is multi words, namely collocation. Collocation consists of two or more words which co-occur together frequently in natural way. Collocation can be found in
English texts such as books, magazines, newspapers, novels, etc. In learning a language, collocation is crucial because by having collocation knowledge, it will
help students in comprehension and production of a language. Collocation knowledge is defined as an ability to store multi words which frequently co-occur
together. Having a better knowledge of collocation also has an impact to the students’
language proficiency, especially reading. In reading, students frequently translate word by word to understand the text. However when they face collocation in a
text, they may not translate it word by word. For example, students who have lack of collocation may translate “have second thoughts about something” as think
about it twice, however the correct one is decide that it may not be a good idea after all. When students face collocation words, they have to guess the meaning of
one word to the collocated word and connect it to the context of the text in order to get complete comprehension. Therefore, the students need to aware every
collocation they get after hearing or reading, in order to improve their knowledge of collocation. By having better knowledge of collocation, it will help them in
comprehending a text accurately. Thus, based on the explanation above, it can be identified that collocation
has a great deal with reading. It can be supposed that the more students getting aware about collocation and having a better collocation knowledge, they will
easily and quickly get a complete comprehension of the text; while students who have lack of collocation knowledge will not able to comprehend the text properly.
E. Theoretical Hypothesis
Based on the theories discussed above, it can be proposed theoretical hypothesis that there is a significant relationship between students’ collocation
knowledge and their reading comprehension.
24 X
Y CHAPTER III
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
A. Time and Place of Research
This study was conducted for two months, from May to June 2016. The study was conducted for distributing collocation knowledge and reading
comprehension tests. The place of the study was at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University of Jakarta which was located at Jalan Ir. Juanda No.95,
Ciputat, Tangerang Selatan. The consideration of conducting the study at this site was because of the accessibility and familiarity of the situation and the
participants.
B. Method and Design of Research
The method of this study was quantitative method. Meanwhile, the research design of this study was correlational study. The real design of the study is
represented as follows:
Figure 3.1 Research Design
Note: X = Independent Variable
Y = Dependent Variable r
= Relationship From the chart above, this study investigated the correlation between two
variables. The variables were independent and dependent variables. The independent variable was “collocation knowledge” which was known as X
variable. Meanwhile, the dependent variable was “reading comprehension” which was known as Y variable.
r
C. Population and Sample
The population of the study was the fourth semester students of Department of English Education at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University of Jakarta in
academic year 20152016. There were 3 classes; 4A, 4B, and 4C and each class consisted of 17, 23, 23 students. The total number of 3 classes was 63 students.
The target population of this study was chosen because they have already passed or learned the related subjects investigated in this study such as vocabulary,
morphology and reading subjects. According to Cohen, taking the larger sample is better to give greater reliability and facilitate more sophisticated statistics to be
used.
1
Therefore, the study was considered to take large sample for collecting data consisted of 46 students which were selected using purposive sampling technique.
The samples were chosen from 4B and 4C classes of Department of English Education. Meanwhile, the other 17 students from 4A class were involved to be
participants in testing validity and reliability of the research instrument.
D. Instrument of Research
In this study, test was used as the instrument for collecting data. There were two different tests conducted in this study; reading comprehension and collocation
knowledge tests.
1. Reading Comprehension Test
In this study, the reading comprehension test was adopted from Longman Complete Course for the TOEFL Test Preparation for the Computer and Paper
Test by the reason that the book consisted of the TOEFL paper-based test which usually used in the institutional TOEFL. In other words, the test was suitable for
the participants of this study as undergraduate students. After being analyzed manually, the passages in the reading test contained lexical collocation whose
score was appropriate to be correlated with the score of lexical collocation knowledge in order to find its significant relationship.
1
Louise Cohen, et al., Research Method in Education 6
th
Ed., New York: Routledge, 2007, p. 101.
