Hypotheses Testing Research Findings 1. Description of the Data

Meanwhile, from the data description of reading comprehension, the score is fairly good. It is shown by the average score of the reading comprehension of the fourth semester students of Department of English Education found is 71.30 and the mode score is 75.00. In addition, most of the students got score upper than the mean score obtained 71.30. Therefore, most of the fourth semester students of Department of English Education in academic year 20152016 have good reading comprehension. In addition, the findings reveal that there is a significant relationship between collocation knowledge and reading comprehension. It is indicated that the value of correlation coefficient r xy is higher than the score of r table r t . In the case, the correlation coefficient is 0.474, and the value is compared with r t at the level of significance 0.01 obtained respectively 0.376, in which r o = 0.474 r t = 0.376. Similarly, based on the calculation of t count above, the value of t count is higher than the value of t table at the level of significance 0.01, in which t count = 3.571 t table = 2.692. Since, r o and t count are higher than r t and t table , it means that the alternative hypothesis H a is accepted and null hypothesis H o is rejected. In other words, there is a significant relationship between collocation knowledge and reading comprehension of the fourth semester students of Department of English Education of Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University of Jakarta in academic year 20152016. This finding is corroborated by a study conducted by Ma which revealed that collocation knowledge contributed mostly to performance on reading comprehension. 2 In addition, regarding to the relationship between collocation knowledge and language proficiency, Yazdandoost, et al., revealed in their study that the knowledge of collocation would lead to EFL learners’ receptive and productive skills—includes reading as one of those skills. 3 Therefore, students who have better collocation knowledge, they may have better ability in comprehending a text. 2 Yu-han Ma and Wen-yin Lin, A Study on the Relationship between English Reading Comprehension and English Vocabulary Knowledge, Journal of Education Research International, 2015, p. 1. Retrieved from http:dx.doi.org10.11552015209154 . 3 Zahra Yazdandoost, et al., Loc cit. Additionally, based on the determination of coefficient r 2 = 0.225 obtained, collocation knowledge is considered to have contribution of 22.5 towards reading comprehension. In other words, the reading comprehension of the fourth semester students of Department of English Education of Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University of Jakarta in academic year 20152016 is 22.5 influenced by their collocation knowledge and there is 77.5 as the remains. The remains indicate that there are other factors which influence their reading comprehension. As Alderson pointed out that there are several factors such as readers’ background and subjecttopic knowledge, their cultural knowledge, their target language knowledge, and linguistic knowledge which influence the process and product of reading. 4 Hence, the factors above can be the 77.5 of the remained influences of their reading comprehension. To sum up, the data interpretation shows a finding that collocation knowledge and reading comprehension correlate each other. Collocation knowledge gives contribution r o 0.474 to reading comprehension. The relationship of collocation knowledge and reading comprehension has significant value. It means that the better students have knowledge of collocation, the better students’ reading comprehension.

C. Limitations

In conducting this study, there were some challenges that lead this study to some limitations. First, finding collocation books for references is difficult since the teaching and learning of collocation are limited in Indonesia. In addition, collocation workbooks which wanted to be adopted in creating collocation knowledge test were also limited. As a result, the researcher got some challenges in finding those books. Second, in order to find the result of the relationship between collocation and reading, the reading passages must contain collocation investigated in this study—it was lexical collocation. After getting reading items’ test from one of TOEFL preparation books, the researcher had to analyze manually whether the 4 J. Charles Alderson, Assessing Reading, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 80. passages contain collocation or not using Ozdic.com—the English Collocations Dictionary online. Therefore, it was challenging and took much time for the researcher to find standardized reading test which contained lexical collocation in its passages. Last, another problem that the researcher found was limited access to look for the relevant studied needed. The reason was that there were few researchers in Indonesia who studied about collocation. In addition, the relevant studies that discussed collocation knowledge and reading comprehension particularly in terms of the Indonesian educational context were difficult to be found. As a result, most of the similar studies discussing the two variables were found in other countries setting.