Reading Difficulties In English As Foreign Language Among Primary School Students: A Case Study

Abstract

Language is a strong and useful instrument for communicating ideas, feelings, attitudes, and intentions. Every nation has its own national language. Language learning is a process to communicate with others in a particular language. There are four basic skills (Listening, speaking, reading and writing) for a good communication. Reading is basic and essential skill in language learning. Countries like Pakistan use English as foreign language (EFL) facing difficulties in reading. It is big problem that our students cannot read a text with fluency and proper pronunciation. The study was conducted in order to identify the reading difficulties of primary school students in Islamabad in English. Descriptive research methodology was adopted to collect the data. A questionnaire was designed on five point Lickert Scale for Area Education Office Urban-II Islamabad, which was consisted on 29 primary institutions with 16,225 students. Sample was 406 students from 29 primary schools of Area Education Office Urban-II Islamabad under Federal Government, 14 students from grade five were selected randomly from each school with equal representation. The collected data was analyzed through SPSS for percentage and mean score. Based on findings and analysis, it was found that primary school student were facing difficulties in reading due to several factors, pronunciation, new words (vocabulary), accent, vowel and silent words, spelling variability and fluency. These difficulties were due to traditional teaching practices, lack of reading activities in class and Lack of helping & interactive material like story books. Majority of the respondents suggested that their reading skills can be improved by eliminating phonetic difficulties, Motivation, role play, activity based learning and personalized learning in class, basic English level videos and establishing English Language Lab in primary schools of Islamabad

Keywords: Language, reading skills, reading difficulties, primary school students