Exploring Students’ Difficulties in Comprehending Exposition Text Towards POE Strategy

Reading is an important skill that students need to comprehend and interpret the content of an English text. Teaching reading at the junior high school level aims to improve students' comprehension skills. The exposition text is one of the genres listed in the English curriculum for junior high school. It is also one of the more challenging genres for learners to grasp when it comes to text comprehension. The aim of this study was to discover students' difficulties in comprehending exposition text based on their reading comprehension level as determined by Barret's Taxonomy.This study was descriptive qualitative. The participant consisted of 42 students from Ponpes Bait Qur'an Kayuagung.The reading test in the form of multiple choice with 40 questions of exposition text was applied in this study as an instrument. Based on Barret's Taxonomy analysis, students' problems with exposition comprehension were linked to literal comprehension, reorganization, inference, evaluation, and appreciation. Hence, the POE strategy is recommended to address students' difficulties in comprehending exposition text.