Reading Habits and Comprehension: A Study of University Students

Abstract

Reading comprehension and reading habits are two elements of learning a language. The goal of this research is to determine the relationship between students' reading habits and students' ability in reading comprehension in the second semester at Universitas Muhammadiyah Kalimantan Timur. In this quantitative research with correlational design, the researcher applied questionnaires to assemble the data. The questionnaire measures students' reading habits and the test measures students' reading comprehension. Based on the statistical data, the population was 2,362 students, and the sampling technique that has been used is a simple random sampling technique. Based on the Slovin Formula calculation for sampling size was 342 (margin of error: 5%), to prevent outlier data the researcher took 428 respondents from the overall faculty. By using Spearman Row, the result of the study was the positive and medium relationship between these variables namely reading comprehension and reading habits. There were some reasons why the correlation gained a medium level. It was because the majority of the respondents were seldom able to read the text in English in their daily lives otherwise only a few students read e-articles. In another situation, they like to read short stories in English. This research hopefully can be one of the references for identifying the literacy level of university students particularly in reading English texts. Encouraging the students in regular read English text in their daily routine and promoting active reading techniques are several strategies to increase the students’ reading habits.