Assessing the Causes of Undergraduate Management Students’ Reading Difficulties

Abstract

Reading is a vital skill that everyone must develop. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the major causes of management students’ reading comprehension difficulties at Rift Valley University. For this study, descriptive research and a mixed research approach were employed. One hundred twenty-one samples were selected for the survey. A questionnaire and a classroom observation were used to collect data. SPSS version 26 was employed for the analysis of inferential statistics. The result identified the significant factors affecting students’ reading comprehension. These factors are a lack of good teaching methods, a lack of practice, a limited number of reading activities, uninteresting reading activities, and a lack of knowledge of reading strategy. Teachers teaching methodology and reading activities are the most determinant factors that affect students’ reading comprehension. The results of an analysis of variance (ANOVA) that includes multiple comparisons among "mother tongue," "national language," and "English language." that the p-values show less than 0.05 which provides strong evidence that there was a significant difference among the groups. Besides the result of the correlation analysis reveals that majority of pairwise correlation coefficients are high and positive. Mobile device is suggested as an effective tool which is used to improve students’ reading skills.