The correlation between students' reading fluency and their reading comprehension

Abstract

As stated in the literature, it is widely accepted that reading fluency and comprehension are critical components of English learning. Reading fluency, which refers to a person's ability to read a text quickly and accurately, is a necessary skill for students when learning English, and numerous studies on reading fluency and comprehension have been conducted. However, research on the relationship between reading fluency and reading comprehension at the high school level is still uncommon. Therefore, this research sought to determine the relationship between students' reading fluency and reading comprehension. This study took a quantitative approach, collecting data from 36 students in Class XI IPA 1 at UPT SMA Negeri 3 Empat Lawang using an oral reading fluency test and a reading comprehension test. The data were analysed using the Person Product-Moment correlation analysis in SPSS Version 20 for Windows. This study found a strong correlation between reading fluency and reading comprehension (0.000<0.829). The higher the reading fluency of students, the higher their reading comprehension achievement will be. On the contrary, the lower the reading fluency of students, the lower their reading comprehension achievement. The implications of the study’s findings and suggestions for future research are also discussed.