The Correlation Between the Tenth Grade Students’ Reading Interest and Their Reading Comprehension of Recount Text at SMAN 1 Siberut Selatan.

Abstrak

Reading interest refers to how excited an individual is to engage in reading some written material. In short, reading interest revolves around an individual’s attitude towards the process of reading, and towards different reading material, while comprehension is the most important thing in reading activity. Some students can read so many English texts but without understanding the meaning. Hanna (2013: 139) states that reading comprehension is the ability to understand what we read. Recount text is one of the kinds of text that the students should comprehend. Recount text is a kind of text composed by the writer to tell the past events or past experience. Coogan (2006:3) states that, recount text is written to retell event with the purpose of informing or entertaining their audience or reader.

The design of this research was correlation research, and it is one of quantitative research. The population of this research was the tenth grade students at SMAN 1 Siberut Selatan. The number of sample was 46 students selected using stratified random sampling technique. The data of this research were collected by using two kinds of instruments; questionnaire on reading interest (X), and test on reading comprehension of recount text (Y). to make the instruments reliable, the researcher gave try out test to the students out of the sample. It was found that reliability index of the test was 0, 93 (see appendix 12), and reliability index of the questionnaire was 0, 85 (see appendix 8). It means that the instruments were very reliable.

Analyzing the data showed that the students’ reading interest was moderate and their reading comprehension of recount text was also moderate. In addition, the value of coefficient correlation between students’ reading interest and their reading comprehension of recount text was 0, 96 and it was bigger than r-table (0, 96>0, 2907). It means there was significant positive correlation between students’ reading interest and their reading comprehension of recount text (r=0,96, p>0,05)

Learning from result, it can be concluded that there was a significant correlation between students’ reading interest and their reading comprehension of recount text at SMAN 1 Siberut Selatan. Related to conclusion, this study suggested to the English teacher to improve students’ reading interest and their reading comprehension of recount text.

Key words: Reading interest, Reading comprehension, Correlation study