The Correlation between Students’ Motivation to Learn English and Students’ Vocabulary Mastery toward Their Ability in Listening to Long Talk of the Third Year Students at English Department of Bung Hatta University

Abstrak

Listening is one of the most important skills in English language learning to be mastered by the students. Hamouda (2013: 117) defines that listening is as ability to recognize and understand what others are telling. Listening have several factors affect student in learning. There are vocabulary, motivation, grammar, pronunciation, etc. Vocabulary is one of the factors affecting students in learning listening that is the most important element in a language. In learning a language, it will not be separated from vocabulary. It also has a very important role in determining the smooth communication (Susanto, 2017: 5). Another factor which has an influence on learning listening is motivation. Motivation is very important for each people. Shams (2008) indicates that motivation seems having an important role in developing students’ mastery of English, includes vocabulary mastery and students’ ability in listening skills. Motivation is energy of students which come from inside or outside encouraging themselves to do something. Relating to this, the researcher conducted this study on purpose of determining and finding the correlation between motivation and vocabulary mastery toward ability in listening to long talk.

The type of this research was correlational study. This research was aimed to find out the correlation between students’ motivation to learn English and students’ vocabulary mastery toward their ability in listening to long talk of the third year students at English Department of Bung Hatta University. The number of population members was 23 students. The researcher used total sampling technique. The researcher gathered the data by using three instruments, namely questionnaire to collect data on students’ motivation, vocabulary test to know the students’ vocabulary mastery, and listening test to know students’ ability in listening to long talk.

Having analyzing the data, the researcher found that the value of coefficient correlation between students’ motivation to learn English and their ability in listening to long talk was 0.95, and  was 0.4132 ( and  (21)). The coefficient correlation between students’ vocabulary mastery and their ability in listening to long talk was 0.85, and  was 0.4132 ( and  (21)). The coefficient correlation between students’ motivation to learn English and students’ vocabulary mastery was 0.86, and  was 0.4132 ( and  (21)). The coefficient correlation between students’ motivation to learn English and students’ vocabulary mastery toward their ability in listening to long talk was 0.95 with  or  was 92.56 and = 3.49 ( and  (20)). After testing hypothesis, alternative hypothesis was accepted that stated that there was significant correlation between students’ motivation to learn English, students’ vocabulary mastery, and their listening ability in long talk.

Related to the findings, the researcher proposed suggestions that lecturers should give the students motivation to learn English, give more variant exercises on vocabulary with interesting listening English activities in the classroom.

In addition, the researcher suggests the students to improve their motivation and to be more aware of the importance of motivation in learning English as a Foreign Language, and also do more exercises and practice on vocabulary and listening. Furthermore, the other researchers are suggested to find other factors that correlate with the ability in listening to long talk.

Keywords: Correlation, Motivation, Vocabulary Mastery and Listening to Monologue