Initial Reading Difficulties in Second-Grade Elementary School Students

Beginning reading is an ability that students must master in elementary school. In the implementation process, students who still have difficulty in beginning reading are sometimes found. These difficulties become an obstacle in the student's learning process because success in mastering reading skills at the initial reading stage will impact the development of subsequent reading skills. This research aims to analyze the types of initial reading difficulties in students, the factors that influence initial reading difficulties in students, and the efforts made by teachers to overcome initial reading difficulties in second-grade elementary school students. This research uses descriptive qualitative methods. Data collection techniques are done through interviews, observation, tests, and documentation. The study results showed that three second-grade students had difficulty reading initially. In research, it is known that the types of initial reading difficulties in students are: (a) not fluent in reading, (b) many errors in reading, (c) difficulty distinguishing similar letters, (d) inability to understand symbols sounds. Factors that influence students' initial reading difficulties are physiological, intellectual, environmental, and psychological factors. Efforts made by teachers to overcome students' initial reading difficulties are: (a) giving assignments to students, (b) providing additional hours after school, (c) preparing reading learning media such as alphabet letter posters, letter cards, and books that support students' initial reading ability, (d) teaching using the alphabet method.


INTRODUCTION
Reading is a process that is tried and used by readers to get the message that the writer wants to convey through words/written language (Purba et al., 2023;Setyawan et al., 2020).In this case, reading can be an attempt to find the meaning in writing.Readers can gain new insights and knowledge from the messages conveyed by the author.If someone has reading skills, they will gain new information and experiences, which are important in expanding their horizons and knowledge (Hidayat & Rohati, 2020;Mardiani & Wahyuni, 2022).Therefore, reading skills are important language skills and must be taught to children from an early age.In general, reading skills are acquired through learning carried out at school.Reading is an ability that students must master in elementary school because reading is directly related to the entire student learning process (Rahim, 2018;Yunita Anindya et al., 2019).Students with good reading skills find it easier to follow the learning process in class than those who still have reading difficulties.Reading ability for students is seen as a determinant of success in the learning process in class.This is because all subject matter taught requires understanding the concepts and theories students must understand through reading activities (Taufik, 2014;Zahra, 2019).Students with good reading skills will be the initial capital for success in various subjects.
Indonesia was ranked 72nd out of 78 countries in the world in 2018 regarding reading.From the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) assessment results, it is known that the reading ability of Indonesian students is still relatively low (Karakaita Putri et al., 2019;Tusfiana & Tryanasari, 2020).It is proven by the average score obtained, 371 out of 500 international average scores.Compared with 2015, Indonesia's position is better because Indonesian students' reading ability is ranked 69th out of 76 countries.From these international facts, reading skills must be taught early, especially at the elementary school level.When reading skills become popular and a culture for students, this will certainly advance and improve students' self-quality.The ability to read fluently has been explicitly implemented, and students begin to master it in the lower grades of elementary school (Khofifah & Ramadan, 2021;Setiani & Suyitno, 2021).It can be seen in the Basic Competencies of the 2013 curriculum, regulated in Minister of Education and Culture Regulation 24 of 2016 concerning Core Competencies and Basic Competencies for Lessons in the 2013 Curriculum in Basic Education and Secondary Education.
Beginning reading learning focuses more on technical aspects.In beginning reading, students learn to recognize letters or a series of letters in language sounds by using certain techniques with an emphasis on aspects of accuracy in voicing writing, natural pronunciation and intonation, fluency, and clarity of sound so that students are braver to enter the advanced reading or reading comprehension stage in high class (Lestari et al., 2021;Muammar, 2020).It can be interpreted as meaning that in early reading learning, the focus is more on students being able to be literate (Muammar, 2020;Nurani et al., 2021).Students can identify, classify, and arrange letters into syllables, words, and simple sentences.Students must master initial reading because success in mastering reading skills at the initial reading stage will impact the development of subsequent reading abilities.However, this goal is certainly not easy to achieve because, in school learning, there are various difficulties experienced by students, one of which is difficulty in starting reading, which students at the elementary school level usually experience.
Based on research conducted by previous researchers, the initial reading difficulties that occur in students are students' difficulty spelling letters into syllables, spelling syllables into words, and distinguishing letters p-d, p-q (Oktadiana, 2019).In addition to the results of other research, it is known that initial reading difficulties include difficulty identifying the sound of letters, not being able to differentiate between capital letters and lower case letters which are almost the same, still confused about pronouncing letters that have almost the same pronunciation, difficulty putting together the arrangement of letters, reversing letters, changing words that are almost the same, omitting letters in word order, pronouncing words incorrectly, stammering spelling and difficulty concentrating (Windrawati et al., 2020).Beginning reading difficulties between one student and another certainly vary.Students who have difficulty in reading will certainly influence the process of pursuing their education.
The various initial reading difficulties experienced by students usually occur because there are factors that influence them.Factors that influence students' initial reading abilities are physiological factors, intellectual factors, environmental factors, and psychological factors (Juhaeni et al., 2022;Suryani, 2020).Physiological factors related to physical and neurological health, student gender, and fatigue.Intellectual factors relate to students' intelligence abilities in acting according to targets, thinking rationally, and acting effectively in their environment.Students with high intellectual intelligence will be easily directed and trained in learning.However, in this case, high intellectual intelligence only partially influences students' success in reading.Student environmental factors include the student's background at home and family socio-economics.Meanwhile, psychological factors include motivation, interest, students' social-emotional maturity, and students' ability to adapt (Muammar, 2020;Pratama et al., 2022).
Early reading difficulties are a problem that is often found in elementary school students.However, the problem of early reading difficulties among students should not be underestimated.This problem should be resolved as soon as possible so students can complete their studies smoothly.It requires the role of all parties who must be actively involved in achieving this goal, one of which is the teacher (Kharizmi, 2015;Rafika et al., 2020).A teacher has a role in instilling reading skills in students.The teacher must know where the reading difficulties experienced by students are, especially in beginning reading, because the difficulties experienced by each student vary from one student to another (Asmonah, 2019;Astuti & Istiarini, 2020).The figure of the teacher plays an important role in the development of students' education at school.Especially when teachers find problems or difficulties experienced by students in learning, the teacher must try to overcome these difficulties.The problems in this research also occurred in the elementary school where the researcher conducted the research.Based on the results of interviews with second-grade teachers at SD Negeri 1 Sambirata, Cilongok District, Banyumas Regency, some students still needed help in beginning reading.Researchers are interested in analyzing the types of initial reading difficulties in students, the factors that cause initial reading difficulties, and finding out what efforts teachers have made to overcome initial reading difficulties in secondgrade students at SD Negeri 1 Sambirata.

METHODS
The method in this research uses a qualitative method with a descriptive approach.Qualitative research is a method researchers use to obtain data descriptively in the form of words or directly from the subjects being observed (Sugiyono, 2022).Qualitative research is a type of research that prioritizes quality issues rather than the quantity (large number) of the object being studied.By using this method, researchers want to investigate and understand a problem or event that has occurred by collecting various information to gain a deep understanding of the individual and discover what efforts were made to deal with the problem.The sources for this research used primary sources, namely three students, one class teacher, and three students' parents.Apart from that, this research uses secondary sources, namely student activities when reading, documents or archives in the form of field notes, lists of student grades, and documentary photographs during the research.This data source will further strengthen the primary data, and the data obtained will be valid.The data collection techniques are observation, interviews, documentation, and tests.The data analysis technique used is by collecting data in the field first.The researcher performs data reduction or summarizing, sorting out the main things, focusing on the important things, looking for themes and patterns, and discarding what is unnecessary.After data reduction is presented, it will be easier to understand what will happen and plan further work based on what has been understood.To present data in qualitative form is with narrative text.Finally, the researcher draws conclusions or verification from the data that has been collected.The grid of instruments used in the research is shown in Table 1, the observation instrument regarding types of initial reading difficulties is shown in Table 2, and the observation instrument regarding the factors that influence initial reading difficulties is in Table 3.

Result
Based on the results of the data analysis that has been carried out, three main findings were found in this research.The first finding relates to the types of initial reading difficulties in students.From the tests carried out, the results obtained for three students who had initial reading difficulties are shown in Table 4.  4, P1 students got a score of 37, so P1 students fall into the category of students who have poor ability in beginning reading.The interviews and observations revealed that initial reading difficulties occurred in P1 students: a) not fluent in reading.Students still read by spelling and are slow when reading.b) many errors in reading.There are still many incorrect pronunciations when reading, such as the word "melihat" becoming "melahat".c) errors in pronunciation of words/sound symbols.When students read, students cannot pronounce combined consonant letters, such as the word "khusus" becoming "kesus".Besides that, students also cannot pronounce multiple vowel letters, such as when the word "mengeong" becomes "mengeng".Then P2 students got a score of 27.75 on the initial reading test.From the results of this test, P2 students can be categorized as students with poor ability in initial reading.The results of interviews and observations show that initial reading difficulties that occur in P2 students are: a) needing to be more fluent in reading.Students still read by spelling, are slow in reading, and still read with the help of the teacher.b) many errors in reading.When students read, there are still many incorrect pronunciations, such as the word "saya" becoming "asya" and when reading, students still repeat words.c) Difficulty distinguishing similar letters.P2 students have not been able to memorize all the letters of the alphabet and still have difficulty distinguishing letters that have similar shapes, such as the letter "L" from the letter "J".d) errors in pronunciation of words/sound symbols.When reading, P2 students cannot pronounce combined consonant letters as in the word "langsung" to become the word "laengsueng" and students cannot pronounce double vowels as in the word "bermain" to become the word "bermimin".P3 students in the reading test got a score of 4 and were included in the category of students who had very poor initial reading skills.From the results of interviews and observations that have been carried out, it is known that the initial reading difficulties that occur in P3 students are: a) needing to be more fluent in reading.When reading, students are not yet able to spell correctly.That is, they still need to read letter by letter, be faster in reading, and have to get help from the teacher.b) many errors in reading.When reading, students still make many incorrect pronunciations, such as when reading the word "setiap" becomes "setip" and they still repeat words.c) difficulty distinguishing similar letters.Students still make mistakes when differentiating similar letters in reading, such as the letter "u" being read as "n", and the letter "W" being read as "Y".d) errors in pronunciation of words/sound symbols.Students still find it difficult to pronounce some vowel letters, such as the letter "u", which is still wrong when read, and cannot pronounce consonant letter combinations, such as the combination of the letters "ng" and "ny" when they find these letter combinations, students are still confused about reading them, cannot pronounce double vowels as in the word "saudara" to become the word "sidara".
The second finding relates to factors in students' initial reading difficulties.Based on the results of observations, interviews, and documentation, several factors were found that influence students' initial reading abilities: a) physiological factors.From the research results, it was found that vision problems were found in P3 students.It was in accordance with the results of interviews with teachers and students that in-class learning, when reading writing on the blackboard, students experienced difficulties.Apart from that, from the results of observations, when students were asked to read the writing on the writing board, students were unable to read correctly.They showed uncomfortable eye movements when seeing the writing.b) intellectual factors.From the results of interviews, observations, and documentation, it can be explained that P1 students, P2 students, and P3 students have a low level of intelligence compared to their other friends.It can be seen from the results of the students' scores, each of which has a lower score compared to the scores of students who are already capable of reading.Apart from that, P2 and P3 students also experience visual memory problems, such as difficulty in distinguishing similar letters.c) environmental factors.From the results of interviews, observations, and documentation, it is clear that the environmental conditions for P2 students and P3 students are less supportive of improving students' reading skills.Besides that, students also receive less motivation and attention from their parents.
Judging from the results of observations when researchers visited the homes of P2 and P3 students, in the homes of P2 and P3 students, there was no special place to study, and there were no books that could support the students' learning-reading process.There were only theme books, namely school books.Parents are also lacking in motivating students in the learning process at home, so students are less motivated to learn to read.Based on interviews conducted with class II teachers and students' parents, the families of P2 and P3 students are families who are not well off from an economic perspective.The mother of student P2 is a household assistant who does not work every day, and his father works as a casual laborer.Meanwhile, for P3 students, only their father works as a casual laborer, and their mother is a housewife.At home, P3 students receive less attention because P3's mother is more focused on her younger siblings, so when at home, P3 students play on their cell phones more often than study.d) psychological factors.From the results of interviews, observations, and documentation, it is clear that students who experience reading difficulties are also caused by psychological factors, namely motivation, emotions, and self-confidence.It is known that motivation among P1, P2, and P3 students still needs to be improved.It can be seen when students' learning looks indifferent, their attention is not focused when given the teacher's example of correct reading, and they play alone when learning in class, as a result of which students experience many difficulties in learning, especially when learning to read.Apart from the motivation factor, there is also the student interest factor in learning to read.Students P1, P2, and P3 have low interest in learning to read.It can be seen that when students are asked to learn to read, the students do not seem enthusiastic and prefer to play alone.Students do not seem interested in reading because they are not interested in reading books, and it can also be seen that students need the desire to learn to read.When researchers asked whether they often did the assignments given by the teacher, from the interview results, they often needed to remember when doing the assignments.Next is the level of selfconfidence.When in class, P1 students and P2 students have a good level of confidence.For example, when students are asked to come forward in front of the class, the students appear confident.However, it is different from P3 students who have a low level of self-confidence.When asked to come forward, P3 students looked embarrassed and nervous.
The third finding relates to the efforts that teachers have made to overcome students' difficulties in beginning reading.Based on the results of research conducted through interviews, observation, and documentation, it shows that the strategy used by teachers in overcoming students' learning-to-read difficulties is to often give assignments to students who have difficulty learning to read, and this is done so that students can better understand each material presented by the teacher, so that when there is a test the student no longer experiences fear because they are used to doing the questions.Apart from that, teachers have also tried to help students who have difficulty learning to read by holding extra hours.The second-grade teacher guides students who have initial reading difficulties in the form of additional hours after school, which is carried out 2-3 times a week.
In learning-to-read activities, teachers also prepare learning media such as alphabet posters, letter and word cards, and books that support students' initial reading skills.Apart from that, teachers also use the method in extra-hour activities.The method used by secondgrade teachers in teaching students who have difficulty reading is the alphabet or spelling method.The process of learning to read with this method starts with the letters.First, students are taught the sound of each letter.Second, students are taught the sound of each letter.Third, students recognize symbols and memorize the sounds of each letter, from which the letters are put together to form syllables.Fourth, after being able to sound out the syllables, students are then taught to string the syllables into words.Fifth, after students can read words, students continue to practice reading sentences composed of several words.

Discussions
Beginning reading difficulties are difficulties learning to change letters into words and sentences.There are many types of initial reading difficulties experienced by elementary school students.The types of initial reading difficulties experienced by students need to be reading fluently, often making lots of mistakes in reading, having difficulty distinguishing similar letters, and errors in pronunciation of words/sound symbols (Istiqoma et al., 2023;Muammar, 2020).Based on the results of the research and analysis carried out, it can be concluded that the types of initial reading difficulties among students at SD Negeri 1 Sambirata are: a) not reading fluently.When reading, students show characteristics such as reading by spelling being slow in reading, and reading must be done with the help of the teacher.Students still experience these difficulties because they have yet to be able to recognize letters, remember letters, and always spell letters (Pridasari & Anafiah, 2020;Sulaiman, 2017).If students are able to recognize letters well, then students do not experience reading difficulties; b) there are many errors in reading.When reading, students show characteristics such as reading by repeating words and incorrect pronunciation.These errors occur because students do not know the letters, so they guess, maybe because students read too fast, because they feel pressured or afraid of the teacher, or because of the difference between the student's dialect and good Indonesian (Abdurrahman, 2012;Nuraini & Abidin, 2020).c) Difficulty distinguishing similar letters.Based on research results, students P2 and P3 cannot distinguish almost similar letters.It happens when students are faced with words that have letters that look almost the same, such as the letters "L" and "J", "u" and "n", "W " with "Y".This happens because there are many letters of the alphabet and many of the letters of the alphabet are similar.The student's memory regarding letter recognition still needs to be fully understood, making it difficult for the student to differentiate between letters that have almost the same shape (Oktadiana, 2019;Rafika et al., 2020).Apart from that, students' difficulties in recognizing letters can be influenced by their short-term memory.Short-term memory is useful in remembering a series of letters and letter sounds, as well as in the process of spelling words (Kumara et al., 2014;Pratiwi & Ariawan, 2017).d) unable to understand sound symbols.From the research results, it is known that students still have difficulties, such as not being able to pronounce some vowel letters, not being able to pronounce combinations of consonant letters, and not being able to pronounce combinations of multiple vowels.Based on the results of this research, the type of difficulty experienced by students is because students need help understanding the relationship between letters and sounds in words.Understanding the relationship between letters and sounds in words includes knowledge of all letters (consonants, vowels, double consonants, dead sounds, perfect sounds, etc.) and deficiencies in recognizing letters, language sounds (phonics), and word forms (Meo et al., 2021;Oktadiana, 2019).
The difficulties in reading experienced by these students are also caused by factors that influence them.From the results of the analysis that has been carried out, it can be concluded that the factors that influence students' initial reading abilities are physiological factors, intellectual factors, environmental factors, and psychological factors.First, physiological factors.In the research, it was found that students had visual impairments.Vision is the main information pathway and an important factor in the learning process.Students who have visual impairments will certainly be hampered and left behind in participating in learning in the classroom, especially when learning students will need help to obtain the information or material taught by the teacher.Apart from that, sensory disorders such as visual perception can also cause students to have difficulty distinguishing letter shapes (Lestari et al., 2021;Septiana Soleha et al., 2021).
From the results of teacher interviews, it was found that students who had difficulty reading at the beginning also had low intellectual abilities.It can be seen from the results of the scores of students who have reading difficulties, which are lower than the scores of students who are already able to read.Students who have high intellectual abilities will make it easier for them to be directed and trained in learning (Daryanti et al., 2019;Sugiharto et al., 2007).Third, environmental factors.The family environment, especially parental guidance, and attention, plays an important role in the student's learning process because the family environment is the first education for students, especially in training sound recognition (phonemes) and letter recognition (Aryani & Fauziah, 2020;Rafika et al., 2020).From the research results, it is known that students' family environmental conditions are less supportive in improving students' reading skills, and students also receive less motivation and attention because parents are more focused on work.Parents of students do not provide facilities to support students' reading skills, such as reading books, even though parental support in the form of learning facilities is important.A disharmonious home situation, parents who do not like reading, and no collection of reading books have a big impact on students' reading ability (Juliana et al., 2023;Yunita Anindya et al., 2019).
Lack of support from the home environment and parents' lack of attention to students' learning progress causes students to have low motivation to enjoy reading at home.Fourth, psychological factors.This psychological factor includes three things: motivation, interest, and self-confidence.Students' motivation to read has a big influence on students' reading skills.Students who have the urge to read will have good reading skills.It can be seen from the attention of students when learning to read at the beginning.Students who have high motivation to read will pay attention to the teacher when giving examples of correct reading so that students will be able to have good reading skills (Hidayah & Hermansyah, 2016;Windrawati et al., 2020).However, from the research results, students need more motivation to learn.It can be seen when students' learning looks indifferent, their attention is not focused when given examples by the teacher in reading correctly, and they play alone when learning in class.As a result, students experience many difficulties in learning, especially when learning to read.Next is the factor of student interest in learning to read.Interest is related to students' interest in reading books (Karakaita Putri et al., 2019;Muammar, 2020;Rafika et al., 2020).
From the research results, it is known that students have a low interest in reading.This can be seen from the behavior of students who are not enthusiastic about learning to read, prefer to play alone, do not seem interested in learning to read, and often need to remember to do their assignments at home.The last factor is the level of self-confidence.From the research results, it was found that there were students who had low levels of selfconfidence (Muammar, 2020).Low self-confidence certainly affects the development of students learning to read.With confidence, students can complete their assignments when asked to read, but students who lack confidence will not be able to complete their assignments when asked to read.Other researchers found that reading difficulties are not a sign that students are less intelligent but rather that students need appropriate learning methods to overcome their difficulties in reading (Mauludiana et al., 2020).Therefore, teachers need to have strategies to overcome the initial reading difficulties experienced by students.In addition, other researchers have found that strategies are very necessary for overcoming various problems in learning (Setiawan, 2021).Teachers must understand various student characteristics, class conditions, and student learning time.If you understand these things, it will be easier for the teacher to apply the strategies that will be used.
Second-grade teachers use several strategies to overcome students' initial reading difficulties and give assignments to students to do at home.By giving assignments to students at home, it is hoped that they will provide additional hours to prepare reading learning media such as alphabet letter posters, letter, and word cards, as well as books that support students' initial reading skills.Apart from that, teachers also use the method in extra-hour activities.The method used by second-grade teachers in teaching students who have difficulty reading is the alphabet or spelling method.The alphabet method is an initial reading method that begins by pronouncing consonant letters and vowel letters.In this method, students are taught to read, starting with recognizing the sounds of each letter until students are able to read the words in a sentence.

CONCLUSION
Based on the results of research and discussion about initial reading difficulties in second-grade students, it can be concluded that the research shows that firstly, the types of initial reading difficulties in students are: (a) not fluent in reading, b) lots of errors in reading, ( c) difficulty distinguishing similar letters, d) unable to understand sound symbols including unable to pronounce some vowel letters, unable to pronounce consonant letter combinations, and unable to pronounce multiple vowel combinations.Second, the factors that influence students' initial reading difficulties are physiological factors, intellectual factors, environmental factors, and psychological factors.Furthermore, thirdly, the efforts made by teachers to overcome students' initial reading difficulties are: (a) giving assignments to students, (b) providing extra hours after school, (c) preparing reading learning media such as alphabet letter posters, letter cards, and words, as well as books that support students' initial reading abilities, (d) teaching using the alphabet method.

Table 1 .
Research Instrument Grid

Table 2 .
Observation Instrument Regarding Types of Initial Reading Difficulties

Table 3 .
Observation Instrument Regarding Factors that Influence Initial Reading Difficulties

Table 4 .
Initial Reading Test Results