The Contribution of Students’ Ability in Inferring Word Meaning from

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 ability of the first year students at SMA Negeri 1 Kibang, East Lampung. Based on information of students‟ inferring word meaning from context test result, it c ould be concluded that students‟ ability inferring word meaning affects their achievement on reading comprehension. The result is shown when the researcher counted the coefficient correlation for those variables. It was found that the coefficient correlation was 0.819 categorized as significant correlation. It also proved when the researcher found the contribution value that showed the students‟ ability in inferring word meaning from context contributes 67 to their achievement on reading comprehension. As Adams and Huggins 1985 in Nation and Coady 1987: 101 claim that word recognition abilities are the single best class of discriminators between good and poor reader, understanding words meaning becomes the important component of reading comprehension. It means that these symbols are cues to the readers in which they are identified and interpreted to understand the message. It can be concluded that the students‟ ability in inferring word meaning from context plays important role in students‟ process of understanding the text in term of question that they formulates about the text.