DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED BY SAUDI EFL LEARNERS IN ENGLISH READING COMPREHENSION
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Abstract
This study is designed to investigate and discuss the problems encountered by Saudi EFL learners in English reading comprehension in a given text.The descriptive approach with its quantitative component is the technique used for data collection. To achieve these objectives, data of this study werecollected from a questionnaire distributed to 150 experienced English language instructorsat Albaha University and other Saudi universities. The questionnaire consists of twenty statements that served to achieve the goals of the study. This study concludes that vocabulary knowledge is essential for reading comprehension, the text's structure hinders comprehension,and reading strategies are helpful in comprehending English text. Finally, the study has valuable implicationsin that the students should be taught how to read every English text according to the purpose of reading, and English language teachers should explain a few keywords during the reading process.
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