Students’ Ability of Reading Exposition At Eleventh Grade Of SMAN 1 Banjarmasin

Abstract

Reading ability is the capability to be capable of understand the meaning of a context. To know and understand a text, everybody needs a reading ability. There are several reading abilities described in this study, like finding a main idea, finding specific information, guessing the meaning of an unknown word from context, and making inference. Researcher need to observe the capability of SMAN 1 Banjarmasin students, whether students of SMAN 1 Banjarmasin, especially in the social program have good ability or not in reading exposition text and their ability can be categorized in the upper level or in the lower level. A descriptive quantitative method is used to describe the research data. The 40 items of multiple-choice questions are designated to be an instrument of this study. The 65 students of eleventh grade students in the social program from SMAN 1 Banjarmasin become a sample of the study. The conclusion of this study indicated that the capacity from the students of the eleventh grade at SMAN 1 Banjarmasin in the academic year of 2018/2019 in reading an exposition text was in category fair or average. The students had a problem in the lack of knowledge on vocabulary. The students cannot guess the word that has similar meaning from the context, especially in reading a text about guessing meaning of unknown words. Therefore, the researcher advised that the teacher of English at SMAN 1 Banjarmasin to give more reading practice and homework about exposition text, so the students become familiar with exposition text. The researcher also advised the students to study more, practice the ability in reading exposition text and practice more to master their vocabulary.