However; there are some differences among each other. This study is more specific and detail than other investigations conducted by other researchers. The
first research above investigated whether or not critical thinking had relationship with language proficiency; while this research focused on investigating the
correlation between critical thinking and reading comprehension skills. Therefore,
this research is really new and different from the other research.
D. Conceptual Framework
Reading comprehension involves the ability to not only read the words but also the abstract meaning behind the text. However, the ability to understand the
abstract meaning behind the texts involves higher order thinking. Higher-order thinking skills enable students to do this and find the real value in the information
they are reading. Readers who can use higher order thinking not only show knowledge and understanding of the text, they can put the information in new
contexts and form relations between ideas. Some experts see reading as a decoding process with the reader processing
each letter in turn, producing the appropriate sounds, and forming words. Allington, R., Sirange M., 1980. In other definition, reading is the process of
construction meaning from read book.
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Therefore, reading is a comprehension process, and comprehension is the ability to construct the author’s message
through experiential background, knowledge, language, and thinking skills. The role of critical thinking is indispensable in reading comprehension.
The relationship between those skills seems to be equal and parallel. It means that if the readers have good critical thinking skill, they are supposed to have good
ability in comprehending the texts. Meanwhile, if the writers lack of the ability to think critically, they are supposed to have poor reading comprehension skill.
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Allington, R.
Strange, M.
2001 What is Reading?
3thd.Ed; Learning Through Reading, p.15
E. Research Hypotheses
This study proposes two hypotheses as follow: 1.
Research hypothesis H1: There is a significant relationship between critical thinking skill and reading comprehension skill of the eleventh grade students of
SMA Kharisma Bangsa, academic year 20152016. 2.
The null hypothesis Ho: There is no significant relationship between critical thinking skill and reading comprehension skill of the eleventh grade students of
SMA Kharisma Bangsa, academic year 20152016.
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CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This chapter describes the research methodology including the period on which the study was conducted, the number of participant of this study, the
instruments of the study as well as the way administrating those instruments. The procedure of collecting and analyzing the data were also included. These are
clearly presented in time and place of the study, research design, population and sample, research instruments, technique of collecting the data and technique of
data analysis.
A. Time and Place of the Study
The study was conducted from May to June 2016 in SMA Kharisma Bangsa which is located in Jl. Terbang Layang No. 21, Pamulang, East
Tangerang, Banten.
B. Research Design
This study is quantitative study as the research analysis used statistical and numerical data to test the hypotheses. This study involved two variables including
critical thinking skill and reading comprehension skill. The design used in this study was correlational design. It was employed to
measure the relationship between two variables covering an independent variable critical thinking skill and a dependent variable reading comprehension skill by
using correlational analysis. ―A correlation is a statistical test to determine the
tendency or pattern for two or more variables or two set of data to vary constantly. In the case of two variables it means that two variables share common variance, or
they co vary together‖.
1
This design was used to find out the relation between two variables or more and to see the influence of each other. In this case, this design
was employed to seek the relation between critical thinking skill and reading comprehension skill.
1
John. W. Creswel, Educational Research: Planning, Coducting and Evaluating Quantitative and Qualitative Research,
Boston:Pearson Education İnc.,2012 , 4th ed., p. 338.
