Assessing Non-English Department Students’ Mastery of Academic Content Area Reading

Abstract

Assessing Non English Department Students’ Mastery of Academic Content Area Reading. This study addresses mainly college students’comprehension on academic texts. It involves 400 respondents of three state and three private universities in Malang with study programs with ‘high, ‘fair’, and ‘low’ bases on the proportion of the study programs accredited A by the National Board of Accreditation (BAN). Quantitative data were analyzed descriptively and comparatively. The results show reading com­prehension of most respondents ranges from ‘avarage’ to ‘low’. Most word attack skills and text content attack skills are low. Text structure attack skills are not adequately mastered. The respondents’ compre­hension across state universities does not significantly differ, but there is a difference across private univer­sities, limited to certain private universities. A significant difference between the comprehension of stu­dents of state universities and private universities and a significant difference between the comprehension of science and social studies students are evidenced. Most respondents are not yet ready for academic comprehension of English.