<![CDATA[Focusing on textual, inferential, and evaluative comprehension, this study investigated high school students' reading difficulties within the framework of Academic Ability Test (TKA). This descriptive mixed-methods study involved 83 twelfth-grade students of SMA Raudhatul Jannah in Payakumbuh who underwent an Academic Ability Test-style reading test, a structured questionnaire, and semi-structured interviews. The results indicated that students' reading performance remained below the expected proficiency level required in the Academic Ability Test. The test results indicated that students with high-level reading skills in evaluative comprehension experienced the greatest difficulty (50.85%). In contrast, students showed relatively lower levels of difficulty in text comprehension (49.46%) and inferential comprehension (47.53%). Overall, the study findings indicate that evaluative comprehension is more difficult than textual and inferential comprehension. This underscores that in the context of the Academic Ability Test, higher-level reading skills still become a main challenge. The findings further reveal that students face reading difficulties because of limited vocabulary knowledge and poor text understanding. They also struggle with evaluation and inference tasks. The results suggest that classroom reading instruction should be tailored to the cognitive demands of Academic Ability Test, in addition to improving basic and advanced reading skills.]]>
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