An Investigation Of Factors That Affect Students’ Reading Skills In Elt: The Case Of Grade 10 Students Of Kersa And Modjo High Schools.

Abstract

The main objective of this study was to investigate factors that affect students’ RS in ELT at Kersa and Modjo High Schools of grade 10 students using descriptive survey research design which involved both quantitative and qualitative techniques. The study has specifically achieved its objectives such as examining how English teachers of both schools teach purposes of reading before they start teaching reading text, and so forth. The subjects of the study were 2 English teachers from Modjo High School and 1 English teacher from Kersa High School, totally 3 teachers for interview, and also 3 students from Modjo High School and 1 student from Kersa High School. 49 students of Kersa High School and 219 students of Modjo High School, totally 268 students for questionnaire were also subjects of the study. Simple random sampling technique was used to select student respondents for questionnaire and purposive sampling technique was used for teacher and student respondents of semi-structured interview questions. Fulfilled questionnaire was organized and then grouped, tabulated, analyzed and interpreted in terms of words and numbers. And, the conducted interview was recorded, transcribed, analyzed, and interpreted qualitatively. The principal data gathering instruments that the researcher used were questionnaire for the students, semi-structured interview for teachers and students and observation to triangulate the findings of the study based on the data. The results of the study revealed that most of the students were unable to identify the purpose (the why) of their reading while they read different texts because they have not been implicitly taught the purposes of RS. Besides, few of the students used techniques such as reading main points of a text, rereading a text for clarity, looking up meanings of unfamiliar words in dictionaries, and guessing meanings of key words contextually, to answer comprehension questions extracted from reading texts. Some of the problems that teachers and students faced in teaching and learning reading lessons were most of the students’ lack of motivation in learning RS, absence of RS related reference books to read in the libraries of the schools, students’ being reluctant in learning reading lessons, students’ lack of vocabulary words to understand written texts, and teachers’ using of students’ mother tongue during teaching RS lessons. Eventually, the researcher has forwarded possible recommendations on the bases of findings and conclusions.