The Correlation Between Students` Learning Motivation and Their Reading Comprehension at SMP Negeri 9 Langsa

The objectives of this study were to find out the students` learning motivation in reading comprehension and to find out the correlation between students` learning motivation and their reading comprehension at the seventh grade of SMP Negeri 9 Langsa.The research used quantitative method and correlational research as design. The population of the study was the seventh grade students of SMP Negeri 9 Langsa in academic year 2023/2024 with total number 158 students. The sample in this study was 31 students. Instruments for data collection were the questionnaire to find out students’ motivation and the reading comprehension test. Pearson Product Moment was used to analyze the data and the hypothesis testing was computed by applying SPSS version 22. The result of questionnaire, it was found that there were 5 students (16,13%) who were very highly motivated, 9 students (29,03%) who were highly motivated, 13 students (41,94%) who were medium motivated, and 4 students (12,90%) who were low motivated. In conclusion, the questionnaire revealed that medium motivation was the most perceived type of reading motivation. The result of reading comprehension test, it was found that the students were included in three category. 3 students had very good reading achievement (9,68%), 15 students had good reading comprrehension achievement (48,39%), and 13 students had average reading achievement (41,93%). From the distribution above, it was found that “good” was the most frequent level of students’ reading comprehension achievement (48, 39%). It can be concluded that there is a significant correlation between students’ motivation and their achievement in reading because the correlation coefficient was 0.658. It was classified into high correlation . Thus, there is a significant correlation between learning motivation and reading comprehension. The result can be interpreted that students’ motivation had strong effect to reading comprehension skill. It is suggested the English teachers have to create teaching strategies that will motivate the students to read in class.