Shania Pink Viagnestia ASAN Pengarang Nadia Sya'ya, M.Pd., M.TESOL Dosen Pembimbing 2 Dr. Shafa, S.Pd.I, M.Pd. Dosen Pembimbing 1 Anis Komariah, M.Pd. Penguji 2 Dina Destari, S.S., M.Pd. Penguji 1 Dr. Bahrani, M.Pd. Ketua Penguji

Shania Pink Viagnestia Asan. 2023. The Students’ Difficulties in Reading Comprehension of Ninth Grade Students at SMPN 34 Samarinda 2023/2024. Thesis. English Education Department, Teacher Training and Tarbiyah Faculty. State Islamic University (UIN) Sultan Aji Muhammad Idris Samarinda. This research guided by Dr. Shafa, S.Pd.I., M.Pd as the first advisor and Nadia Sya’ya, M.Pd., M.TESOL as the second advisor. Reading comprehension is how the student dealing with the text they read with the aim of gaining a deep and thorough understanding. However, based on the preliminary study, reading comprehension is not easy for some of ninth grade students SMPN 34. The researcher found that the several students had difficulties in understanding vocabulary, determining main idea, making a conclusion in the paragraph and the students are lost confident to read aloud the text. This study also has objectives to analyze the student’s ability in reading comprehension and find factors causing the students’ difficulties in reading comprehension of ninth grade students at SMPN 34 Samarinda. This study used mix method as a research design. The subjects of this study are the ninth-grade students of SMPN 34 Samarinda in the 2023 academic year. The data were collected by using reading test and interviews. In quantitative data, the researcher used and analyzed data by using calculation of mean. While for qualitative data, researcher used three steps, namely data condensation, data display, and drawing conclusion & verification. Data validation of the study was used triangulation method. The result of the study showed that: (1) the ability of reading comprehension of ninth grade students at SMPN 34 Samarinda was in the good category, with the average score in the reading comprehension test was 82,2, nevertheless there are 5 out of 48 students that having difficulties in reading comprehension. (2) the students’ difficulties in reading comprehension of ninth grade students SMPN 34 Samarinda were caused by 8 main factors, namely lack of vocabulary, lack of fluency, lack of familiarity with the subject matter, difficulty level of the text, inadequate use of effective reading strategies, weak verbal reasoning, problems with the processing the information, and problems in recalling information after reading.