A survey study of English reading comprehension problems as perceived by grade 6 students in Thailand

The objective of this study investigated the reading comprehension ability of Grade 6 students at a public school. The research focused on identifying the primary students’ reading comprehension problems while completing the English reading comprehension. The data were collected from students about 150 students at school. The research instrument was the questionnaire divided into two parts: the reading comprehension problems and the interview to analyze direct problems. The quantitative results from the questionnaire in the first part were analyzed using Microsoft Excel and reported in the form of descriptive statistics. The second part was the interview of students’ reading comprehension in high-level problems when completing the questionnaire. The results revealed the participants’ reading comprehension problems in qualitative results. In all average mean in the moderate level (X ̅ = 2.02). The highest average mean which illustrated the factors of reading texts problems were reading strategy part (X ̅ = 2.072), vocabulary part (X ̅ = 2.070) and grammar part (X ̅ = 2.015) whereas the last three lowest means which were presented in environment (X ̅ = 1.93), content part (X ̅ = 1.854) and other problems part (X ̅ = 1.854).The results showed on how vital reading comprehension were when they performed a reading comprehension in their study. Even though, the results revealed the significant effects on the English reading comprehension problems, the average means of individual factors were slightly different. From the students’perspective, they considered that English reading comprehension was difficult for them because they did not know enough words to read the texts. However, they believed that they could improve their reading skills if they usually read in English texts and study from the teacher who could improve their English reading skill at school.