Grammatical Competence and Pre-Existing Knowledge (Schemata) in Connection with Reading Comprehension

Abstract

The aim of the study is to prove empirically the causal relationship between students’ grammatical competence, schemata and reading comprehension. correlational study involved thirty students of the eleventh grade students of class science 2 and class science 3 and was conducted in May 2014 at a senior high school in Sragen. The technique of choosing the sample was cluster random sampling. The instruments were multiple choice tests for collecting the three kinds of data including the data of students’ grammatical competence, schemata and reading comprehension. Single correlation and multiple linear regressions were used to analyze the data. The result shows that there is a positive correlation between (1) students’ grammatical competence and reading comprehension; (2) students’ schemata and reading comprehension, and (3) students’grammatical competence and schemata to reading comprehension simultaneously. It means that the improvement of students’ grammatical competence and schemata will be in line with the improvement of students’ reading comprehension.