THE CORRELATION BETWEEN STUDENTS’ MASTERY ON LEXICAL COLLOCATION AND THEIR READING COMPREHENSION

The aims of this research were to find out the correlation between students’ mastery of lexical collocation and their reading comprehension. This research applied correlational study which used quantitative design. The subjects were 66 of the Fifth-Semester Students of English Education Study Program at University of Bengkulu in Academic Year 2018/2019. The data were collected from two instruments: (1) lexical collocation test was used to get data about students’ mastery of lexical collocation and (2) reading comprehension test was used to get data about students’ reading comprehension achievement. The result of the two instruments counted by using Pearson’s Product Moment formula and checked it by using SPSS 22 Program. The conclusion were (1) The result score of lexical collocation test showed that 53% of the students got score over 70, it means that half of the total subject of the students have a good knowledge of collocation especially in lexical collocation. (2) There was high significant correlation between students’ mastery of lexical collocation and their reading comprehension. The result of calculation using Pearson Product moment formula and SPSS 22 Program can be seen in table 4.1 which showed the score of arithmetic r > the score of r table (0,825 > 0,315). It means that Ha was accepted and H0 was rejected.


Introduction
One of the important skill that must be mastered in learning English is Reading. Reading is an important skill because one key to get a knowledge, it supported the theory from McNamara (2007) states that the most common and effective technique in obtaining knowledge is reading comprehension, because the readers must understand what they read about. When the learners read the article and they find some strange vocabulary that they unusually hear, they will get confused and they cannot get the meaning of what they read. Nowadays, the ability to comprehend the English is necessary for millions of people. By understanding English, many people are able to read many kinds of English texts. Reading occurs when someone looks into a written text and starts to absorb the information from the written linguistic message.
One of the important things to do is to combine the word into a good sentence so that it is easy and natural to read. Thornbury (2002) explains that there are at least 6 types of vocabulary. The types are word classes, word families, word formation, multi-word units, collocation, and homonyms. The six types must be learned and mastered by the EFL students in order to improve as well as to increase their English vocabulary. In relation to the mastery of English collocation, the students whose non-native speaker must understand these types of vocabulary, especially in collocation.
The aim of understanding English collocation is to make the students increase learners' skill, such as writing skill, reading skill, and etc, and also the students know in what context the student can use the word for instance verbs do and make can be used with a different situation. based on the result of the researcher's mini-observation to some of the students of fifth-semester of English Education Study program for example like 33,3% students still use the word yellow hair rather than blond hair, and also 66,7% students still use right truth rather than plain truth. So, the students are still confuse to decide what is the appropriate word which closely associated together in lexical collocation. It related to reading comprehension test, when they do the reading test and find some lexical collocation or may be some strange vocabulary which they unsually hear, they will get confused to interpret and understand the meaning of the reading test. And also, the students cannot recognize the collocation area in the reading text because they have lack of knowledge about the collocation.
The scope of this research limited on the lexical collocation and also focus to find the correlation between students' mastery on lexical collocation mastery and their reading comprehension achievement, particularly restricted to lexical collocation and reading comprehension text on fifth-semester students of English Education Study Program at University of Bengkulu in the academic year of 2018/2019. This research paper is aimed to find out the correlation between students' mastery on lexical collocation fifth-semester students of English Department and their reading comprehension achievement of Universitas Bengkulu in academic year 2018/2019.

Method
In this study, the researcher used a correlational research design while the type of data was a quantitative one. In correlational research design, investigation used the correlational statistical test to describe and measure the degree of association (or relationship) between two or more variables or sets of scores (Creswell 2012). In this research design, there was a correlation coefficient, which is a numerical index that provides information about the strength and direction of the relationship between two variables. It provides information on how the variable is associated. However, the process would be that first: the researcher identified the students' collocational knowledge by using lexical collocation test.
Second, by using the reading comprehension test, the students' reading comprehension achievement will be acquired. The next process that the researcher discovered the relationship among variables through Pearson-Product The data were analysed by using Pearson Product Moment Formula and also checked by SPSS 22 Program. After finding out whether there is a significant correlation or not, the next step is interpreting. To interpret the correlation coefficient, the following criteria from Cohen, Manion and Marrison (2007, p.536) used. Then, to find out the significant between two variables, the researcher used the Paired Sample T Test with IBM SPSS Statistic 22. The basic of decision making in this test is if the value of Sig (2-tailed) < 0.05, then there is significant differences between 2 variables. Meanwhile, if the value of Sig (2-tailed) > 0.05, then there is no significant differences between 2 variables.
Both of the tests were done one time. The test was administered for two days in two different classes (November 21 th and 26 th , 2018) at 10.00 -11.00 am.
The total subjects were 66 students from 5 th semester students of English Education Study Program of Universitas Bengkulu.

Results
Based on the analysis of the data, the researcher get scores from both of the test: lexical collocation test and reading comprehension test. Lexical Collocation test was form of fill in the blank with multiple choices which consisted of 50 items. The researcher asked the students to choose the best answer to complete the blank space of the sentences. The researcher gave 40 minutes for the students to answer the test. Firstly, the researcher counted the sum of the score for each student. Then the researcher make percentage based on the scores of the students to see the students' mastery on lexical collocation. Based on the pie chart, 36% (blue area) of students got score over 70 which present that students have a good score in reading comprehension.
Meanwhile, 64% (red area) of students got score under 70 which present that half of the students have low score of reading comprehension, it means in the test half of the students still cannot recognize the lexical collocation test and cannot understand the meaning of it.
To identify whether collocation knowledge of students has any correlation with students' reading comprehension achievement or not, the researcher applied Pearson-Product Moment Correlation Coefficient. By To ensure the result of the calculation above, the researcher used SPSS 22 program in order to know whether the result of calculation that the researcher did manually was accurate. The Description of the calculation of SPSS was described below: The result of both calculation (manual and SPSS calculation) is similar. The result showed that rxy is 0,826, it was higher than r table. It means that there is no mistake in calculation process and there was correlation between students' mastery of lexical collocation toward their reading comprehension. ,000 Based on the score of rxy =0,825, it indicates that rxy is higher than rt, in which 0,825 > 0,315 and the score of tvalue= 5,112 is compares by ttable of 5%= 1,997, that is tvalue is higher than ttable, 5,112 > 1,997. As a result, the correlation between the students' mastery on lexical collocation and their reading comprehension is positive or significant. So the null hypothesis (H0) which states that there is no significant correlation between students' mastery

Discussion
Based on the result of the research, it is found that half of the total subject of the research of fifth semester students of English Education Study Program in academic year 2018/2019 got score at least 70 of lexical collocation test.
Owing to this facts, the researcher relate to the expert by Bahns (1993) and Bonk (2000) state, it can be concluded that a good level of collocation knowledge may be regarded as one of the last stages of second-language acquisition. It means that if the students' have a good level in collocation especially in lexical collocation the students also have a good level in English Skills, because if the EFL students have a good level in collocation, it will help the students increase the range of English Vocabulary, for example the students the students can choosing a combination of words that fits the context better and has more precise meaning. The students also can speak and write English in a more natural and accurate way.
Meanwhile, the result of reading comprehension test sowed that half of the student got score under 70. This finding could mean that other in reading comprehension is very complex. It also supported to the theory by Kwon (2005) that states that studies have shown that reading is not a simple ability but an active and complex psychological process associated with variety factors. It means that some other factors effect to students' reading achievement for example like situation and condition of the test, the prior knowledge of the students, and others.
Based on the result, the correlation between the students' mastery on lexical collocation and their reading comprehension is positive or significant.
The result of this present research supported to theory from Ganji (2012) stated that lexical collocation has positive effect on the reading ability of the students.
The new words should not be presented as single-item vocabularies. It is better to present them as collocation, at least with one or two more items. So it can make the learners can predict and learn what kind of lexical items could occur together.
According to the Cahyo (2015), collocation is one of the important roles in creating cohesion in a discourse (spoken and written), and will further lead to coherences of the message delivered. So the collocation is a determinant factor of the meaning of the words and it will increase the effectiveness of language skill. It can be shows that some the meaning of the word probably have different meaning in the different context and collocation is probably the one that decides the meaning of that word.
Collocation has given considerable contribution to the language learning. Based on this result of this research, a strong relationship was found between the students mastery on lexical collocation and reading comprehension among the 5 th semester students of English Education Study Program of Universitas Bengkulu on academic year 2018/2019. If the students have a good level on lexical collocation and understand about the lexical collocation, the students also can get a better understanding while they read a reading text that has several combination of words or collocation. The students can also easily to find the meaning of the collocation if the students can recognize the collocation item in the reading text. Meanwhile, when the students write or speak in English, the students also can easily choose the better combination of the words in natural and accurate way.

Conclusion and Suggestion
Based on the research finding, it is found that the null hypothesis (H0)  In relation to the conclusions, suggestion are given as the following. First for English Lecturers. Based on the fact that the students' mastery on lexical collocation has a high correlation toward their reading comprehension, so English lecturer should consider to put collocation into their teaching material especially in teaching reading skill. The lecturers can improve their capability in many ways to develop a new method of language learning to enhance the knowledge about collocation and reading comprehension by give the example and exercise of collocation while the lecturers teach reading material.
Second for English Students in English Education Study. By knowing that the students' mastery on lexical collocation has contribution for their reading comprehension, it is a must for them to increase their knowledge about the collocation due to it helps them to understand the meaning of the combination of words in the text completely and accurately. The students also should do the exercise of collocation in order to recognize the type of collocation in reading text.
Third for further researcher, The result of this result can be essential for other researchers who would like to investigate and explore more about the collocation problems in the future. In addition, the future researcher can also find out the study between the collocation and any language skills such as listening and speaking skill.