Reading comprehension plays an important role in learning a foreign language but it is also a very difficult subject. The current study investigates what difficulties in reading comprehension that the first-year English majored students encounter and what the most common difficulties they face. To handle the issues, 126 first-year English majors at a public university in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam were selected to become the participants in this study. The study results revealed that lacking of background knowledge, inadequate vocabulary, time pressure and inappropriate use of strategies are the four most popular factors causing reading comprehension difficulties. By contrast, the findings reveal that the participants could deal with grammatical structures of the reading texts and have no problem in understanding them. The findings of the study are a good source of information helping students to recognize their own reading comprehension difficulties.

Citation: Nguyen Huynh Trang (2021) Reading Comprehension Difficulties Encountered by First-Year English-Majored Students, International Journal of Education, Learning and Development,Vol. 9, No.9, pp.51-67

Keywords: English-majored students, Reading Comprehension, difficulties