THE MOTIVATIONAL LEVEL AND GENDER EFFECT ON ENGLISH READING ACHIEVEMENT OF THE FIRST SEMESTER OF ENGLISH STUDENTS AT STKIP PGRI JOMBANG

Abstract

Reading ability is a general power, the easiest ability to acquire in a language and its essential to succeed in all academic subjects since it involves the active of grammar, idioms and vocabularies. In such cases the stimulus for motivation would be the inherent interest of learning, because classrooms or learning situations might be attractive places in themselves. As the consequences, the students at least do not have any burden, even they will be very happy to study English in the classroom. So, this research want to know the motivational and gender in teaching reading. Here, there are some problems:Do motivational levels affect on the students’ English reading achievement? Do genders affect on the students’ English reading achievement? Do motivational level and gender provide interaction effect on the students’ English reading achievement? To solve those problems the researcher used quantitative research which employs causal comparative (ex post facto) as the methodology. Since this study is investigating the combined effect of two independent variables, thus it is considered as factorial design. The result of data analysis showed that the students’ motivational level of F value was 234.655 and significant (X1 : sig=.000), it meant that students with different motivational level have significantly different English reading achievement. Thus, hypothesis was accepted while null hypothesis was rejected. In addition, gender provided F value was 8.491 and significance at (gender : sig=.004) level. This meant that male and female students have different English reading achievement, hence hypothesis was accepted and null hypothesis was rejected. Meanwhile, the interaction between motivational level and gender served F value 180 at (X1*X2 : sig.=.835) level, however, it did not significance at 0.05 level, it indicated that there is no significance different in the effect of motivational level on English reading achievement for males and females.