ABSTRACT

Arifin, Zainal. 2018. “a Descriptive Study on the Reading Comprehension Ability of the Tenth Grade of SMKN 3 Banjarmasin in the Academic Years of 2017-2018”. The English Department of Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Lambung Mangkurat University, Banjarmasin. Advisor (I) Asmi Rusmanayanty, S.Pd., M.Sc. (II)  Dr. Cayandrawati. S, M.A.

Key words: Reading, Ability, Comprehension
This research is aimed to describe the ability of tenth grade students of SMKN 3 Banjarmasin in the academic year of 2017-2018 in reading comprehension ability. It was conducted based on the fact that the need of foreign language mastery was felt to be very important, especially the mastery of English. The research focused on reading comprehension because it was very essential for all people nowadays, especially for senior high school students who spent most of their time in learning by reading.
The research was used a quantitative analysis in analyzing the data. The researcher determined to use purposive sampling method as technique to choose the samples of the population. The researcher took two classes, they were X.A Administrasi Perkantoran and X.B Administrasi Perkantoran with the total of the students are 66 students. The variable of this research is the reading comprehension ability. In this research, the researcher only focused on three of reading comprehension sub-skills. Those are making inference, restatement and drawing conclusion. The descriptive research was used in collecting the data. There were 50 items of multiple -choice as the instrument of the test.
The result of this research showed that the highest percentage of students reading comprehension ability is in good level (51.51%) with 34 students. Furthermore, there are 5 students (7.57%) performed very good level, 24 students (36.36%) performed average level, 3 students (4.54%) performed low level and none of students got excellent or very low level.
Based on the findings, it is suggested to the English teacher to give the students more practice at home, like reading an article in a newspaper then discuss it in the class in order to improve their reading comprehension ability especially to improve their vocabulary.