The Analysis of Students’ Reading Interests in SMP Negeri 1

Lempuing

1. Background of Study
Reading one of languages skill plays principal role in students’ activities because reading
enables the students to gain information from printed or online sources. Healy (2002) stated that
reading is the most critical skill for future success in school as well as throughout life. Reading is
one of the most important components of language and it is an essential tool for lifelong learning
for all learners. Alyousef (2005) mentioned that reading is an interactive process between a
reader and a text. Then it is essential to read in order to understand the target language especially
in learning English.
Reading has a big role to gain the success in school and life. As Piyanukol (2001) said that
the more people read, the more they learn and that reading is the road to knowledge. The reading
process can be difficult and complicated or easy for some students. Some students might say that
reading as a fun activity while others might avoid it (Wallace, 2007). The students who has a bad
experience in learning English might be has less interest in learning English and end up by not
adopt reading English as their habit. It is also maintained by lee, Schaer & Dismukes (1994) who
discovered that a lot of middle students show a remarkable decline in general attitudes towards
reading, intrinsic motivation for reading and the frequency of voluntary reading. Some students
might be read not because their desire to read, but because they have to read.
A research by Taylor, Frye and Maruyama (1990), reported that reading interest has a
strong positive relationship with the success of students both in school and life. According to
Istanti (2012), reading is one of the important indicators in interpreting a written discourse.
Reading interest must be promoted more to students. It can give the effect for the listening,
speaking and writing skill. Thus, the habits of reading must be a repetition among the students, in
case it can increases the intellectual of a person. Diem and Novitasari (2012, p.39) state that it so
essential to promote reading interest in case that it has an important role in learn English as a
second language.
Reading as a means of collecting and analyzing information is predominant for people’s
career improvement in the era 21th century. For learners particularly, reading might be their
primary need to achieve academic success. From reading, individuals are able to minimize the
confusion and the ambiguity that may surround them in any situation, thus allowing them to
respond appropriately to various stimuli. The important of reading in students is one of the
highlights of learning; it is consistent with the 2013 Indonesian curriculum;
‘material based on language competence is emphasized as means of communication that
conveys ideas and knowledge, students habitually read and understand the meaning of the
selected text and summarize and represent it in their own language, students are
accustomed to preparing text that are systematic, logical, and effective through scripture-
containing exercise, students are presented by the corresponding text rule so that it is not
ambiguous in the process of composition”.

Related to the 2013 Indonesian curriculum above, reading material in the English subject
emphasizes on reading levels. It is important that students who learn English as their second
language or foreign language growing up their reading interests because it is much involved in
and has great advantage to English reading practice. Furthermore, reading is needed especially
among the students because sometimes students get lack in reading activity, they do not have the
habit towards reading activity or have a less interests in reading. As Commiyetti (2013) says that
reading one of skills that is important to students to master because many information presented
in text throughout the world.
According to Miller (2016) Indonesia dedicated as 60 th of 61th country of reading interest.
Even in Southeast Asia, Indonesia dedicate as third rank down of ASEAN in reading interest.
The result of survey did by United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO), 2011, index of reading interests of Indonesian only 0,001 percent. It means that only
one of one hundred people who has the desire to read. Also, reading has been one of
requirements that determine the status of a country. The fact said that Indonesia has been listed
as a developing country with the low reading habits among its society (Hafiz, Syofia, and Syafri
2016). In South Sumatera, especially in Palembang, the case of reading interests also occurs.
According to Ria (2018), after she interviewed some students in Junior High School Palembang,
she found that the students have some difficulties in reading comprehension. It happened because
the students did not do the assignment seriously, pay attention to the teacher and have low
reading interest.
The cases above have some similarities with students in SMP Negeri 1 Lempuing. The
students sometimes do not pay attention to the teacher so they do not focus on the subject or the
text. Furthermore, it can affect their interest in reading. The reading interest of the students is
also being a question to the writer. The least of them is eager to visit the school library and read
some books, the library even though the school has provided facilities and some suitable reading
source for the student. Most of students are more interested in spending their spare times by
going to the canteen, talking to their friends in the class and playing something in the field than
going to the library to get some books to read. So it means that the students get their time to read
only in the learning and teaching activity, when the teacher sometimes brings some new English
text with pictures to the students and asks them to hear the teacher read the text so they can read
it by themselves in order to increase their interest in reading.
The more the student interest in reading, the more proficient he or she becomes. According
to Shen (2006), reading habit can be explained as how often, how much, and what students read.
Since the students can take greatly benefit from reading practice, therefore it is worth to say that
the more frequently students read and the more number of books they read will help the students
to enhance their academic performance. Otherwise Likewise maintained by Feurstein &
Schcolnik (1995), lack of practice in reading is probably the most serious source of reading
difficulties. Someone who does reading of his or her own free will, it would anticipate
satisfaction that he or she will get from the act of reading. It also refers to reading that having
begun at someone else’s request we continue because we are interested in it (Clark & Rumbold,
2006).
Regarding the discussion above, the writer tries to analyze reading interest of Junior High
School students by conducting a study entitled “The Analysis of Students’ Reading Interests in
SMP Negeri 1 Lempuing” along with the factors affecting their interest in reading. At least, it is
expected that this study encourage the students’ awareness to read and hopefully reading activity
might be a good habit for the students.

I.1 Problem of the Study

 How is the students’ reading interest level?
 What factors are affecting students’ interest in reading?
I.2 The Objective of Study
Based on the problem of the study, the objective of the study is;
1. To identify the students’ interest in reading and,
2. Find out the factors affecting the students’ interest in reading

I.3 The Significance of Study

The results of this research can enrich the new knowledge to the readers since there is no
much research related to this study. As the result, this research can fill the gap. This research
makes students aware how essential the reading culture is. The students will also be motivated to
grow reading interest. Equally important, the results of this research can be used as a
measurement of quality toward the educational system, especially the educational quality of
Department 6 of English Language Education. Furthermore, the stake holders can also be
facilitators and they can make the strategies to grow the students’ reading interest. Moreover, this
research can be utilized as one of the valuable references in conducting further research related
to this research. This study is significance to help the students to know their interests in reading.
The writer hopes that from this study, when the students read every single sentence from the
questionnaire they can realize about their interest in reading, so they have the desire to increase
their interest in reading. And also this study hopefully can give some contributions for the
development of language teaching and learning.

2. Literature Review
2.1 Reading
Reading is one of important skills that must be mastered by students in learning English
as foreign language. Healy (2002) says that reading is the most critical skill for future success in
school as well as throughout life. Reading also states by Piyanukol (2001), that the more people
read, the more they learn and that reading is road to knowledge. That statement suggests that
reading is important, in other hand the more it is necessary if students want to get more
knowledge.
As defined by Issa (2011), reading is a way for a better understanding of one’s own
experiences. Once the students have been taught to love in reading and develop to love for
books, they will gain the assets of human experiences and knowledge for themselves. For
instance, students can get many information and knowledge by reading such as books, articles,
newspaper, magazines, and the other reading materials.
Furthermore, in learning English as a foreign language, the students might have some
difficulties. One of those is reading. Some students assume that reading is a boring activity.
Students think that reading is difficult. The survey did by Nestle Family Monitor (2003) find that
the students not only think that reading is difficult, but also boring and distastefully.

2.2 Components of Reading

Over the past two decades, teachers of adults learners of English as a second language
(ESL) have increasingly encountered students who have limited literacy skills in their native
language and/or in English (Burt, Peyton, & Adams, 2003; DelliCarpini, 2006). In order to
facilitated the second language learners’ literacy development, the essential components of
reading are needed to interrelated and work in concert to extract the essence of reading, which is
gaining from the text. These components of reading are (a) phonological awareness/phonemic
awareness, where the phonological system is essential and it may be have a basic a basic
phonological awareness in order to read, (b) word study/phonics, it occurs when students learn
how the sounds and letters correspond to one another and use the knowledge of phonic to spell
and read, (c) vocabulary, related to reading activity that knowing a word involves being able to
decode written text and comprehend its meaning, (d) fluency, that fluent readers recognize and
comprehend words simultaneously while making sense of the text as they read, and (e)
comprehension, it is the focus of all reading engagement (National Reading Panel, 2000).

2.3 Reading Interest

The word interest in the context means the source where people are motivated to do
something (Hurlock, 2000). Also interest according to Crow (in Djaali, 2007) is associated with
a style of motion that encourage one to face or deal with people, objects, activities, experiences
stimulated by the activity itself.

According to Woolfolk (Anita, 2004), there are two kind of interest. The first one is
personal interest; it is from inside its person without any influence, it can be call as a latent
aspect of one’s inner self. And situational interest, it comes from external influence or social
activity, even direct or indirect interaction can affect someone’s perception toward something.
For instance, a student has interest in reading because some of her friends like to read. So it
makes the feeling of interest in reading for the student that affected from her friends.

Lefrancois (2000), also define two kind of interest, they are intrinsic and extraction-
interest. Intrinsic interest that stem from within the individual and fundamental to encourage to
be have with desired activities and have a tendency to like without intervention. And the
extraction-interest, it based on reward and punishment, for the example is individual impulse to
jack his or her interest by pursuing the purpose of reward or creating individual tendency to be
interested through the pressure of intervention in punishment. It is as generally used to help
strengthen the urge for intrinsic.

Some experts (e.g., Renninger, 2000; Schraw & Lehman, 2001) in educational research
have primarily also stated the two types of interest: situational and individual interest. Hidi
(1990) defines situational interest as the focused attention and the affective reaction triggered in
the moment by environmental stimuli, which may or may not last over time. Such interest is
thought to be context-specific and of short-term value. On the other hand, the individual interest
refers to a person’s relatively enduring predisposition to reengage in particular content over time
(Renninger, 2000). This type of interest is believed to be topic-specific and have long-lasting
personal value. It is related to a person’s previous knowledge and experiences. A third type of
interest known as the topic interest is introduced (Ainley, Hidi & Berndorff, 2002) which is
assumed to be a learner’s level of interest when a specific topic is studied. It is defined by
Schiefel (1991) as a form of individual interest which is in contrast with the situational or text-
based interest.

2.3.1 Factors Affecting Reading Interest

The everyday reading activities in students, considered to influence their studying skills
and academic performance. Reading interests is also let the students who love to read will get the
way to write well and have more ideas which can make the students become more creative and
innovative (Grabe, 2003; Stansberry, 2009). Read as the windows of world, means that the one
who loves to read can get the opportunity to gain access to this wide world.

Nowadays, one of many problems that students face is not only the inability to read, but
also their lack of interest or rejection of reading.
 “Studies based on reading habits have particularly focused on the important of the
promotion of specific strategies to: capitalize on their interests, make reading materials
accessible, build a conducive environment, allow time to read in school, provide
significant adult models and use motivational techniques.” (Clary, 1991)
Therefore some factors affecting the reading interest. Dawson and Bamman in Rahman (1985)
propose some factors that affecting the reading interest;
a). The purpose that obtained after reading activity is peaceful, status and certain state, affective
satisfaction and the freedom as a fact, and the student development rate, the needs above
affecting on the selection and reading interest on each individual. b). Obtaining a family reading
material is a guide to both reading and students reading and enables reading interests to be
encouraged by family’s social and economic status. c). Teachers also have a point in affecting
students’ reading interest, because with interesting information about a book, then the students
will be interested in reading it and at the same time obtained a source of information.
d). the facilitations of library or the infrastructure have been provided, the number and variety of
readings favored by students will increase their reading interest. e). Gender also contribute to
selecting reading books and student reading interest. f). A classmate’s suggestion as an external
factor can encourage a student’s interest in reading.

2.3.2 The Importance of Interest in Reading

The interest in reading is essential to enhance students’ success in and out of school. The
person who is not able to read will not be able to succeed (U. S. Department of Education, 2006.
It can be said that reading is the way to success in school and life. The more somebody read, the
more they can enlarge their knowledge. According to Shen (2006), reading interest is described
as what, how often and how much the students read. That refers to students’ behavior that
expresses the likeness of reading, how often, how much, and what students which occur
regularly. Reading interests affect the students’ knowledge. Moreover, it is not only help the
students increase their knowledge but also their wisdom from the cultural heritage and very
helpful in passing the free period (Patel and Jain, 2008).

Reading interest and is important to cultivate the role in enabling a person to achieve
practical efficiency. Mustafa (2012) also states reading is essential foundation to students to gain
their academic and research goals. In line Noor (2011) says that reading is important in general
in order to cope with new knowledge in a changing world. Therefore, reading interest is good,
especially for students, since it help them to enhance their knowledge from various reading
resources.

2.4 Reading Interest in English as a Second or Foreign

The word interest had played a vital role in education and particularly in second or
foreign language learning. Hidi & Renninger (2006) defined it as heightened attention and
emotional engagement that emerges when a person has positive interaction with a content area or
a task. For students, the process in reading interest might commence with an initial exposure to a
new language that arouses their interest, and which can be sustained by subsequent interaction
with interesting materials and activities with which the language is presented, or lost when such
materials or activities fail to inspire or maintain learners’ interest. The students with high interest
usually read more and find it useful and enjoyable (Beale, 2004). They will spend their time by
reading more than other activities, focus and absorb in it. The other hand, the students with low
interest in reading can affects that students’ performance in classrooms.

2.4.1 How to Measure Reading Interest or the Indicators of Interest in Reading

Interest is commonly categorized as individual or personal and situational interest
(Eidswick, 2010). Crow and Crow (2014) stated that there are three factors which influence
students’ reading interest; intrinsic motivation, social motivation and emotion. Beside that they
also mention five main indicators of reading interest; attention, time use, motivation, emotion
and effort to read.
Those five indicators would be the basis measurement of reading interest.
a. Attention. Paying attention is the main process of learning and also in increase the
interest of something. The students would pay attention on an activity that they
interested in.
b. Time use refers to the conscious process of planning and control over time on spent
on specific activities such as hobby.
c. Motivation is the desire within a person that makes the person to do an activity.
d. Emotion that may determine how their ability to read. When students can control their
emotion, it makes them receive a certain thing easily.
 e. Effort to read is one factor that can measure the interest in reading. When someone
has interest in reading, she will do something in order to read.
According to Sutarno (2006), there are two factors affecting the level of interest in
reading;
1. Direct Factor; it involves parents (family), teacher, librarian, and environment.
2. Indirect Factor; it involves source of material, government, and private company
concerts to education.
The study by Nugroho (2000), showed that the people’s interest in reading very depends
on the extends to which people perceive the urgency of an information. Its people perceptions
determine the quality of interest in reading. Therefore, how much interest a student also depends
in how much the student consider the information or content of that reading text is important.

2.5 Previous Related Studies

In writing this study, the researcher found some finding that are related to what the
researcher is writing. First, a study conducted by Noor (2010) entitled Reading Habits and
Preferences of EFL Post Graduate: A Case Study. This study asked 52 post graduate students at
the School of Language Studies and Linguistics, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities,
University Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) as the sample of the study. There 19 female and 33
male respondents of ages that ranges between 20-45 years old. The result revealed that 36 of the
samples enjoy reading material, have different reasons for reading as well as demonstrated
language preference in reading.
The research result from Nugroho (2000) showed that the people’s interest in reading
very depends on the extent to which people perceive the urgency of information. That is, the
perception of each person determines the quality of their interest in reading.
The other study involved 914 students in the range of 11-18 years old by Nestle Family
Monitor (2003) about the reading interest and boring reading in the teenagers’ view. The result
found that 49% students described that reading is relaxing and 26% stated that reading is boring.
Furthermore, 27% disagreed about whether books were important to them, compare to 40% who
agreed. In addition, 36% compared to 33% stated they had better things to do than reading. And
the worst was when 43% compared to 23% said that they would be disappointed when they
received books as their present.
 The studies above have difference and similarity with the study that the writer will
conduct. The difference is one of the previous studies took the sample from post graduate
students. While the similarity problem of this study is to identify the students’ interest towards
reading and find out the factors that are affecting the students’ interest in reading.

3. Method and Procedures

3.1 Quantitative Method
Applying a theory to a problem requires a method that is deemed relevant and helps to
solve the problem. There will be quantitative research method chosen by the researcher. The
method used in this study is descriptive analysis with a quantitative approach, which is a
quantitative study for conclusions. The researcher will use quantitative descriptive to describe
the reading interest in students in order to know how deep the desire of the students in reading.
Furthermore, Best and Kahn (2006) state:
“A descriptive study describes and interprets what it is. It concerns with condition or
relationship that exist, that are held, processes that are going on, effects that are evident or
trends that are developing. It is primary concerned with the presents, although it is often
considers past events and influences as they are related to current conditions.

To gather large of data, the researcher also uses survey research that can be analyzed for
pattern, averages and frequencies. Survey researcher is collecting information from a group of
people by asking the students questions and analyze the results. (McCombes S, 2019). In this
study, the data will be analyzed by using descriptive analysis. Descriptive analysis is reported in
the form of tabulated frequencies and percentages.

3.2 Operational Definitions

The title of this research is “The Analysis of Students’ Reading Interests in SMP Negeri 1
Lempuing”. There are terms that need to be defined as they are used in this study. To avoid
misinterpretations, some terms used in the title are defined operationally; analysis, reading
interests.
 The first term is analysis, the identification in detail in order to understand the case of its
nature. In this study, the word “analysis” refers to an attempt to get the result of the case of its
nature. The second term is reading interest refers to whether the students like to read in their
spare time or not, how often and how much the students read, enjoying reading, read more if they
have more time, read at the same time using some various books.

3.3 Population and Sample

3.3.1 Population
According to Creswell (2012), population is a group of individuals who have the same
characteristic. In line to Sugiyono (2010, p. 117), “population is the object/subject that has
certain qualities and characteristics that determined by the researcher to do the research.” The
population of this study was the students of SMP Negeri 1 Lempuing. Each grade include 5
classes that consist 27 to 33 students, furthermore there are 15 classes.

3.3.2 Sample
According to Creswell (2005, p. 118), sample is certain group of the population that the
researcher plans to study for generalizing about the target population. Herdiansyah (2010) said
that random sampling also called as probability sampling is a sample selection method in which
each sample in the population has the same probability to be selected. In this study, the
researcher planned to use random sampling technique that take some classes randomly based on
each grade, which will be selected from VII, VIII, and IX grades. The reason in collecting the
sample is because the researcher wants to know whether the students’ reading score are high or
low based on the reading variable. To determine the size of the sample the writer is going to use
the formula by Slovin;

n=

Where:
n = no. of sample
N = total population
 E = error margin/margin or error
So can be find the number of sample is;

n=

n=

n=81, 52 =82
Here is the table to find the sample

No. Class Number of Proportion of sample Number of

students sample

1. VII-1 28 28/441 x 100% = 6,3% 5

6% x 82 = 4,92

2. VII-2 28 28/441 x 100% = 6,3% 5

6% x 82 = 4,92

3. VII-3 28 28/441 x 100% = 6,3% 5

6% x 82 = 4,92

4. VII-4 29 29/441 x 100% = 6,6% 5

6% x 82 = 4,92

5. VII-5 28 28/441 x 100% = 6,3% 5

6% x 82 = 4,92

6. VIII-1 30 30/441 x 100% = 6,8% 6

7% x 82 = 5,74

7. VIII-2 30 30/441 x 100% = 6,8% 6

7% x 82 = 5,74

8. VIII-3 30 30/441 x 100% = 6,8% 6

 7% x 82 = 5,74

9. VIII-4 33 33/441 x 100% = 7,5% 7

8% x 82 = 6,56

10. VIII-5 30 30/441 x 100% = 6,8% 6

7% x 82 = 5,74

11. IX-1 27 27/441 x 100% = 6,1% 5

6% x 82 = 4,92

12. IX-2 27 27/441 x 100% = 6,1% 5

6% x 82 = 4,92

13. IX-3 30 30/441 x 100% = 6,8% 6

7% x 82 = 5,74

14. IX-4 33 33/441 x 100% = 7,5% 6

8% x 82 = 6,56

15. IX-5 30 30/441 x 100% = 6,8% 6

7% x 82 = 5,74

15 classes 441 students 84 students

3.4 Technique for Collecting the Data

3.4.1 Questionnaire
To measure the interests’ level of students in reading and factors affecting it, the
researcher is going to use Reading Interest Questionnaire adapted from Donal (2015). There are
some items in this Reading Interests Questionnaire and the students will be asked to read each
statement and rate the questions based on their own answer by using the Likert scale intervals,
ranging from “Strongly Agree” to “Strongly Disagree”. The scales are coded as 1=Strongly
Disagree, 2=Disagree, 3=Undecided, 4=Agree, 5=Strongly Agree.

3.4.2 Data Analysis

In this research, the data will be collected from the questionnaire. There are 28 items in
the questionnaire which at some point measures the students’ reading interest level and factors
affecting it. The students will be asked to read each statement and rate it by themselves using the
Likert scale intervals, ranging from “Strongly Agree” to “Strongly Disagree”. The scales are
coded as 1=Strongly Disagree, 2=Disagree, 3=Netral, 4=Agree, 5=Strongly Agree. After
distributing the questionnaires, the writer will process the data and make it into a percentage (%).