STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION DIFFICULTIES ON NEWS ITEM TEXTS (BBC NEWS) AT ENGLISH EDUCATION STUDY PROGRAM OF UNIVERSITY OF BENGKULU

The objective of this research is to investigate the students’ difficulties in reading
comprehension of news item texts in BBC news and to analyze the students’
possible reasons on the difficulties in reading comprehension. This research was
using qualitative research design. The subject of research was the sixth semester
students of the English Education Study Program at University of Bengkulu. The
instrument used in this research was test and interview. The techniques of
collecting the data were reading test and the interviews. The technique of
analyzing the data were data reduction, data display, and conclusion
drawing/verification. The researcher presented the data from the results of
students’ difficulties in comprehending news item text. The result showed that
there were 13% students who have difficulties in the main idea of the text with the
total of incorrect was 31. Then, there were 24% students who have difficulties in
understanding vocabulary of the text with the total of incorrect was 57. Then,
there were 23% students who had difficulties in understanding making
inferences of the text with the total of incorrect was 55. Next, there were 18%
students who had difficulties in understanding to identify the references with the
total incorrect was 44. Last, there were 22% students who had difficulties in
understanding to look the detail information with the total incorrect was 53. In
conclusion, the most dominate students’ difficulties were understanding
vocabulary and the lowest was identifying main idea. Therefore, the students had
difficulties of understanding the texts and words in the test because did not
comprehend the news item text and lack of reading comprehension.
Keywords: difficulties, reading comprehension, news item texts, BBC news.