Key terms: problem, reading, comprehension

This research was conducted to know their own problems and also the factors
causing the difficulties in understanding English reading descriptive text.
This research is a case study and it uses descriptive quantitative method. The
subjects of the research are fifteen students of the eighth grade students at SMPN 4
Banjarmasin, who are detected as having problems in understanding English reading
and an English teacher who handles the classes. The questionnaire was used as the
instruments of this study. The questionnaire was used to obtain the data about the
students’ problems in understanding English reading by their own perception.
The finding shows that the majority of the students find problems in
identifying main idea of the text, more than half of students made mistake in
identifying specific word in the text and many students cannot understand the
structure of the text. Whereas, the factors causing the students’ difficulties in
understanding English reading descriptive text are learners’ background, teaching
technique, and the learners’ environment.
Based on the data finding in this research, some suggestions are given to
English teacher that the teacher should emphasize to solve the students’ problem and
also he should learn better to apply the techniques of teaching reading skill. It is also
suggested future researcher that he or she should analyze with different aspects of this
research.