Assessing and Overcoming Reading Difficulties: Students’ Views on Reading Short Passages

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate how students can maximize and develop their skills for reading short passages. It also aims to explain and evaluate students’ views of and experiences with reading such passages. To meet these objectives, the study adopts a quantitative approach. Data are collected from 540 students studying English in the second semester through an online questionnaire. The study indicates that most participants are intensely interested in developing their reading skills in short passages. It also shows that although most participants can understand the meaning of ‘some’ words in the selected passages, they cannot pronounce/read them accurately. Therefore, the current paper attempts to understand whether these students can shift from a weaker to a stronger level of short passage reading. Based on these findings, we make two recommendations: to adapt short passages to low-ability students and to engage these students with different follow-up systematic reading techniques and practices – which differ from those used with students of higher ability. However, despite the importance of our study findings, further research is still required in this area.