READING STRATEGIES AND READING COMPREHENSION: HOW ARE THEY CORRELATED?

Abstract

Reading is an active mental process intended to gain information and comprehend the message in the text. To read effectively, the reader must apply strategies that suit their reading needs. Many kinds of strategies affect how well the students comprehend the materials; in this study, the researcher focused on global reading strategies, problem-solving strategies, and support strategies. Therefore, the researchers is interested in conducting a study about the correlation between reading strategies and reading comprehension. This study used a quantitative approach, using questionnaires to measure reading strategies and reading comprehension tests to measure students' reading comprehension. The data for this research were collected from 45 students in the third semester of the English department at the University of Islam Malang. The data were analyzed using simple linear regression using SPSS 26 to measure the correlation between variables. The result shows that there was a linier relationship between the three reading strategies (global reading strategies (GLOB), problem-solving strategies (PROB), and support strategies (SUP)) and reading comprehension with R = 0.885 (p<.000). The highest correlation was the value between reading comprehension and problem-solving strategies, r = 0.780. It means that problem-solving contribute to students' reading comprehension the most. The finding also shows that the more students use reading strategies, the easier it is for them to understand the text.

Key Words: Reading strategies, correlation, reading comprehension.