A STUDY ON STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION PROBLEMS IN ANALYTICAL EXPOSITION TEXTS AT SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL

Abstract

This study aims to explore the reading comprehension difficulties experienced by senior high school students when working with Analytical Exposition texts. Using a qualitative descriptive approach, the research collected data through individual semi-structured interviews with 38 Grade 11 students at a public senior high school in West Java, Indonesia. The results show that limited vocabulary, especially academic, abstract, and evaluative terms, represents the most prominent and widespread obstacle. Complex and lengthy sentences featuring nominalization, passive voice, and multiple clauses rank as the second major challenge. Students also struggle significantly to distinguish facts from opinions, locate main ideas, and follow the logical progression of arguments due to the specific rhetorical and linguistic features of the genre. Insufficient reading practice and the lack of explicit teaching of reading strategies in regular classroom instruction further aggravate these problems. The study concludes that the identified difficulties are closely linked to the unique characteristics of Analytical Exposition texts rather than general reading weakness. Findings underline the necessity for targeted vocabulary instruction, explicit teaching of text structure, and systematic strategy training to enhance students’ ability to comprehend argumentative texts effectively in the Indonesian senior high school context.