An Analysis of English Reading Comprehension Problems Faced By Students of Education at Graduate Level
Abstract
The paper analyses reading comprehension problems of the graduate students from the discipline of Education at the International Islamic university, Islamabad and Allama Iqbal Open University, Islamabad. The researcher has made an attempt to scientifically investigate whether these students can comprehend the text related to their field in English language or not. The researcher has also tried to find out the problems that these students face while reading some text for comprehension. The findings unveil the real picture of the students’ level of understanding the text at the graduate level. In this study two universities from Islamabad capital territory were selected based on convenient sampling.60 graduate students’ reading performance was investigated. To execute the research a comprehension test based on one topic in conjunction with short answers was administered to the graduate level students in both the universities. A questionnaire was also given to the students asking them questions about the problems they face in comprehending a text and the reasons for these problems. The collected data were analyzed through percentage. Data analysis of the test revealed that many of the respondents’ comprehension level was weak however, only few respondents were successful in handling the intensive reading tasks. The questionnaires’ analysis points out some important issues which are responsible for this lack of comprehension.
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