ASSESSING FACTORS AFFECT TEACHING READING COMPREHENSION: THE CASE OF GRADE TEN STUDENTS AT KURFA CHALLE SECONDARY SCHOOL

Abstract

The objective of the research work was to assess the factors affect teaching reading comprehension in Kurfa Challe Secondary School, grade ten EFL classes. The study addressed four objectives. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were employed to analyze the data. Four English teachers and sixty grades ten students participate in the study. To select the samples, simple random samplings were used. The data were collected through questionnaire, semi- structured interview and textbook analysis. Quantitative data were gathered using questionnaire and was analyzed thematically. Then, qualitative data were gathered through semi- structured interview and textbook analysis. The findings suggested that the factors, which affected teaching reading comprehension were such as problem to determine words’ meaning from context, many students do not bring English textbook to the class, students’ limited vocabulary knowledge, lack of flexibility, poor education background, low motivation to read, problem to assimilate the new idea with their previous knowledge, high density of difficult vocabulary, unengaged in a kind of silent dialogue with writer, the reading texts are too long to cover them in a single period and to do the various reading activities, some of the reading texts are too long, great differences in incorporating the different comprehension questions, and most of students are challenged with poor reading strategies: Finally, based on the findings, it was recommended that the students should be read flexibly depending on the type of they are reading and their purpose for reading its, the reading text need to be related with students’ background culture and their language proficiency level, the school should be made the students bring the text book to class, the text should not be too long and full of new words. Moreover, it was recommended that the teacher should be create a friendly atmospheric in the classroom, encourage students to personalize the classroom environment, and boosts students to set their goals.