Background of the Study

achievement a correlational study in 5 th semester of Department of English Education in UIN Jakarta.

B. Identification of Problems

The problem in this study can be identified as follows: 1. The problems influence reading achievement both from internal and external factors. 2. Intelligence is one of internal factors influences reading achievement. 3. Most of 4 th semester students in academic year 2013-2014 got low score in reading.

C. Limitation of the Problems

The writer concerns and limits the problem in this research on the correlation between students’ verbal-linguistic intelligence and students’ reading achievement.

D. Formulation of the Study

The formulation of the problem is Is there a correlation between students’ verbal- linguistic intelligence and students’ achievement in reading?”

E. Objective of the Study

The objectives of the study is to find out whether there is a correlation between students’ verbal-linguistic intelligence and students’ reading achievement in 5 th semester of Department of English Education.

F. Significance of the Study

This study hoped can provide useful information for students, lecturer, and institutions. 1. The students The result of this research hopefully can help the students to acknowledge their intelligences so they can find the way for themselves in reading. 2. The lecturer The result of this research is expected to be useful for reading lecturers in improving their teaching capacity to improve students’ reading achievement. 3. The Institution The result of this research is also expected to be useful input for headmaster to support teaching and learning activity by improving and developing the quality of education in the college, in order that students are motivated and interested in reading. 6

CHAPTER II THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

A. Literature Review 1. Reading

a. The Definition of Reading

Reading is a mental process. It is called mental process because it involves brain to receive the message or information from print text while the eyes are sending the information to the brain. Related to this, Gough, Hoover and Peterson stated there are two parts of mental process: word recognition and comprehension. 1 It can be concluded that reading engage a cognitive process because it need the reader’s comprehension to get the meaning of text. In addition, reading is not just a basic skill. Many people think that reading is a basic skill that was taught in the first year of school. Most of teachers teach their students reading based on their level and the vocabularies based on the content. “Reading is a simple process: readers decode figure out how to pronounce each word in a text and then automatically comprehend the meaning of the words, as they do with their everyday spoken language. This is not our understanding of reading”, said Ruth Schoenbach, Cynthia Greenleaf, Christine Cziko, and Lori Hurwitz. 2 Reading is a process for the reader and the text. When the reader read a text, the reader not only has to find the information, but also the reader has to work together with the text. Working together with the text means that the reader has to engage the meaning of the text and what the author want to say in the text with the reader background knowledge. Hunt said that reading is a process that is formed by text, reader’s background, and the situation that 1 David Colins, Ann Colins, Advancing Reading Achievement Becoming Effective Teachers of Reading through Collective Study , South Florida: HTRA, 1998, p.8. 2 Ruth Schoenbach, et al, What is Reading? An Excerpt from Reading for Understanding, The Quarterly , 2000, 223, p. 38. occurs in. 3 Related to the previous statements, Urquhart and Weir said that reading use the reader’s cognitive ability so that both the reader and the text can interact well. 4 In defining reading, it is important to pay attention in the reader external and internal factors, both factors related to how the reading’s readability and understanding. There are some factors involved both external and internal such as reader’s intelligence, experience, and background knowledge, words, phrases, sentences, and grammatical cues. 5 So, like the previous statements, reading is a process that involves all of reader attention to read the reading. When the reader read the text, it will be better if the reader has good attention especially to both factors. So, the writer concludes that reading is all about the process such as mental process, brain process, and the process how the reader can work with the text. In reading, the reader who has background knowledge related to the text is better than the reader who has lack background knowledge. This because of the reader can easily read the text. Moreover, because of reading is a mental process that involves brain to work with, the reader has to have ability to work with the written text in order to get the meaning and main idea easily.

b. Types of Reading

In the reading activity, there are two types of reading which are usually done by the students. They usually read a short text for getting detail information. In addition, they usually read a longer text for getting the overall meaning of the passage. The kinds of reading are intensive and extensive reading. 3 Julian Hermida, The Importance of Teaching Academic Reading Skills in First-Year University Courses, The International Journal of Research and Review, Vol.3, 2009, p.23. 4 Feng Liu, Reading Abilities and Strategies: A Short Introduction, International Education Studies , Vol.3, 2010, p.153. 5 Seyyede Zahra Naghibi and Mahmud PourhassanMoghaddam, The Effect of Intensive Vs. Extensive Reading on Iranian Intermediate EFL Learners’ Knowledge of Collocation, Modern Jornal of Language Teaching Methods , Vol.3 3, 2013, p.51.