<![CDATA[This study aims to investigate a teacher's instructional strategies in reading instruction using short stories and to analyze the multi-dimensional reading difficulties encountered by ninth-grade students in a rural EFL context. Utilizing a qualitative case study design integrated with phenomenological perspectives and educational ethnography, data were gathered from an English teacher and 25 ninth-grade students at MTs Sayyid Ali Geger Bangkalan. Data collection was executed through triangulation involving non-participant classroom observations, semi-structured interviews, and documentation of reading assessment worksheets, which were subsequently processed using the interactive qualitative analysis model of Miles, Huberman, and Saldana. The findings reveal that the teacher operationalized short stories through a systematic process-oriented framework spanning pre-reading, while-reading, and post-reading stages. The strategic shift from a text-only approach to an illustrated, tool-supported methodology successfully lowered the students' affective filters and enhanced predictive understanding. Concurrently, the analysis of student challenges identified three core dimensions of reading difficulties: psychological and affective barriers (manifested as public speaking phobia and intense performance anxiety), linguistic and lexical hurdles (characterized by an extreme vocabulary deficit, past tense verb confusion, and rigid polysemous interpretation), and phonological friction (stemming from rigid first-language orthographic transfer). The study concludes that while short stories serve as a potent alternative medium to stimulate textual interest, their efficacy remains strictly dependent on targeted scaffolding, visual materials, and systematic structural reinforcement to foster independent, sustainable literacy development among struggling foreign language learners.]]>
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