THE CORRELATION BETWEEN READING INTEREST AND READING COMPREHENSION ABILITY OF THE THIRD YEAR STUDENTS AT THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT OF BUNGHATTA UNIVERSITY

Abstrak

Abstract

The type of this study was correlational design. The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between students’ reading interest and students reading comprehension. The population of this research was the third year students of English Department Bung Hatta University. The number of population members was 128 and the members of sample in this research were 30 students. The data of this research were collected by using two kinds of instruments. The first  is Questionnaire, and the second is reading test. To make the instrument reliable, the researcher gave try out test to the students out of the sample. It was found the reliability index of questionnaire was 0.89, and reliability index of reading test was 0.80. It means that the instruments were very reliable. Based on the result of data analysis, the researcher found that the value of r calculated of this research was 0.78, while the value of r-table with level significance 0.05 and degree of freedom (df=n-2) was 0.362. It means that r-calculated was higher that r table (0.78>0.362). Therefore, the alternative hypothesis of this research stating that there is significant correlation between students’ interest and reading comprehension  at the third year students of English Department of Bung Hatta University was accepted. Based on the conclusion, in order to improve students’ reading comprehension ability, it is suggested to lecturers to guide their students to have more interest in reading. Suggestion also goes to the students to have more interest in reading and make them have reading comprehension ability.

Key words: Correlation,  Interest, Reading Comprehension.