Vocabulary knowledge and English reading obstacles faced by Libyan Undergraduate students at Elmergib University

Abstract EN

Reading is one of the prevailing obstacles that Second and foreign language students face due to the average of limited knowledge of vocabulary and sentence structure and considered as the main matter that hinder the ESL\EFL students to comprehend the idea implied in the text(Gunning, 2002) This study investigated Libyan undergraduate students reading problems concerning sentence structure, vocabulary, and reading comprehension.

A descriptive quantitative research method was used to accomplish the objectives of the study.

However, the participants were the students studying in English programs at Elmergib University, Libya It was found from the results of the questionnaire of these three areas that about 30 % of the participants have limited problems with their reading; while most of them (over 70%) had problems in those three areas of the investigation.

The results of the study suggest that most of the participants had a limited linguistic and vocabulary knowledge.