AN ANALYSIS ON THE SECOND YEAR STUDENTS’ ABILITY IN COMPREHENDING PARAGRAPH AT ENGLISH DEPARTMENT OF BUNG HATTA UNIVERSITY

Abstrak

Abstract

This study was designed to describe the second year students’ ability in comprehending paragraph at English Department of Bung Hatta University. To be more specific it was aimed to describe the students’ ability to comprehend topic, stated main idea and main detail of paragraph. This research used descriptive method. The members of the population were 108 students. Forty of them are taken as the sample by using cluster random sampling. The instrument used to collect the data in this research was reading test. The data of this study were gathered using reading test in comprehending paragraph in the form of multiple choice. Before the researcher gave the real test, she tried it out of the test. The result of the data analysis showed that the ability of the second year students in comprehending paragraph was moderate. It was proved by the fact that 50% of the students had moderate ability. Specifically, 72.5% of the students had high ability to comprehend topic, 75% of the students had moderate ability to comprehend stated main idea, and 50% of the students had moderate ability to comprehend main details of paragraph. Based on the findings above, the researcher concluded that the third grade students’ ability to comprehend the generic structure of recount text was moderate. Based on this conclusion it is suggested that the English teacher should explain more comprehensively about the material of paragraph and give more exercises to the students. Besides, the students are suggested to learn and do more exercise.

Key words: Ability, Reading, Paragraph