English abstract
The present study aimed at investigating Omani EFL students' perceptions of reading difficulties. It aimed at describing the major reading difficulties as perceived by Omani EFL students and how these reading difficulties vary according to gender, stream and linguistic achievement. The population of this study consisted of all Omani third secondary school graduates enrolled at Sultan Qaboos University during the year 2002-2003. The sample of this study consisted of 28% of the whole population. The sample consisted of 619 secondary school graduates coming from eleven regions of the Sultanate of Oman, Male students were 311 and female students were 306. The sample contained students from the two different streams: science students were 423 and arts students were 196. The research instrument was a questionnaire in which the subjects reported the occurrences of 46 reading difficulties. These reading difficulties were grouped into six components (Automatic recognition skills, vocabulary and structural knowledge, formal discourse structure knowledge, Content
