STUDENTS’ ATTITUDES AND THEIR ABILITIES IN ENGLISH READING TEXTS AT SMPN 1 PRINGGARATA

Abstract

The aims of this study were to find out the correlation between students’ attitudes and their abilities in English reading texts, to know students’ attitudes toward English reading texts, to know which text students show their positive and negative attitude to, and to know the reasons why students have positive and negative attitudes. This research was mix method research with explanatory sequential mixed methods design. The population of this study was 210 students at the second grade at SMPN 1 Pringgarata in academic year 2016/2017. The numbers of sample were 118 determined by simple random sampling. Interview, questionnaire, and tests item were instruments in this study. Analyzing the data used persentage and statistical analysis called Spearman Correlation in SPSS program. The result was the score of significant correlation was 0.048<0.05. It indicated that there was correlation between students’ attitudes and their abilities in English reading text. Therefore, the alternative hypothesis (Ha), clearly accepted. However, the correlation was very weak (0.182). In addition, most students had good attitude towards English reading texts and their very positive attitudes were towards narrative text. Moreover, students’ reasons for having positive attitudes towards descriptive, recount, and narrative texts were that they were easier to be understood. They liked reading recount texts were that they liked writing a diary and liked reading people’s experiences. Students’ reasons for having negative attitudes towards descriptive, recount, and narrative text were that those texts were too long and difficult to be understood.

Key Words: Attitudes, abilities, and English reading texts.