Nisa, Jahratun, 2019. The Ability of the Eleventh Grade Students in Reading Exposition Text for Social Program of SMAN 1 Banjarmasin in Academic Year of 2018/2019. Sarjana’s Thesis. English Department, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Lambung Mangkurat University, Banjarmasin. The first advisor: Dr. Nanik Mariani, M.Pd., the second advisor: Elvina Arapah, M.Pd.

Keywords: students’ ability, reading comprehension, exposition text

Reading ability is the capability to be able to understand the meaning of a text. Reading ability is needed for someone to be able to understand a text. There were several reading ability that were described in this research, such as finding main idea, finding specific information, guessing meaning of unknown word from context, and making inference.The purpose of this study was to find out the ability of the students at SMAN 1 Banjarmasin, whether students of SMAN 1 Banjarmasin, especially in social program have good ability or not in reading exposition text and their ability can be categorized in upper level or in the lower level.

This research used descriptive quantitative method. The instrument of this research was a set of test. The test was multiple choice questions that consist of 40 items. The sample of this research were 65 students of eleventh grade students for social program from SMAN 1 Banjarmasin.

The result of this research showed that the ability of the eleventh grade students of SMAN 1 Banjarmasin in academic year of 2018/2019 in reading exposition text was in category fair or average. The students had a problem on the lack of knowledge on vocabulary. The students cannot guess the word that have similar meaning from the context, especially in reading text about guessing meaning of unknown words.

Therefore, it is suggested that the English teacher at SMAN 1 Banjarmasin can gives more reading practice and homework about exposition text, so the students become familiar with exposition text. It is also suggested for students to study more, practice their ability in reading exposition text and practice more to master their vocabulary.