Appendix 20-24 . It means that the contribution of students‟ ability in inferring
word meaning from context to their reading comprehension achievement in such skills as Main idea was 45.9, Detail was 43,2, Inference was 31,4,
References 35.1, and Vocabulary was 45.8, while other percentages were influenced by other factors.
5. Hypothesis Testing
The hypothesis testing is the last step in this research to prove whether the hypothesis proposed by the wrier was accepted or not.
The result calculation for the first hypothesis showed that the coefficient correlation was 0.819, which was classified into significant correlation. The
critical value of r-table was found 0.312. The coefficient correlation is higher than the critical value of r-table 0.8190.312. Therefore, for the first hypothesis, the
null hypothesis H is rejected and the research hypothesis H
1
is accepted. It means that there is significant correlation between students‟ ability in inferring
word meaning from context and their achievement on reading comprehension of first year students at SMA Negeri 1 Kibang, East Lampung.
B. Discussion
From the result of inferring word meaning from context test, it was obtained that the highest score was 90 and the lowest score was 33.3 and the average was 64.27
see Appendix 12. The researcher categorized the students who got score from 80 to 100 into excellent performance, from 60 to 79 into good performance, from 50
to 59 into average, and under 50 into poor performance. It was found that, 35 students have excellent performance, 22.5 students have good performance,
17.5 students have average performance and 25 students have poor performance.
Based on the result of inferring word meaning from context test administered, the students‟ ability in inferring word meaning from context was considerably good.
It was indicated by the average score of the test, that is 64.27 see appendix 12. As stated by Simanjuntak 1989: 73 that inferring word meaning from context is
the ability of knowing the meaning of a word by considering its context, it means that there we
re several contributions to the students‟ performance in inferring word meaning from context as follows:
1. The students‟ ability in making use the closeness of the contextual
information in which the word occurred. Therefore, the students reading the sentence got a rough idea of its meaning.
2. The students‟ background knowledge of the subject matter of a given text.
Context is provided not only by preceding words or sentence but also topic. Therefore, it allowed the student the students to construct their
understanding of unfamiliar words meaning.
For another test, that was reading comprehension test, the researcher found that the highest score was 93.3 and the lowest score was 46.7 and the average was
70.08 see Appendix 13. The researcher categorized the students as who got score from 80 to 100 into excellent performance, from 60 to 79 into good
performance, from 50 to 59 into average, and under 50 into poor performance. It was found that, 32.5 students have excellent performance, 37.5 students have
good performance, 27.5 students have average performance and 2.5 students have poor performance. From the Table 6, it can be seen that almost the students
have excellent performance in reading comprehension.
The results of this reading comprehension test show that the ability to comprehend the texts happened because of the students‟ sufficient knowledge of word meaning
and their ability in drawing inferences or implying the information on the text. Students who got the contextual information as a means of activating their
background knowledge could give a correct response to the questions. It means that the students successfully combined their prior knowledge about the topics and
contextual information. Those are the grounds that predictably contributed to the students‟ achievement on reading comprehension. Meanwhile, the results of
reading comprehension test also show that the students who got low score in inferring word meaning from context test would get the low score in reading
comprehension test. Therefor e, we can take a stand that the students‟ reading
failure is suspected by the lack of background knowledge and of effort to make use the contextual information in inferring word meaning.
In this research, the researcher assumed that there is correlation b etween students‟
ability in inferring word meaning from context and their reading comprehension
