English Reading Comprehension Skills of Second-Year English Major Students

Abstract

Reading comprehension, in particular, plays an important role in students’ learning, especially for Thai learners of English as a foreign language. This study aimed to assess students’ English reading comprehension skills and to examine their self-assessment of those skills. This survey study focused on the English reading comprehension skills of second-year English major students at Kasetsart University, Kamphaeng Saen Campus. The participants were 148 students (69 regular program students and 79 special program students). The research instruments included an English reading comprehension test and a questionnaire. Participants were required to complete a reading comprehension test covering seven skills, consisting of two passages with 25 items. After that, they completed a five-point Likert-scale questionnaire assessing the same seven skills. The data obtained from both instruments were analyzed using descriptive statistics, including percentage, mean, and standard deviation. The results showed that among seven reading comprehension skills assessed, the three highest-ranked English reading skills among the students were interpreting information skill (92.13%), identifying supporting details (90.30%), summarizing information (89.81%) whereas predicting information (75.09%) was lowest. In addition, based on students’ self-assessment, the top three English reading skills were identifying the main idea (M = 3.81), identifying supporting details (M = 3.77), understanding vocabulary (M = 3.75), but summarizing information is the lowest (M = 3.67). This research is beneficial in identifying the strengths and weaknesses of students’ reading comprehension skills.