A Correlational Study between Attitude towards Learning English and Reading Comprehesion Achievement of Grade XI Bahasa 1 Students at SMA Muhammadiyah 3 Jember

Abstract

Reading can be regarded as a basis to understand the language in written communication. It can be said that reading is an activity which involves the reader and the text whereby the readers are fully engange with the text to elicit the meaning of the written words in a text. Besides, students’ attitude in learning can also affect on their performances. Both attitude and knowledge relates one another as if it becomes the essential point in deciding student’s success or failure in language learning. This research was intended to find the correlation between attitude towards learning English and reading comprehension achievement. The research used correlational study as a research design. The subjects of the research were XI Bahasa 1 students at SMA Muhammadiyah 3 Jember in the 2015/2016 academic year which chosen purposively. The main data collection methods of this research were reading comprehension test and questionnaire. The result of the research was anylized statistically by using Spearman Rank Order Correlation. The result revealed that the correlation coefficient was 0.623. In other words the coefficient correlation was 0 <0.623< 1, it indicates that there was a positive correlation. The result of the research showed that the degree of the correlation between students’ attitude towards learning English and reading comprehension achievement was in moderate strong relationship. Based on the calculation, the significant value was found 0.001. It showed that the significant value < 0.05 which means that null hypotheses (Ho) was rejected, as the consequence the alternative hypothesis (Ha) was accepted. In conclusion, the present research proved that there was a significant correlation between attitude towards learning English and reading comprehension achievement of grade XI Bahasa 1 students at SMA Muhammadiyah 3 Jember in the 2015/2016 academic year.