ABSTRACT
The objectives of the study are to search how the skimming is applied in teaching reading comprehension, and to find out whether skimming could improve the students’ reading ability.
The population of this study is the third grade students of MTs YAPIM Ngeluk Penawangan in the academic year of 2005/2006. The sampling process was administered by applying random sampling. There are 86 students of the third grade and the writer took 26 students as the subjects of the study. These 26 students were expected to be the representatives of the population.
The techniques used for obtaining data are: first, collecting data from students skimming test and reading comprehension test; second, computing and classifying the students’ skimming test and the students’ reading comprehension; third, analyzing the score of the students’ skimming and the students’ reading comprehension; the last, drawing the conclusion based on the data.
The final result of the analysis shows that there is a significant correlation between the students’ skimming skill and students’ reading comprehension. It is reasonable since the average of the students’ reading comprehension is 63.653 and the students’ skimming score was 103.384 words per minute.
Having analyzed this result using the formula of the Pearson Product Moment Correlation, it was clearly conceivable the correlation score was 0.847 which means that there is a significant correlation between the students’ reading comprehension and their skimming skill. According to the Correlation Index Interpretation of the rxy is 0.847 belongs to the group of ‘perfectly correlated’. Based on the above finding, the writer draws a conclusion that the students’ reading comprehension is perfectly correlated to their achievement in skimming.
