Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menganalisis kesulitan pemahaman membaca literal siswa dalam teks deskriptif pada kelas delapan SMP Muhammadiyah Boarding School Tarakan. Jenis penelitian ini adalah deskriptif kualitatif. Subjek dari penelitian ini adalah kelas VIII A SMP Muhammadiyah Boarding School Tarakan tahun ajaran 2021/2022. Peneliti menggunakan purposive sampling, ada 32 siswa sebagai sampel dalam penelitian ini. Peneliti mengumpulkan data menggunakan tes dan wawancara. Hasil penelitian menunjukan kemampuan membaca literal siswa terhadap teks deskriptif berada pada kategori baik. Hal ini dapat dilihat dari nilai siswa dimana 88% siswa dapat mencapai nilai KKM (Kriteria Ketuntasan Minimal). Sedangkan 12% siswa belum dapat mencapai KKM. Hasil dari rata-rata nilai siswa adalah 85,5. Persentase untuk setiap indikator adalah 31% dari siswa kelas delapan berada di kategori sangat baik, 38% dari siswa kelas delapan berada pada kategori baik, 19% dari siswa kelas delapan berada pada kategori cukup dan 12% dari siswa kelas delapan berada pada kategori kurang. Penelti juga menemukan ada beberapa kesulitan yang dihadapi siswa dalam proses pembelajrana, salah satu kesulitan yang paling banyak dihadapi siswa adalah kurangnya kosakata yang dikuasai sehingga menyebabkan siswa kesulitan untuk memahami isi teks bacaan.

Analysis of the students’ difficulties on literal reading comprehension in descriptive text at SMP Muhammadiyah Boarding School Tarkan. This research aims to analyze the difficulties of students' literal reading comprehension in descriptive text in eighth grade of SMP Muhammadiyah Boarding School Tarakan. The research design of this research was descriptive qualitative. The subject of this research was class VIII A SMP Muhammadiyah Boarding School Tarakan in the academic year 2021/2022. The researcher used purposive sampling, there were 32 students as the sample in this research. Researcher collected data using test and interview. The results showed that students' literal reading comprehension of descriptive text were in the good category. This can be seen from the student scores where 88% of students can achieve the KKM (Minimum Completeness Criteria). While 12% of students have not been able to reach the KKM. The result of the students' average score was 85.5. The percentages for each indicator are 31% of the eighth grade students are in the very good category, 38% of the eight grade students were in the good category, 19% of the eight grade students were in the fair category and 12% of the eight grade students were in the poor category. The researchers also found that there were several difficulties faced by students in the learning process, one of the most common difficulties faced by students was the lack of mastered vocabulary, which made it difficult for students to understand the contents of the reading text.