Correlation between Students' Motivation and English Speaking Skill in Senior High School

Abstract

Speaking ability is one of the important abilities to be improved because aspect of communication. Speaking skills are very difficult to learn because they require practice and a good understanding of the content which must be accompanied by good self-confidence. Mostly, the difficulty faced by second language learners is to express their ideas in spoken form. They experience fear of making mistakes when speaking in front of many people which causes them to lose interest or motivation in learning to speak better because of these psychological obstacles. This study explores research on how these students' motivation being one of the problems that influences their speaking scores by using Quantitative research method. Participants in this study were eleventh grade students of MIPA 2 from SMA 1 Kawedanan. The results of this study indicate that there is a correlation between students' motivation and their speaking ability. This correlation is at a moderate level or can be said to be quite high. this can be shown from the results of the Pearson Correlation Test, with a Sig (2-tailed) value of 0.000 which is below 0.05. then for the correlation level itself with a value of 0.680, indicating a moderate level. From this data it indicates that the alternative hypothesis (H1) is accepted and the null hypothesis (H0) is rejected. Motivation in this study becomes one of the problem factors in students' ability to speak. Several factors from outside (environment) as well as from oneself influence students' motivation and abilities.