ZULKIFLI Pengarang Rostanti Toba, M.Pd. Dosen Pembimbing 1 Anis Komariah, M.Pd. Dosen Pembimbing 2 Rostanti Toba, M.Pd. Penguji 1 Nadia Sya'ya, M.Pd., M.TESOL Penguji 2 Dr. Shafa, S.Pd.I, M.Pd. Ketua Penguji

Zulkifli, 2024. “Perceptions and Efforts to Overcome Reading Comprehension Difficulties of Eighth-Grade Students at SMPN 15 Samarinda in the 2023/2024 Academic Year”. Thesis, English Education Department, Teacher Training and Education Faculty, Islamic State University Sultan Aji Muhammad Idris Samarinda. This was supervised by Mrs. Rostanti Toba, M.Pd as the first advisor and Mrs. Anis Komariah, M.Pd as the second advisor. Reading comprehension is one of the important skills that students need to obtain information. However, this reading comprehension skill often becomes difficult for students in their learning process, especially in understanding English texts. This difficulty is caused by several factors triggered by students' perceptions related to reading comprehension skills. This research are to find out the perceptions of eighth-grade students at SMP Negeri 15 Samarinda regarding their reading comprehension skills, the factors that influence these difficulties, and the efforts they made to overcome them. The design of this research is descriptive qualitative with a case study approach. The research participants were eighth-grade students at SMPN 15 Samarinda in the academic year 2023/2024 with a total of 10 people were selected through purposive sampling. The data were collected through interviews, observation, and documentation. The data were analyzed using data reduction, data presentation, and drawing conclusion techniques. The results indicate that most students have negative perceptions regarding their reading comprehension ability, especially in English texts. Students' difficulties are influenced by internal and external factors. Internal factors include a lack of English vocabulary and grammar mastery, as well as low motivation and interest in reading. Meanwhile, external factors include limited facilities, reading resources, teaching methods and media, and teacher guidance. Students are quite active in trying to overcome these difficulties, such as asking for help from friends, searching for information from various sources, rereading the text, and applying reading strategies such as answering questions, summarizing, peer review, and evaluating.