Abstract
The aim of this study was to describe the reading ability of the fifth semester students of English Department of Universitas Negeri Padang in academic year 2017/2018 in reading an expository text. This research was a descriptive research. The data collected through a reading comprehension test. There were five indicators tested; identifying topics, finding the main idea, identifying supporting details, making inference and identifying writers’ purpose. The result shows that students' ability in identifying the topics is good, (the mean score is 71.48), students' ability in finding the main idea is good enough, (the mean score is 65.70), the ability of students in identifying supporting detail is good enough, (the mean score is 68.65), student ability in making inference is enough (the mean score is 59.36) and student ability in identifying writers’ purpose is good enough (the mean score is 68.75). Thus, the results of this research indicated the students’ reading ability of the fifth semester students of English Department of Universitas Negeri Padang in academic year 2017/2018 is good enough, where the total mean of students’ score is 66.72.
Key words: Reading comprehension, students’ reading ability, expository text.