Motivation to Read Students’ Reading Habits

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CHAPTER IV RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

This chapter consists of three parts. The first part discusses the research findings on students’ reading habits. The second part discusses the students’ writing cohesion. The third part discusses the contribution of students’ reading habits of English texts towards writing cohesion.

A. Students’ Reading Habits

There were three indicators used to observe the students’ reading habits. They were motivation to read, types of reading text, and reading strategies. In the questionnaire, they were scaled according to the freque ncy of doing the activities, which are never, seldom, sometimes, frequently, and always, with Likert-scale on a 1 to 5 ordinal scales respectively. The questionnaire revealed that most of the participants had good motivation to read. In terms of reading types preferences, the writer found that the participants read non-fiction texts more frequently rather than fiction texts and that the participants mostly applied quick reading strategies, such as skimming and scanning, for different types of reading texts. The following sections elaborate detailed findings of the three indicators of the students’ reading habits.

1. Motivation to Read

The research indicated that most of the participants had good motivation to read. By referring to the criteria of categorizing motivation to read which were explained in Chapter III, the writer elaborated the research findings into three levels of motivation they were high, medium, and low motivation. It revealed that among 32 research participants, seven students had high motivation to read, 19 students had medium motivation to read, and six students had low motivation to read. The questionnaire showed that the participants, who were highly motivated to read, would frequently spend their spare time by reading activity, even though many of them were not supported by their surrounding environments. Table 4.1 shows the total percentage of the students’ motivation to read. Table 4.1 Total Percentage of Students’ Motivation to Read PARTICIPANTS MOTIVATION NUMBER PERCENTAGE High 7 21.88 Medium 19 59.34 Low 6 18.75 Total 32 100 The participants had different motivation to read. Some of the participants had integrative motivation to read, in which they were motivated to read for their own interest in the target language. The questionnaire revealed that 53.13 of the participants frequently read for pleasure and 25 always read for pleasure. Meanwhile, they also had instrumental motivation in reading activities, in which they read for academic purposes. From the questionnaire, the writer found that 21.88 students were frequently motivated to read for academic purposes, whereas 12.5 of them were always motivated to read for academic purposes. Such motivation led to resultative motivation, in which they were motivated to read more due to their achievement in language learning. The participants always gained good achievement since they were motivated to read for their assignments, even if it was not for Reading class. Table 4.2 shows the questionnaire data of the types of motivation. Table 4.2 The Frequency of Students’ Motivation to Read Based on the Types of Motivation CATEGORY OF FREQUENCY TYPES OF MOTIVATION 1 Never 2 Seldom 3 S ometimes 4 Frequently 5 Always Integrative motivation 6.25 15.63 53.13 25 Instrumental motivation 3.13 21.88 40.63 21.88 12.5 Sometimes, they were less motivated to read since they also had problems with the meaning of the words they read. Nevertheless, their background knowledge was helpful for a better understanding. The participants’ responses to the statement of “my personal experiences help me to understand reading better” in the questionnaire reached 56.25 points for ‘frequently’ and ‘always’ category of frequency. The detailed data from the questionnaire were presented in Appendix 2.

2. Types of Reading Text