Difficulties encountered by low proficiency ESL students in reading online academic texts

Abstract

Reading is the key component for academic success for ESL students because they are required to read various materials in English. However, reading difficulties may become an obstacle for them to gain knowledge from online sources especially for ESL readers. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate reading difficulties of low proficiency ESL students in reading online academic texts and how they solve the problems as teachers should be aware of reading difficulties the students encounter during online reading so that they can address the problems accordingly. A quantitative research design is used to collect data from a group of 122 respondents from two public universities in Malaysia using 5 Likert-scale questionnaire consists of 16 items. The results showed that the students have difficulties with the sounds of the individual words (M=3.68), getting the overall meaning of the text (M=3.62) and recognizing the words (M=6.61). The students used several strategies to overcome reading difficulties when reading online academic texts, for example by using online dictionaries and re-reading the texts. Some recommendations towards minimizing reading difficulties among ESL students in reading online academic texts will also be presented.