Reading Strategies Employed By Advanced Reading Class

Abstract

Reading was said as an important skill besides other three skills for language learners. Reading was one of the subjects in the English Language Education Study Program that sometimes had a reading comprehension test. It was assumed that the students who had learned reading for three semesters also had learned reading strategies. Thus, the objective of the study was to find out what reading strategies were employed by students of the Advanced Reading class (A1) at the English Language Education Study Program of FKIP Lambung Mangkurat University in batch 2018. The researcher used a qualitative approach to this research. The setting was FKIP of Lambung Mangkurat University. The subjects were Advanced Reading classes at the English Language Education Study Program of FKIP Lambung Mangkurat University in batch 2018. The researcher chose Advanced Reading Class (A1) as a sample. The researcher gave tests to get achievement results. Then, the researcher interviewed two students who were willing to interview. The results of the interviews were presented through descriptive analysis. The findings showed that the interviewee used identifying the purpose in reading, skimming, scanning, guessing, vocabulary analysis, distinguishing between literal meaning and implied meanings, and capitalizing on discourse markers to proceed with relationships. The interviewees have weaknesses in differentiating literal and implied meanings and found it hard to use graphemic rules and patterns to aid the bottom-up decoding using semantic mapping and clustering, and efficient silent reading techniques for relatively rapid comprehension. Based on the research findings, it could be concluded that the interviewees used efficient reading strategies. It was suggested that students had to learn more about reading strategies and do more practice in reading comprehension tests using reading strategies.