding the main context and sometimes contain a summary of the
text.
2.1.3.2. Scanning
Scanning is another effective technique for speeding up reading. Unlike
skimming, when using scanning, you just need to quickly read the article to find the
necessary information or partial information for answering the question without
reading the entire text.
Another definition made by Leo (1994: 39), he states that “scanning is one of
the reading techniques that is aimed at looking for and getting the details, facts,
numbers, and specific bits of information that are in the text. Readers apply
scanning in reading to locate specific information and get an initial impression of
whether the text is suitable for a given purpose. When scanning, readers do not
follow the linearity of the passage to get the information wished”.
When scanning, we just try to locate specific information and often we don't
even track the linearity of the passage to do so. We simply scan the text until we
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find what we're looking for, whether it's a name, a date or a less specific piece of
information. Therefore, skimming is a more thorough activity that requires an
overview of the text and implies a definite readability. On the contrary, scanning is
much more limited because it only means retrieving any information relevant to our
purposes. However, it is common to use these two operations together when reading
a given text. In actual read performance, it is difficult to distinguish between scans
and scans because the scan inevitably involves a number of scans and scans must
include some scan operations (Nunan, 1999).
When should skimming apply?
Scanning is used when you need to find important data related to the article
such as names, numbers, dates, facts or phrases without having to read the entire
article to grasp the content of the text. Scanning allows you to find lots of
information with limited time.
How to scan?
Analyze how text is organized before scanning
Always remember and guide the type of information you need to find in a
specific and accurate way. The more you define specific data, the easier it is to find
information and avoid wasting time
You need to determine which part of the article the information is in, read the
relevant questions to easily identify the question and find the answer.
Both skimming and scanning can help you find specific information in no time
and get an overview of the main content of the article.
2.1.3.3. Intensive reading
Intensive Reading, sometimes called "Narrow Reading", is used on shorter
texts in order to extract specific information.
In the opinion of Brown (2001) intensive reading is usually a classroomoriented activity in which students concentrate on the linguistic or semantic details
of a paragraph.
Another view, Grellet, F. (1981) states that intensive reading means reading

short text to find out specific information. This is an accuracy activity involving
reading for detailed.
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Using intensive reading technique, you must understand the structure of the
text in order to absorb the many meanings of the words as easily as finding
information.
Intensive reading activities include skimming a text for specific information
to answer true or false sentences or filling gaps in a summary, scanning a text to
match headings with paragraphs, and scanning jumbled paragraphs and then reading
them carefully to put them into the correct order.
This is one of the reading skills that require great concentration and analytical
effort. Therefore, if you want to read a text with intensive reading skills, you should
choose the text with short, attractive and attractive content to read in a short time. If
the content is not interesting, you will run the risk of boredom, exhaustion and
quickly forget the content of the text. The ultimate goal of intensive reading is to
understand text to the smallest detail. The material on News articles, Wikipedia
articles, Short stories, Blog posts, etc. is an ideal resource for intensive reading of
students, especially second year students in the English Faculty at TMU to enhance
vocabulary for their study.
2.1.3.4. Extensive reading
A definition given by Grellet, F. (1981) that extensive reading means reading
longer texts, usually for one’s pleasure and interest. This is a fluent activity, mainly
involving global understanding.
While intensive reading requires high concentration and effort from students,
extensive reading requires low mental effort and provides enjoyable experiences for
them. The more extensive reading you do, the more exposed you to many different
sources of knowledge, the faster your knowledge and reflexes will increase.
Specifically, if you wish to read a text extensively, you have to read interesting text

of content, of moderate length, suitable for your current level so that you can relax
and motivate reading.
In addition to the books according to the classroom program, students are
allowed to choose books according to their preferences. They can encourage
reading for joy, enjoyment and more effective reading. The ultimate goal of reading
is to help students enjoy and increase reading fluency.
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2.2. Difficulties in reading skill of students
No one can deny the important role of reading skills to the development in the
fields of economics, politics, education, academic research and professional
success. In this skill, students apply suitable reading methods to find out key
information, analyze the content of questions to find suitable answers. As a result,
students have good reading skill, they can understand the entire text and find
information quickly. In fact, students without good reading skill, they may be
apprehensive about the classroom reading lessons, or it could be a major barrier to
their lack of concentration in learning the skill well.
After those class discussions, they feel they do not get enough of the text and
of course their level of knowledge is less acquired than other students in the class.
This situation is prolonged, they will be left behind in the common ground of the
class or not experience interesting reading, as well as limited opportunities to
acquire more knowledge. However, it will be more difficult to learn a language
other than a first language well and so is learning reading skills. Therefore, this
study is designed to identify the difficulties that second- year students in the English
Faculty at TMU face in their classroom learning to decide which learning methods
are used to improve students' reading skills.
2.2.1. Background knowledge problem
The main purpose of students going to school is to learn, but if students do not
have necessary background knowledge, reading comprehension is considered a

barrier. Background knowledge plays an important role in students' reading skills.
In fact, second- year students with a good background will read comprehension
better and save time than students with poor background.
Some studies have shown that background knowledge problems also affect
students' reading ability. Researcher Tenaha O'Reilly of Educational Testing Service
(ETS)'s Center for Research on Human Capital in Education (2019) claimed that
background knowledge plays a virtual role in students' reading comprehension - our
study show that if students don't have sufficient related knowledge, they'll probably
have difficulties understanding text. We also found that it's important to measure
students' knowledge quickly by using natural language processing techniques. If a
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student scores below the knowledge threshold, they'll probably face the difficulty in
the reading skill.
Previous studies have shown that students with poor reading skills,
including decoding vocabulary, perform worse than other students. But research by
O'Reilly and colleagues Zuowei Wang and John Sabatini of ETS have different
opinions about difficulty in reading, they argue that background knowledge is also
an important factor influencing reading ability of students.
Students often associate what they read with what they know. Therefore, it is
very important to have background knowledge of the topic they are reading before
starting to understand. Essential background knowledge helps students extract data
and grasp content quickly.
2.2.2. Language problem
Previous studies reported by Alderson (1984) and Yorio (1971) have given
views on language in reading problem that L2 reading comprehension may be more
clearly associated with L2 proficiency than with L2 reading comprehension”.
Specifically, Alderson (1984) pointed out that reading ability is related to or indeed
part of the cognitive/academic language proficiency dimension and students who

are proficient readers in their L1 are more likely to become efficient readers in the
L2 than are poor L1 readers. Yorio (1971) claimed that a successful reader is largely
attributed to second language proficiency and L1 interference.
2.2.2.1. Difficulties related to vocabulary
Students who read the text in their L2 will have a slower reading speed than
their L1. Moreover, students do not know what meaning is used in the text with
multiple meanings. They tend to look at each word and read slowly from beginning
to end without grasping the main information of the text. Therefore, when
encountering a long document with a lot of new words, they still apply “word-byword” reading, not focusing on memorizing key points in the text. As a result, the
stored information is left very little at the end of the reading, it is difficult for them
to remember what they just read in the previous paragraphs.

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If students have to encounter too much unfamiliar vocabulary, they will have
difficulty to grasp the overall concept conveyed in the sentence. They are also
challenged when reading idiomatic expressions and phrasal verbs (get back to, run
this by, count on, etc.).
Students with large vocabulary, they do not have difficulty in understanding
the content of the text. These students tend to prefer reading a lot to absorb
vocabulary every day rather than students with little vocabulary.
2.2.2.2. Difficulties with grammar
Lack of processing ability or grammatical knowledge interferes with higher
level text comprehension. First, Perfetti (1999) pointed that grammar is a difficult
problem mainly due to the overlap between grammatical knowledge and
vocabulary. Therefore, it’s necessary to isolate the contribution made by grammar
from that of vocabulary and create a clear grammar.
In addition to the above problems, students also face many different
difficulties when they start reading skills. The problem most students face is that

they have to deal with unfamiliar and difficult reading topics. This issue is also
known as "text problem". It happens when learning to read a rather strange content
text along with many new grammatical structures. Students will begin to find it
difficult and not interested to continue reading it. Therefore, they cannot understand
the meaning of long sentences and even the entire text. They are not familiar with
some of the strategies for dealing with the grammatical structures used in the text.
They may encounter the difficulty in a story "grammar" or the organizational model
of informational text. They may not be familiar with the structures used in the text.
Moreover, students cannot remember all the grammatical structures they learned
and understand the meaning of the new grammar structure that just appeared. Even
long sentences are also a great difficulty in the student's reading process.
During the reading process, students will analyze the organization of the
paragraph and the entire text to make reading easy and find the sentence containing
the important information of the text in the fastest way. Students do not understand
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" How is the text organized?” and “How the sentences are linked together? "is one
of the difficulties of students when reading.
2.2.3. Reading method problem
Reading skills have long been a topic of interest to researchers. According
to Alderson (2000), reading skills are divided into 8 essential skills such as:
-

recalling word meanings

-

drawing inferences about the meaning of a word in context

-

finding answers to questions answered explicitly or in paraphrase

-

weaving together ideas in the content

-

drawing inferences from the content

-

recognizing a write’s purpose, attitude, tone and mood

-

identifying a writer’s technique

-

following the structure of a passage.

Reading well requires students to use all of the above methods. In practice,
however, students do not know how to use appropriate reading methods or use them
in the wrong way. In other words, they cannot summarize the main ideas of reading
text through each paragraph, and of course the reading is very difficult for them.
Reading is an active skill, practiced repeatedly, and involves judging and
predicting words and meanings of text. In the long text, students cannot predict the

meaning of new words used in the text. The students' limited reading methods also
create many problems. For example, students must encounter some problems in
reading skills such as slow reading, not understanding the content of the article to
summarize the main ideas, not predicting the vocabulary meaning used in the text.
Students can be trapped in the following vicious circle:

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Figure 2.2. The vicious circle of the weak readers (Nuttall, 1982)

(Source: />Iftanti’s study also shows that most EFL students do not have good reading
methods even though they have learned English in school (2012). This situation can
be caused by the teacher or the habit of reading less often. Like second- year
students at Thuongmai University, although they have been familiar with reading
comprehension skills from high school, the reading skills of students in universities
are still limited.
In addition, Farshad farzami (2016:10) pointed out that “ Lack of

concentration during reading” and “Inability to connect ideas in a passage ”
are the main causes leading to barriers in reading method.
2.3. Factors leading to students’ difficulties in reading skill
2.3.1. Lack of motivation
There have existed many definitions from researchers about motivation in
L2 learning. However, all the researchers share the same opinion that motivation
combines effort and desire along with a favorable attitude and happens as a result of
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a combination of internal and external influences. According to William and Burden

define motivation as:
“...motivation may be construed as a state of cognitive and emotional
arousal, which leads to a conscious decision to act, and which gives rise to period
ofsustained intellectual and/or physical effort in order to attain a previous set goal
or
goals”
(William and Burden, 1997:120)
Saville- Troike (2006:85) claimed that motivation is a significant factor that
explains L2 learners’ success “it largely determines the level of effort which
learners expend at various stages in their L2 development, often a key to ultimate
level of proficiency”.
Motivation plays an important role not only in L2 learning but also in reading
skill. Motivation influences reading behaviors across cultures and languages (Lorch
& van den Broek, 1997; Oldfather, 2002; Wigfield, 1997). Indeed, if skillful readers
lack motivation, they can feel difficult to become effective readers (Watkins &
Coffey, 2004).
It is said that students’ motivation has an effect on both the result of reading skill
and the process of understanding. If the students have no interest in the text, the
reading activity will become a pressure on them. It makes them unwilling to read
and the reading may not even happen. This is also one of the factors causing
difficulties for students in reading skills.
In case the students are motivated to read, they will try to read with the desire to
find information, ideas and find specific answers to the questions they are interested
in.
2.3.2. Poor concentration
It is obvious that poor concentration leads to difficulty and ineffectiveness in
reading skills as well. This skill requires a highly concentrated effort to retrieve all
the data, so your brain is always thinking about the reading and ignoring any
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external influences. If you focus poorly on any text, students will have difficulty
becoming successful readers.
It is not surprising that any form of poor concentration makes learning to read
very hard because it's a skill that takes long-term practice and application to master.
There are a lot of theories on how to help a student with concentration difficulties,
but the key way is to make them interested in the task and keep the sessions short.
Here are a number of behaviors that Everest Education (2019) has pointed out
in reading skills:
 an inability to sit still
 is easily distracted
 has problems following instructions
 has problems organizing themselves, or is constantly losing things
 difficulty completing school work
 has poor handwriting compared to other children of the same age
2.3.3.

Poor comprehension
Sometimes students think they can read, but it is not yet certain they

understand what they read. Decoding the words incorrectly they meet, they are
likely to ignore that word. Text causes the meaning of words students understand
less than words they do not understand. Therefore, reading the text becomes more
challenging and difficult to read than ever. That is why poor comprehension skills
can affect the ability to read a text at a high level.
Above are 9 factors affecting reading difficulty of students. Similarly, Birch
(2008: 11) pointed out that:
“Young learners’ development of English L2 reading skill is influenced by a
number of factors, such as age, motivation, aptitude, personality, gender, strategies,
learning style, metacognition, autonomy, beliefs, L1, L1 reading skill, L2 oral skills,

prior knowledge, a text read, teaching method, and exposure to L2 printed material.
To be able to understand how L2 readers develop reading in English and how best
to support them, teachers need to know “what factors complicate the acquisition of
the knowledge and processing strategies for effective reading in English”
2.3.4.

Words “moving around on the page”
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