Students Difficulties in Reading Comprehension at The First Grade of SMAN 1 Darussalam Aceh Besar

This study focuses on the difficulties faced by the first grade students of senior high school in reading comprehension. The purposes of the study were to find out the difficulties faced by the first grade students of SMAN 1 Darussalam, Aceh Besar and to find out the factors of difficulties in reading comprehension. The method applied was descriptive quantitative, where the test and questionnaire were used as the instrument data collection methods. The test consisted of 20 question items divided into five types of questions, which were main idea, detail information, making inferences, locating reference, and vocabulary. Index difficulty and percentage were used to analyze the data. The result of the test showed that the majority of the first grade students of SMAN 1 Darussalam, Aceh Besar found difficulties including answering main idea, making inference, and locating reference questions. The most difficult aspect that encountered by the students of SMAN 1 Darussalam, Aceh Besar was finding main idea questions, because the located main idea was difficult to find. In addition, based on the students’ responses in questionnaire, they mostly got difficulties in understanding vocabulary, poor mastery of grammar, the difficulty in understanding long sentences, lack of media learning, less support from the family, lack of knowledge of strategies in reading comprehension.