Students’ Reading Interest in English Short Stories and Vocabulary Mastery as Correlation Research

Abstract

In understanding an English text, something interesting is needed in reading a text. Higher interest in reading affects vocabulary mastery. Through reading, students will gain new experiences and knowledge. It will make it easier for students to receive messages from the teacher to increase students’ interest in reading short stories in learning English. The purpose of the study was to find any correlation between students’ reading interest in short stories and vocabulary mastery. The research design for this study was a correlational study. Using simple random sampling, it took 80 Eighth grade students of SMP Negeri 8 Cibitung in the academic year 2021-2022. The result found that students’ interest in English Short Stories was 63% in the middle category of interest. Second, there were 42 students (53%) with good vocabulary mastery. Third, the correlation calculations found that H0 was rejected, and H1 was accepted. There was a significant correlation between students’ reading interest in English short stories and vocabulary mastery, and the correlation direction was positive. Therefore, interest in reading and vocabulary mastery are two important things in learning English. It means the two things are related to the achievement of learning English. If students have no interest in reading English stories, then vocabulary mastery will not increase.