Background and Rationale
Reading is a necessary skill to be successful in life. People with
high reading abilities seems to have principles that lead them to succeed.
On the other hand, according to Richek, etal. (1996), a child who is poor
in reading often suffers from low self-esteem, and as this child matures,
he/she finds that the doors to personal enrichment and career
opportunities are closed.
Similarly, reading skills are important for students to complete
their study; however, not every student succeeds. The reason for students’
failure is not that they want to fail. In fact, all students want to finish their
studies because they have invested their money and time. Like all
students, the ones with the lowest ability want to complete their education
as soon as possible. However, they need to read well to complete their
studies successfully. As Johnson (1994: 2) points out, high reading ability
is the advantage that helps students to succeed in their college education.
To succeed in their studies, students majoring in English require
higher reading abilities than other students because they have to read in
English. Moreover, their departments assume that the students admitted
possess adequate reading abilities in English because they passed the
school and university entrance examinations. However, as Alderson (2000:
1) states, despite this specific need for reading in English, it is common
that most students fail to learn to read adequately in English. Very
frequently, students reading in English seem to read with less
understanding than one might expect them to have, and to read
considerably slower than they reportedly read in their first languages.