the Correlation between the Students’ Motivation in Learning English and the Reading Comprehension at the Eighth Grade of SMP N 20 Pekanbaru

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Problem  

            Reading is an activity for setting information and meaning of the text in the language. Reading is very important skill which is taught in the school from secondary school until university as the main subject. By reading we can improve vocabulary, memory, creativity, and concentration.

            Based on the researcher’s interview English teacher at SMP N 20 Pekanbaru, there are some problems, found the students’ motivation in learning English is still low, the students have lack of vocabulary, many students find difficulties comprehending reading text and the school has a shortage of facilities in learning English.

            First, the students’ low motivation in learning English can be seen from the attention of the students during teaching and learning process. The students do not pay attention to the teacher when the teacher explains the lesson in front of the class. They are busy with their own activities. Some of them think that learning English is a burden. Besides, many of the students always come late and are absent.  As a result, it leads that the students’ low achievement in studying reading. 

            Second, lack of vocabulary mastery affects the students’ low comprehension in reading the text. Many students look up dictionary very often when the teacher gives the task of reading. They always find difficult words in text. That makes them not enough have time to do the task.

            Third, the low comprehension in reading text makes the students lazy to do the task of reading. Normally they cheat with each other. It is they do not comprehend the text. It can be caused by the technique used by the teacher in teaching English is not appropriate yet, so that the students find difficulties in reading comprehension.           

            The last, lack of facilities in learning process, as we know facilities are important in teaching and learning process in the school. Because facilities are supporting in teaching and learning process so that the process of teaching and learning can be success. Besides, the students or teachers can be easy to learn or teach the materials. For instance, facilities in teaching and learning process are important part.

            Based on the problem above, the researcher is interested in doing the research entitled  “the Correlation between the Students’ Motivation in Learning English and the Reading Comprehension at the Eighth Grade of SMP N 20 Pekanbaru”.

B.     Identification of the problem

            Based on the background above, the problems can be identified as follows:

1. Most of the students have low motivation in English learning process.
2. Most of the students have lack of vocabulary
3. Many students find difficulties comprehending reading text
4. The school has a shortage of facilities in learning English

C.    Limitation of the Problem

            Based on the problems in the identification above, the writer limits the problem in term of the students’ lack of motivation and the students’ low reading comprehension which will be correlated one another.

D.    Formulation of the Problem

            The problems in this research can be formulated as follows:

1. How significant is the correlation between the students’ motivation in learning English and their reading comprehension at the eighth grade of the SMP N 20 Pekanbaru?
2. What factors influence the correlation between the students’ motivation in learning English and their reading comprehension at the eighth grade of the SMP N 20 Pekanbaru?

E.     Aim of the Research

      The purposes of this research as follows:

1. To find out how significant the correlation between the students’ motivation in learning English and their reading comprehension at the eighth grade of the SMP N 20 Pekanbaru is
2. To explain the factors influence that the correlation between the students’ motivation in learning English and their reading comprehension at the eighth grade of the SMP N 20 Pekanbaru

F.     Significance of the Research

a.       For the students:

a.       To give information about the students’ motivation in learning English.

b.      To improve their knowledge about English subject especially in reading comprehension.

b.            For the teachers:

a.       To give input to the teacher in order to teach English better.

b.      To give information about the importance of the students’ motivation in learning English.

c.          For the institute

a.       This research can be used as information to improve teaching and learning English in the future.

d.                              For the researcher

a.       To give information to further research with certain interest.

G.    Definition of Key Terms

            To avoid misunderstanding of the concepts used in this study, some definitions are provided as follows:

a.       Motivation is a general term applied to the entire class of drives, desires, needs, wishes and similar forces. To say that managers motivate their subordinates is to say that they do those things which they hope will satisfy these drives and desires and induce the subordinates to act in a desired manner. In this research, motivation is kind of stimulation or desire from the students’ to get their goal in English learning.

b.         Reading comprehension is the skill that a reader understands or gets the meaning of a text is easily. In this research, reading comprehension is the ability of students’ to understand reading text

CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF THE RELATED LITERATURE

A.    Review of the Related Theories

1.      The Motivation

In teaching and learning process, motivation is important for students. Many researchers consider motivation as one of the elements that determine success in developing a second or foreign language. Without motivation the student cannot accomplish learning goals, whatever the curriculum and whoever the teacher is.

According to Romando (2007) the word motivation is coined from the Latin word “movere’’, which means to move. Motivation is defined as an internal drive that activates behavior and gives it direction. The term motivation is concerned with the processes that describe why and how human behavior is activated and direct. It means that motivation is human behavior in doing something such as in learning or working. So, motivation is important for the human to be successful in doing something.

 According to Brown (2001:35) defines that motivation as anticipation of reinforcement which is powerful concept for the classroom. Motivation may be constructed as a state of cognitive and emotional arousal. This leads to a conscious decision to act, and which give rise to a period of sustained intellectual and physical effort in order to attain set goal.

According to Harmer (1995: 3) Motivation is some kind of internal drive that encourages somebody to pursue a course of action. If we perceive a goal (that is, something we wish to achieve) and if the goal is sufficiently attractive, we will be strongly motivated to do whatever is necessary to reach that goal. It means that motivation is the kind of internal drive to pursue a course of action. So, motivation is necessary in learning process.

Smaldino (2005: 51) states that “motivation is an internal state that leads people to choose to work toward or against certain goals and experiences”. It defines what people will do rather than what they can do. Motivation influence learning by determining which instructional goals students attend to and which they choose to ignore. It also determines the effort they will expand to reach certain goals.  It means that motivation influences learning by determining which instructional goals students attend to and which they choose to ignore. For instance, motivation is an important factor that influences students’ reading comprehensions.

According to Brown (2000:160) motivation is probably the most frequently used catch-all term for explaining the success or failure of virtually any complex task. It is easy to assume that success in any task is due simply to the fact that someone is “motivated” it is easy in second language learning to claim that a learner will be successful with the proper motivation.

According to Gardner in Gass and Selingker (2001: 350) motivation involves four aspects, a goal, effortful behavior, a desire to attain the goal and favorable attitudes toward the activity in question. Effort consist of a number of factors, including an inherent need to achieve, good study habits, and the desire to please a teacher or parents. These seems to be a mixed bag of components, as some pertain to what one has done and others to what one would like to do. It means that with motivation the student can get their goal easily, not only to students but also teacher and parents too. So motivation is necessary to all people to get their goal.

According to Tremblay and Gardner in Gass and Selingker (2001:351) made a distinction between motivational behavior and motivational antecedents. Motivational behaviors are those characteristics that are perceivable by an observer. Motivational antecedents cannot be easily perceived by an observer, but can report by the observer. Motivational antecedents influence motivational behavior.

      Based on the definition above, motivation is some kinds of internal drive that encourages somebody to reach their goal, and motivation is very important need for students and teacher with motivation we can easy to assume that success in any task. Beside that motivation can directly include in learning strategies so make the students interest to study. Motivation is a key in learning process, with motivation we can get easy to our goal.

Motivation significantly determines the level of proficiency achieved by learners. Harmer (1995: 4) claims that motivation has two main categories: extrinsic motivation, which is concerned with factors outside the classroom, and intrinsic motivation, which is concerned with what takes place inside the classroom as in the following:

1). Extrinsic Motivation

There are integrative motivation and instrumental motivation. Integrative motivation is a weaker form of such motivation would be the desire to know as much as possible about the culture of the Target Language Community (TLC). Instrumental motivation is the term describes a situation in which students believe that mastery of the target language will be instrumental in getting them a better job, position or status.

2). Intrinsic Motivation

 There are physical conditions, method, the teacher, success. Physical conditions is  clearly the case that physical conditions have a great effect on learning and can alter a student’s motivation either positively or negatively. Method is very important factor that influences students’ motivation. The teacher is as motivator also influence high or low of student motivation. Success is a vital part in the motivational drive of a student. Both complete failure and complete success may be de-motivating.

Referring to the explanation above, the view of language learning in a society will influence the students’ attitude to the language being studied, and the nature and the strength of this attitude will have profound effect on the degree of motivation the student bring to class. For example, in Indonesia many people assume that English is an international language, so they have to be able to use English in communication. So it can motivate Indonesia people to study English.

2.  Reading Comprehension

a). The concept of reading

Nunan (1991: 65) explains that Bottom-up is the process to find the information only after the act of reading activities. It means that readers’ understanding of the text will depend only on the meaning of the word, sentence, and paragraph. The meaning of the words will contribute to the meaning of a sentence, a sentence to a paragraph and so on.

Nunan (1991: 66) states that top-down reading is the process where the reader can find the information of the text and understanding the text based on their knowledge about the text. Many readers do not understand all of the text, not because they do not know the meaning of the words and sentence in the text but because they do not have appropriate background knowledge about the text.

Harmer (1995: 190) definite that reading is an exercise dominated by the eyes and brain. It means that the eyes receive messages and brain then has to work out the significance of these messages. Hence, reading is an activity of the eyes and brain to delivery information or message to the reader.

Richards and Renandya (2002:277) define that reading for comprehension is the primary purpose for reading (though this is sometimes overlooked when students are asked to read overly difficult texts); raising student awareness of main ideas in a text and exploring the organization of a text are essential for good comprehension. It means that reading comprehension is the primary purpose for reading by the reader to get the meaning of the text which they are reading. So, reading comprehension is important for the students in understanding a text.

According to Nunan (1991:33) Reading is an interactive process between what a reader already knows about given topic or subject and what the writer writes. Reading is a process of understanding of the symbol. It means that reading is an interactive process between writer and the reader in delivering information.

b). The Skills and Knowledge Areas in Reading Comprehension

According to Grabe in Murcia (2001:154) There are six general component skills and knowledge areas in the complex process of reading such as: Automatic recognition skills, Vocabulary and structural knowledge, Formal discourse structure knowledge, Content/ world background knowledge, Synthesis and evaluation skills, and Meta cognitive knowledge and skills monitoring.

The first, Automatic recognition skills is a virtually unconscious ability, ideally requiring little mental processing to recognize text, especially for word identification. The second, Vocabulary and structural knowledge is a sound understanding of language structure and a large recognition vocabulary. The third, Formal discourse structure knowledge is an understanding of how texts are organized and how information is put together into various genres of text (e.g., a report, a letter, a narrative). The fourth, Content/ world background knowledge is prior knowledge of text-related information and a shared understanding of the cultural information involved in text. The fifth, Synthesis and evaluation skills are the ability to read and compare information from multiple sources, to think critically about what one reads, and to decide what information is relevant or useful for one’s purpose. And last, is Meta cognitive knowledge and skills monitoring is an awareness of one’s mental process and the ability to reflect on what one is doing and the strategies one is employing while reading.  

c). The Strategies of Reading Comprehension

            Nunan (1999:265) states that” there are some strategies that can be applied in reading comprehension, such as activating prior knowledge, predicting, skimming, and scanning.

 First, activating prior knowledge is teacher can play a vital role in seeing that the reader’s knowledge about the new topic is built up so they can successfully comprehend a new text. Second, predicting is Prediction creates anticipation and get students thinking about previous experiences they may have about the topic before they read about it. Third, skimming gives readers the advantage of being able to predict the purpose of the passage, the main topic, or message, and possibly some of the developing or supporting ideas. And the last is scanning the purpose of scanning is to extract specific information without reading through the text.

d). Three Phases in Teaching Reading

According to Avery & Graves in Duplass (2005) there are three phases of reading, pre-reading, whilst-reading, and post-reading as in the following:

1).Pre reading

Pre reading activity is the activity before reading process, the aims of this phase are:

• To introduce and arouse the interest of the students to the topic. In this phase, the teacher introduce to the students about the topic which they will discuss in the reading class.
• To motivate the students to give a reaction for the reading. Teacher can ask the students some questions related to the topic.
• To provide some languages preparation for the text. In this term, teacher can show some language preparation, such as the word, phrases, or sentences that can be used to lead the student attention to the material.

2). Whilst-reading

Whilst-reading activity is the chore of the lesson. In this phase the students divided into small groups. A group consists of three or four members to discuss the task. Through whilst reading tasks, students are trained how to read the text effectively and efficiently.

3). Post-reading

This phase is the last activities for reading class which the aim as follows:

• To consolidate or reflect up on has been read
• To relate the text to the students’ knowledge interest or views.

According to Hedge (2000:221) the reading lesson should aim to build learners’ ability to engage in purposeful reading, to adopt a range of reading style necessary for interacting successfully with authentic texts, and to develop critical awareness.

Based on definition above the researcher can conclude reading is one of important subjects in English learning, with reading the students can easy to get new information and knowledge,  in reading process the students can be used some steps so that they cannot bored when they read.

B.     Review of the Related Finding

In this part, the research will describe some related findings which support the problems of this research as follows:

            Zam (2009: 65) found that: the correlation between motivation towards English and the speaking ability of the female students of English Study Program FKIP-UNRI are in good level. It means that most of the students have good motivation to speak English, especially in term of presentation. Motivation is needed, motivation is one of influence factor that can change behavior, so with motivation can make the speaking ability of the students be well.

Haji (2004: 49) found that there is significant correlation between the students’ motivation and their achievement in attending English course for the sixth year students of SD Santa Maria in Pekanbaru. It means that in fact the most of students does not want to follow courses; motivation is one of the factors to influencing students in attending English courses.

Salwa (2010: 53) found that “There are two hypothesis needed to be answered from her research, the hypotheses are: there is no correlation between the motivation towards speaking and the speaking achievement of the fifth semester students of English study program FKIP Riau University and there is a correlation between the motivation towards and the speaking achievement of the fifth semester students of English study program FKIP Riau University. It means that only a few of English students use English in communication while others seldom practices in real environment, this problem caused by lack of students motivation, so that motivation is very important for students with motivation can easy to get the goal of  learning process.

C.  Conceptual Framework

Motivation is one of influential in English learning. Every learner must have motivation in English learning. Without motivation, the goal of learning process is difficult to be reached. Motivation is stimulus that come from inside of individual and also can be influenced by external factor. As we know many students are lazy to study English, this is caused by the student’s low motivation in English learning, the students have lack of vocabulary, many students find difficulties comprehending reading text and the school has a shortage of facilities in learning English. Reading comprehension is the way of students to understand about text. In short in this research motivation become the independent variable, which is symbolized by X, and reading comprehension become the dependent variable, which is symbolized by Y.

D.    Hypothesis

There are two hypotheses in this research, such as:

Alternative Hypothesis (Ha): There is a correlation between students’ motivation in learning English and their reading comprehension at grade eight of Junior High School 20 Pekanbaru

Null Hypothesis (Ho): There is no correlation between students’ motivation in     learning English and their reading comprehension at grade eight of Junior High School 20 Pekanbaru.

CHAPTER III

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

A.    Kind of the Research

In doing this research, the kind of this research was quantitative research. According to Creswell (2005:39) quantitative research is a type of educational research in which the researcher decides what to study, asks specific, narrow question, collects numeric (numbered) data from participant, analyzes these number using statistics, and conducts the inquiry in an unbiased, objective manner.

B.     Population and Sample

1.      Population

The population of this research was the students of the grade eight of Junior High School 20 Pekanbaru. There were eight classes for grade eight which each of the classes consisted of 40 students. So, the total of the population in this research comprise 336 students. Due to the large number of the students, the researcher took the sample of this research.

2.      Sample

Referring to the number of population, it can be seen that was too big number of population. The researcher needed to take a sample. According to Gay (2000: 121) Sampling is the process of selecting a number of individuals for a study in such a way that they represent the larger group from which they were selected. The researcher will use purposive sampling to collect the data. The sample in this research was the group that will be participants in this research. Gay (2000:138) states that purposive sampling is the researcher selects a sample based on his or her experience or knowledge of the group to be sample. According to Arikunto (2006: 131) sample adalah sebagian atau wakil populasi yang diteliti. In this research, the researcher has taken one class as the participants that researcher gathered the data. The sample in this research was the students at class VIII A of Junior High School 20 Pekanbaru.

Table 1: Population and sample

SEX	POPULATION	SAMPLE
Male	160	20
Female	176	20
Total	336	40

C.    Instrumentations

There were some instruments that will be used in this research including test and questionnaire as in the following:

1.      Test

Test was the way to know the students’ reading comprehension. In this research, the researcher used the test to know the motivation of the students in reading comprehension. The researcher used this instrument to know how the correlation between students’ motivation and their reading comprehension. So, test was an important to do this research in knowing the correlation between the students’ motivation and their reading comprehension.

2.      Questionnaire

          A questionnaire was a research instrument consisting of a series of questions for the purpose of gathering information from participants. Usually, a questionnaire consisted of a number of questions that the respondent has to answer in a set format. A distinction was made between open-ended and closed-ended questions. An open-ended question asked the respondent to formulate his own answer, whereas a closed-ended question had the respondent pick an answer from a given number of options. Creswell (2005: 217) states that: “on questionnaires, you ask some questions that are close ended and some that open-ended”. So, questionnaire was a research instrument to collect the data by using questions from the participants of the research. 

Table 2: The questioner

No	The questionnaire	A	B	C	D	E
1	I pay full attention when teacher gives explanation
2	I do the  assignment from the teacher
3	I answer the teacher’s question
4	I make home work given by teacher
5	I  am not bored  at English class
6	I review lesson  at home
7	I make summery/ write the lesson when study English
8	I ask  teacher when I don’t understand
9	I give response about the lesson
10	I discuss with my friend if there is problem in material
11	I come on time at English class
12	I  absent at English class
13	I spent much time to read English books
14	I buy English book to collection
15	I make  schedule in reading English book
16	I get a reward from the teacher
17	I go to library to borrow English books
18	I use English when study

A         :  Always                     C         :  Sometime                 E          :  Never

B         :  Often                        D         :  Seldom

   (Gay 2000: 158)

D.    Data Collection Technique

There were some techniques in collecting the data for this research. They are test and questionnaire.

1.      Test

This instrument was used by the researcher to get the data about the correlation between students’ motivation and their reading comprehension. The researcher used this instrument to know the percentage their reading comprehension. In reading test, the researcher gave descriptive and recount text. The researcher  designed multiple choice in this test. In this test, the students read two or three paragraphs that were provided by the researcher, after that the students answered 35 questions were related to the paragraph.

2.      Questionnaire

This instrument was as supporting instruments for the test. The researcher gave close-ended questions to the students that correlate to the research problems. In this instrument contained 18 items that indicated the students’ motivation, they went to select one of the choices of any single items.

E.     Techniques of Analyzing the Data

The data were collecting from the participants by using test and questionnaire. The researcher analyzed the data to identify the correlation between the students’ motivation in learning English and their reading comprehension and to know what factors influence the correlation between the students’ motivation in learning English and their reading comprehension.

The data that got from test and questionnaire have been analyzed simultaneously with quantitative data. The formulation of correlation as follows:

rser =      ∑{(Or  – Ot) (M)}

              SDtot ∑   (Or - Ot) ²

                                          P

Dalam mana:

rser = koefisien korelasi serial

Or = ordinat yang lebih rendah

Ot = ordinat yang lebih tinggi

M= Rata-rata

SD tot = standar deviasi total

P= proporsi individu dalam golongan 

( Arikunto 2006 : 280)

Then, to interpret the level of students’ motivation will be searched based on the following terms:

Score	Categories
76-100	High
60-75	Midle
0-59	Low

In order to get the description of the answer that given by students, the data were analyzed by using the formula:

N =  x 100

Where : N= Score

            The students’ ability classified according to the score they got from the test. Then, their ability was classified into four level. The levels of ability are follow:

Interval	Categorizes
76 – 100	Good
56 – 75	Fair
40 – 55	Less
0 – 39	Bad

                  (Arikunto, 1996: 244)