AN ANALYSIS ON THE THIRD YEAR STUDENT’S ABILITY TO IDENTIFY THE RELATIONSHIP OF IDEAS THROUGH TRANSITION WORDS IN READING COMPREHENSION AT THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT OF BUNG HATTA UNIVERSITY

Abstrak

The aim of this research was to know the ability of the third year students of English Department of Bung Hatta University Padang to identify the relationship of ideas through transition words in reading comprehension. The design of this research was descriptive research. The population of this research was the third year students of English Department of Bung Hatta University who register 2012/2013 academic year. The number of the population was 107 students. Twenty eight of them were taken as the sample of this study by using cluster random sampling technique. The instrument was reading test. The test had 30 questions. It consisted of transition s about cause-effect, comparison, contrast, example and addition. Each of transitions had six questions. Before doing the real test, the researcher tried out the test. The result of try out test showed that the reliability index of the test was 0.98. It means that the test was reliable. The ability of students for each transitions as general was moderate. Based on the findings above, it could be concluded that the students’ ability to comprehend the relationship of ideas through transitions could be categorized into moderate ability. Based on the conclusion, the researcher suggests that the lecturers should provide more exercises in teaching transition words and the students are expected to do more exercises on transitions to improve their reading ability.

Key words : Analysis, Transitional Words, Reading Comprehension, Students’ Ability