4.2 The Correlation between Academic Words Mastery and the Students’ English Productive Skills
This section discusses the correlation between the twelfth grade students’ mastery of academic words and the students’ productive skills and it is the answer
to the second problem in this research. The number of academic words is analyzed and discussed in the previous discussion, i.e. 583 academic words. It means that
the twelve grade students in SMA Negeri 1 Wonosari have good mastery of academic vocabulary items because the minimal standard of academic words
mastered for beginner is 570 words. The twelfth grade students are able to master more than 570 words included verbs, adjectives, nouns, adverbs, and
conjunctions. Therefore, it can be said that the students are able to achieve the minimal standard of mastering academic words for beginner level in terms of
knowing or understanding the meanings of the words, i.e. understanding the Indonesian equivalences.
4.2.1 Data Presentation
In the research, the students’ productive skills were tested in the final examination. Their speaking and writing skills were tested practically. After
knowing the students’ mastery of academic words, the correlation between academic words mastery and the students’ productive skills is discussed in this
section. The twelfth grade students’ productive skills are represented by the final scores achieved in the practice examination. Based on the data gathered from SMA
Negeri 1 Wonosari, the students’ scores of final practice examination are
presented in appendix 4 see in appendices. Table in appendix 4 shows that there are only two students who have vocabulary test scores below the productive skill
test scores, and the other 118 students have vocabulary test scores above the productive skill test scores.
It means that the twelfth grade students in SMA Negeri 1 Wonosari do not have good productive skills, i.e. speaking and writing though their mastery of
academic words is good. This finding can be influenced by some factors, such as the form of the vocabulary test and the items in the vocabulary test are only
focused on academic words. Those two factors can influence the students’ productive skill scores since may be in productive skill tests, the students do not
work with academic words entirely. It means that may be in the productive skill tests, the students also work with another kind of words besides academic words,
such as high frequency words. If the students do not only work with academic words, their mastery of academic words cannot be explored well in the productive
skills since may be in the productive skill tests, they mostly use high frequency words. These two factors can be the reasons why the correlation between
academic word mastery and productive skills are very low or even can be ignored. For the detailed explanation, the correlation is analyzed in the next section.
4.2.2 Analysis Results
The data analysis in this section uses correlation analysis, i.e. Spearman’s correlation. Correlation Spearman in this research is used to find the relation
between two variables and the data do not come from the same sources, i.e. from PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
the students’ vocabulary test scores and final practice examination scores see in appendix 4. The correlation between the twelfth grade students’ mastery of
academic words and their productive skills is found by using SPSS program as in the table as follows.
Table 4.18 The correlation between academic words mastery and productive skills
VAR000 01
VAR000 02
Correlation Coefficient
1.000 .027
Sig. 2-tailed .
.770 VAR000
01 N
120 120
Correlation Coefficient
.027 1.000
Sig. 2-tailed .770
. Spearmans
rho
VAR000 02
N 120
120
Variable 1 represents the academic word test scores and variable 2 represents the final practice examination scores. Final practice examination
consists of speaking and writing tests which are included in productive skills. Table 4.18 shows that the correlation between those two variables is 0.027. It
means that the correlation can be ignored or almost there is no relation between academic word mastery and productive skills in which mastery in this research is
about knowing the academic word meanings, especially knowing the Indonesian equivalences.
The correlation between those two variables is very low in this finding since the students’ scores in academic word test sometimes do not always
correlate with their productive skills scores in the final practice examination. Table in appendix 4 shows that the students’ who have high scores in academic
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