THE CORRELATION BETWEEN STUDENTS’ MOTIVATION IN LEARNING

ENGLISH AND THEIR SPEAKING ABILITY

IN SMP N 16 KOTA JAMBI

ABSTRACT
Jariah,Intan.Students Number RRA1B211002. The Correlation Between Students’ Motivation
in Learning English and Their Speaking Ability in SMP N 16 Kota Jambi .Thesis.
English Study Program. Teacher Training and Education Faculty of Jambi
University in the Academic Year 2016/2017. The First Advisor is Hadiyanto,
S.Pd., M.Ed., Ph.D. The Second Advisor Rd. M. Ali, S.Pd., M.Pd..

Key words: Motivation, Speaking Ability.

The purpose of this study is to know whether there is any correlation between students’
motivation in learning English and their speaking ability in SMP N 16 Kota Jambi. The
sample of this study is 40 students taken from second grade of SMP N 16 Kota Jambi. The
method used in this study was a quantitative method and the technique used in this study was
a correlational technique. The questionnaires based on the indicators of intrinsic and extrinsic
motivation which adopted from The Attitude/Motivation Test Batery (AMTB) by Gardner
and translated into Indonesian language. Besides, in assessing students’ speaking ability, this
study conducted oral test to the students. The data were analyzed through Pearson Product
Moment Correlation formula.The finding shows that there was a positive correlation between
students’ motivation in learning English and their speaking ability (r=.630).

Speaking is a tool to communicate with other people. It is an activity conducted by a

person to communicate with others in order to express ideas, feelings, opinions, etc. It also
used to share information among people, to negotiate, to solve problems, to maintain social
relationship and friendship. Speaking is used by people almost every time to interact with
others. Therefore,it is an essential skill to be learned by students in learning English.

One of factors affects students in learning speaking is motivation, Shams (2008 :

120). Motivation seems having an important role in developing students’ speaking ability.
Motivation is energy of students which come from inside or outside encouraging themselves
to do something, It will give strength to students in learning speaking in order to speak up. In
fact, motivated students will do everything which supports their performance. They will do
the best way to get the best result

Therefore, the study is conducted to know students’ motivation in learning speaking

and to know whether there is any correlation between students’ motivation in learning
English and their speaking ability in SMP N 16 Kota Jambi by the title “The Correlation
Between Students’ Motivation In Learning English and Their Speaking Ability in SMP N 16
Kota Jambi”.

According to tittle of the study, the writer presents the problems statements as
follows:

1. What is the level of students’ motivation in learning English ?

2. What is the level of students’ speaking ability?
3. Is there any correlation between students’ motivation in learning English and
their speaking ability?

This study used quantitative method with correlational approach to see the significant
between students’s motivation in learning English and their speaking ability. From the
formulation of research problem, there are two variables, namely the students’s motivation in
learning English as an independent variable (X) and their speaking ability as dependent
variable (Y) at eighth grade of SMP N 16 Kota Jambi.

The Population of the research is the class eight grade student of SMP N 16 Kota
Jambi. It consists of nine classes and the number of the students is about 320 students. The
research used cluster sampling. First, The researcher wrote those nine classes on a small
paper, one class for one piece of small paper. Then, the researcher took one paper randomly
to choose the class to be the sample. Finally, the writer got one class VIIID with total number
40 students as the sample.

Instrument is a tool for measuring, observing, or documenting quantitative data. The

researcher used questionnaire and test in collecting the data. The questionnaires are adopted
from The Attitude/Motivation Test Batery (AMTB) by Gardner (2004). The questionnaire
consist of 35 items. The kind of test used in this research is oral test. The topic was
“Agreement and Disagreement.The material is obtained from the school syllabus. . In this
study, the students are scored based on five components of speaking skill by using the scale
rating scores of David P. Harris (1969 : 84).

This research had been held four times in two weeks, from 25 September until 16
October 2016 at the class VIII D of SMP N 16 Kota Jambi. There were 33 items of
questionnaire that distributed to one class.

There were two items in students’ motivation, there is intrinsic motivation and
extrinsic motivation.

The interpretation of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation

Motivation Mean S.td Level

Intrinsic Motivation 2.96 0.76 Medium
Extrinsic Motivation 2.88 0.83 Medium

The students’ speaking ability is as the dependent variable (Y). To know students’
speaking score, the researcher conducted oral test to the students. The researcher used inter
rater to score the students’ English speaking ability in speaking English. It means there was
other raters who scored the students’ ability in speaking English besides the researcher
herself. Here are the the total score of English speaking test as accumulation score from
raters:

The Distribution Frequency of Students Score in Speaking Test

No Score Interval Frequency Percentage Level of ability

1 20-25 85-100% 7 17,5% Excellent
2 15-19 75-84% 29 72,5% Good
3 10-14 60-74% 4 10% Satisfactory
4 5-9 40-59% 0 0% Unsatisfactory
5 0-4 0-39% 0 0% Fail
To identify the correlation between students’ motivation in learning English and their
speaking ability in SMP N 16 Kota Jambi, the researcher did an analysis toward those two
variable through the formula of Pearson Product Moment. The researcher analyzed the data
by using SPSS. The following table shows the computation result of the two variables.
 The Value of Pearson Product Moment Correlation
Correlations

Totalmotivation Nilaispeaking
**
Totalmotivation Pearson Correlation 1 ,630

Sig. (2-tailed) ,000

N 40 40
**
Nilaispeaking Pearson Correlation ,630 1

Sig. (2-tailed) ,000

N 40 40

**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

From the calculation above, the researcher got the result of rxy= 0.627 (it is between
(0.40 – 0.70). According to interpretation of correlation, the researcher noticed that the
correlation between students’ motivation (X variable) and speaking ability (Y variable) is
neutral or enough.

Conclusion & Suggestion

The purpose of this research was to find out the correlation between students’
motivation in learning English and their speaking ability. From the finding above, the
researcher concluded that there was a positive correlation between students’ motivation and
their speaking ability in SMP N 16 Kota Jambi. The result of Pearson correlation was
(r=.630).

After doing the research and looking at the conclusion above, it is found that there is
significant correlation between students’ motivation in learning English and their speaking
ability. The researcher has some suggestions for teachers and students. First, For English
teachers, they are expected to improve their students’ motivation in learning English,
especially in speaking skill because motivated students will concentrate and enjoy the
teaching and learning process. Besides, teachers should tell the important of English
knowledge to their students. Second, for students, they are expected to increase their
motivation in learning English, especially speaking skill. students also should have
motivation from inside themselves to learn speaking. It can encourage students to learn and to
achieve their goals.
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