THE CORRELATION BETWEEN THE STUDENTS’ ADJUSTMENT TO THE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT AND THEIR ENGLISH SPEAKING ABILITY AT ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT OF UNIVERSITAS MUHAMMADIYAH YOGYAKARTA

Adjustment is the main thing the freshmen students need when they enter a new environment of higher education. Adjustment might influence students’ performance in learning English especially in English speaking. This research aims to find out: (1) the EED of UMY students’ adjustment toward the learning environment; (2) the EED of UMY students’ speaking ability; and (3) the correlation between the students’ adjustment of the learning environment and their English speaking at EED of UMY. This research was quantitative by using correlational design. Sample of the research was 41 students of EED UMY batch 2015 selected by using convenience sampling method. Questionnaire was used as the instrument to collect the data of students’ adjustment and the speaking scores were gained from the documentation to find out the participants’ scores of speaking ability. Analysis method of the research used descriptive statistics to know the students’ adjustment ability (x) and students’ speaking ability (y) along with Correlation Product Moment to examine the correlation between both variables of x and y. The findings showed that most of EED students (56.1%) were in the medium adjustment ability toward the learning environment. Afterward, the EED students’ speaking ability was mostly in the category of good (46.3%). This research showed that the correlation coefficient was 0.437 with significance value 0.004 (p<0.05), therefore the null hypothesis was rejected and the alternative hypothesis was accepted. It can be concluded that there was positive correlation between students’ adjustment ability and their speaking ability at EED of UMY batch 2015, and the correlation strength were medium.
Keywords: students’ adjustment, speaking ability, learning environment