THE RELATION BETWEEN READING HABITS AND STUDETS' WRITING ABILITY AT PBI UMY

As one of the four main English language skills, writing plays an
important role in the English language learning. However, writing is considered as
a productive skill which has some difficulties in its process. Reading as a
receptive skill is simply assumed to be one of the various ways for learners to
improve their writing ability. Thus, the researcher is interested in finding out how
the students’ reading habits are. Besides, the investigation on the students’ writing
ability is also conducted through the students’ Academic Reading and Writing
score. The result on the students’ reading habits and students score were important
to discover the third research question on the relation between reading English
text habit and students’ writing ability at PBI UMY.
The quantitative correlational research was employed to answer the
research questions. A hundred PBI’s students of academic year 2013/2014
become the respondents of this research. There are two variables in this research.
The first variable is students’ reading habits which are considered as independent
variable. The second one is students’ score as the independent variable. The
instruments of this research are the closed-ended and open-ended questionnaire.
The students’ reading habits being investigated in order to answer the first
research question is indicated by the three aspects namely the types of reading
materials, the frequency of reading and the techniques of reading. The result
shows that in terms of the types of reading materials, most of the students prefer
to read the reference materials. In terms of frequency of reading, most of the
students prefer to spend more time to read for general interest articles. Besides, in
terms of the techniques of reading the students prefer to apply quick reading
techniques while reading. The result of the second research question reveals that
the level of students’ Academic Reading and Writing score is in good category.
The last result on the relation between students’ reading habits and their writing
ability shows that students’ reading habits positively correlate with their writing
ability in a weak level (r = 0.102). Therefore, the hypothesis alternative (H1)
“there is a positive correlation between students’ reading habits and their writing
ability in PBI UMY” is accepted and the null hypothesis (H0) is rejected.
Keywords: reading, writing, the relation between reading habits and students’
writing ability.