THE NON-ENGLISH LECTURERS’ READING COMPETENCE IN READING ENGLISH TEXT AT HIGHER EDUCATION IN CENTRAL JAVA

Abstract

Abstract Nowadays, the government offers a lot of scholarships to non-English lecturers to study abroad. However, only a few that could get the scholarship due to their inability to communicate in English or to comprehend English texts. In this paper, therefore, the writers want to find out whether or not the non-English lecturers could get some benefits to comprehend the English texts after being given the manual book developed by the researchers. Besides, the researchers also want to find out the elements of the text that are easy or difficult to be understood by them. The method used in this research was experimental research with the population of non English lecturers at Kopertis Wilayah VI. One hundred (100) people from several universities in Central Java were taken as the sample. Two kinds of instrument for collecting the data, namely reading test and interview were used. Reading test material was taken from the modification of the TOEFL test with the intention to know the ability of non English lecturers in reading English texts and which elements of the text are difficult or easy to be mastered by the lecturers. The interview was used to know the lecturers’ perception on the appropriateness of the manual book given and whether they got some benefits from it.