One of the language skills which has important roles in mastering English is reading, reading

plays an important role because reading has become a part of our daily life. Through reading,
people are able to gain a lot of knowledge, information, pleasure and problem solution.
Hence, the ability to read a text in many form will contribute a great deal advantage in our
life such as gaining success in school, university or other educational institutions. Nowadays,
information is being presented to people around the world in many forms. Now, with the
existence of smartphones we can read information in every time and everywhere. So, not only
in the forms of printed books, but we can acquire information in a form of electronic book
which is more simple to bring anywhere. As a result of advanced technology, people can
read many information everywhere without bring too many books. It means that with all the
information that people can easily get, people living in this era have to be able to read faster.
Moreover, due to the limited time people have in the globalization era, the importance of
reading speed is getting higher every day. People should have an ability to read faster in order
to receive information given to them in this era. Bialystok has similar thought with the
writer’s assumptions. Ellen said in her book that when students read slowly, they will have to
spend too much time.1 That is why the ability of speed reading can help people to read and
understand information much more quickly. Therefore, the ability of reading speed is
important to help people in facing the huge improvement in the era of information nowadays.
Speed reading, according to Konstant, is not reading words faster than what the reader did
before. It is about being able to read at a speed appropriate for the

1Ellen Bialystok, Bilingualism in Development, (Cambridge: University Press, 2001), p. 174

material being read.2 It means that speed reading can be flexible depends on the material that
being read. The reader who is familiar with the material or topic that she or he is reading
supposed to read efficiently and reach a faster speed than the material or topic that the reader
is not familiar with. English Education Department objective is to provide professional
bachelors in educational field and English teaching primary and secondary
education.3According to standard competence of reading coursefor the fourth semester
students in English Education Department UIN SyarifHidayatullah academic year of 2014-
2015 states that the aims of the course are to help the students to be able to comprehend
reading passages consist of minimum 2000 words from various types or genres and identify
various types of reading comprehension questions in international standardized tests. In
addition, one of the indicators of the reading course for the fourth semester students is to be
able to read at least 300 words per minute in the middle of the semester. It means that the
fourth semester students are supposed to read the texts with various types and genres fast. In
the other hand,based on the writer’s experiences, the students only have limited time to read
because they also have many other classes besides the reading course.That is why the
students need to practice speed reading and master the techniques. The students also find
some difficulties in reaching the reading course goals because sometimes they have to read
material or topic that they are not familiar with and not interested in. Reading interest is the
desire and tendency to perform reading activity in order to get some ideas and information.If
students have interest in reading, they will always read more and more. This problems make
writer assumes that students who have interest in reading are supposed to read more than
those who doesn’t like to

2Tina Konstant, Work Smarter with Speed Reading,(Great Britain : Macmillan Company,
2010), p. 21. 3AmsalBakhtiar and friends, PedomanAkademik, (Jakarta:Biro
AdministrasiAkademikdanKemahasiswaanUniversitas Islam NegriSyarifHidayatullah
Jakarta, 2010), p. 67.

read. Students who read more are supposed to get higher reading speed than those who read
less. Thus, students that have interest in reading, especially students in fourth semester, are
expected to have speed reading rate at among 300 words per minutes. Reading interest can
influence speed reading because one of the problems that can slow down speed reading is
interest. It means that fast and slow in reading can influence reading interest and students that
have interest in reading might also have better reading speed. Based on those reasons, this
research is conducted to find out whether there is correlation between students’ interest in
reading and their reading speed of English students in fourth semester at faculty of Tarbiyah
and Teachers’ Training SyarifHidayatullahState Islamic University. Therefore, the writer
interested in writing a skripsiunder the title: THE CORRELATION BETWEEN
STUDENTS’ READING INTEREST AND THEIR SPEED READING.
One of skill that is very important to be owned by each student are reading skills. Students
can get information and expand his/her knowledge by reading. Therefore, students are
expected to be able to read well so the information submitted by the author can well
understand. Thus, reading is not just a skill support success in attending learning at school,
but rather the skill that every individual need in life at the community, both during the study
period until completing education at school. According to Azizifar et al., (2015, p. 189)
reading is central of all study skills to get the information in everyday life. As we know that
reading is one of the ways to obtain information other than listening and viewing, so students
must do reading activities in order to get information. There is much information that can be
found from reading like information about education and other. Besides, people who often
read will gain a more in-depth knowledge compared with those who rarely or never read.
Through knowledge, people can communicate and provide information in oral and written
form. So, reading can also help someone to improve his skills to communicate in another
form. Besides, reading is also essential for the students especially in elementary school;
teaching reading is one of the main aspects of language teaching. Therefore, students in
elementary school must be getting used to reading textbooks or stories that benefit them. So
that when they continue to a higher level, students who are used to reading activities would
be beneficial for them to obtain information and knowledge. Students who have a high
frequency in reading it is more comfortable to foster a sense of interest in reading. Besides,
students who have reasonable competence in the understanding of reading can make them
easy to understand the content of the reading. For students, reading is an activity that cannot
be separated from them because in the learning process students are required to understand
the content of the text so that the information contained in the text can be understood. In
reading, students would understand some aspects, such as the main idea, the meaning of
words and the information contained in the text (Tarigan, 2008, p. 37). After students
understood these aspects, they would be easy to understand the content of the text. Until
now, students’ ability in reading has been an important part of the success in the final
examination. Therefore, teachers should improve students' ability, especially in reading
comprehension and students’ reading interest so it will facilitate them to understand the text,
especially narrative text. Debut (2006, p. 25) argues that reading is an essential skill for
students if it is as a second language or a foreign language. With the ability of reading,
students will be able to improve their knowledge and provide many advantages in life.
Besides, Syllabus of National Curriculum explains that there are four specific primary
language skills should be mastered by a language learner. The language skills include
listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The reading skill includes several essential
materials. One of the materials discussed is about kinds of text. The kinds of text are
narrative, descriptive, procedural, etc. Based on curriculum KTSP 2006 for Junior High
School, the purposes of English subjects are to develop the potential of learners in order to
have communicative competence in interpersonal discourse, transactional and functional.
Based on observation and interview at the eighth-grade students of Al-Mukhlisin junior high
school, the researcher found that they had difficulties in comprehending the text. It can be
seen from the score of their reading test. There were still many errors and the students were
still confused to explain the content of the story. Most of the students in Al- Mukhlisin junior
high school had difficulties in understanding the content in each paragraph due to low
vocabularies mastery. It was caused by the lack of reading interest on the students in reading
the narrative text. On the other hand, they only read the text without any planning and had
difficulties in capturing the ideas presented. Besides, teachers’ strategy in teaching reading
focused only on one strategy so the activities of reading in English class were not attractive
and it made the students bored. In here, the teacher only gave the text and explained the
generic structures and linguistic features of the text. Finally, the teacher asked them to answer
the questions listed in the text.

This strategy made the students be passive learners because the teacher dominated the
teaching and learning ability. The traditional strategy that teacher applied made students
underestimate the reading text and students were more concerned with answering questions
rather than obtaining the information were in the text (Darmiyati, 2007, p. 31). In other
words, students were not trying to understand the text. The students only need to answer the
questions given by the teacher. Besides, most students considered that the activities of
reading in English class were boring and not attractive for teaching narrative text because
they had to search many difficult words in the text and to comprehend and answer the
complicated questions related to the reading. For students who have reasonable competence
in reading this strategy is useful, but, this strategy is difficult to apply to students who are
lack of understanding in reading the narrative text. In fact, in the classroom, almost all
students still have difficulties in understanding, analyzing, explain the information from the
content of the text. According to Najmoo and Marzban, (2014, pp. 37—49) reading is a
complex task which needs not only about the vocabulary and grammar, but also the ability of
the reader to analysing, synthesizing and evaluating the content of the text. Therefore the
teacher must use a strategy that appropriates the students need and make students interested
in learning reading comprehension of narrative text by using a new strategy. To solve this
problem, teachers must use the right strategies in teaching reading. According to Westwood,
(2008, p. 4) the strategy is one of the ways to solve the students' problem in the four language
skills. In addition, good strategies in teaching can give students' motivation to learn and make
them focus on the learning process (Wang, 2007, p. 2). Therefore, the strategy is one of the
important aspects of the teaching and learning process in the classroom. It means that a good
strategy in teaching can increase students' ability, especially in reading comprehension.
After doing observation in Al- Mukhlisin junior high school, the researcher found out some
problems that occurred in the classroom especially strategy in teaching reading
comprehension. Therefore, the researcher considered using appropriate strategies with the
problem of understanding reading that students face. Besides, reading is not a skill which can
be acquired naturally or in an automatic way, but it requires a conscious effort to analyse and
comprehend the ideas of a text (Balikcioglu and Efe, 2016, p. 295). Thus, the strategy used
by the teacher in a reading text will give effects to students on comprehending the text. There
are many types of learning strategies in teaching reading, and Reader Response Strategy is
one of them. This is one of the strategies in teaching reading was given many options for the
reader how to respond a text. It focuses on reading experience, allows the readers to live
through what they read and engages them in the reading experience. This allows the readers
in connecting to familiar experiences in their life. Reader response consists of five steps:
engaging, describing, conceiving, connecting, and judging or give the opinion on the story
(Rosenblatt, 2005, p. 35—38). Those steps can make the reader faster in comprehending the
narrative text. So, this strategy can help the readers to understand the text easily because the
steps used in the readers' responses guide the reader to understand the simple text to a
complicated text. In addition, the researcher does not only use the strategy to increase reading
comprehension of narrative text but also use the reading interests of students in the learning
process. Interest is one of the learners’ internal factors. Students in learning reading
comprehension can not ignore this factor. It may have a significant influence on the students’
reading ability. The interest is a psychological aspect which makes someone tends to
something, high attention. A positive response to an object or act as a close relationship with
what becomes the point of reading interest (Khairuddin, 2013, p. 163). So, reading interest
would be motivated students in reading text with their desire without any coercion from
anyone. This tendency may encourage people to reach the target and also stress that when a
person has an interest in something he will show a tendency for positive behaviour and
changes. Reading interest can make students attempt to fill the needs of the reader (Wade,
2006, p. 4). It is essential for students to be interested in enjoying the book that they read.
However, in the learning process, most students do not pay careful attention to the teacher
while teaching reading. Furthermore, when the teacher explains the material and asks the
students to comprehend the text and answer questions related to the text, most of them cannot
do the task. This is caused by students who have differences in reading interest.

Some of them have a high and low reading interest. Students with a low in reading interest do
not want to read the text. These facts are supported by several research findings which
showed that there was a significant relationship between readers’ responds strategy and their
reading comprehension ability. Khaled and Rae’d, (2012, p. 8) tried to investigate the reading
interests of Saudi EFL teacher–college students’ reading interests in English and there was a
significant relationship between reading interests of Saudi EFL teacher–college students’
reading interests in English. While, Utami, (2015, p. 60) concluded that the reader with
reader response strategy got more opportunities to share their ideas personalizing and
enabling to live through what they were reading. In reader response classroom the students
become active learners. Thus, if the students keep practising every step of the strategy, they
will realize that reading is fun. It automatically encourages their interest in reading. Thus, it
can be considered that by applying the reader response strategy in reading the text, it does not
only encourage students' reading comprehension but also increase their interest in reading.
Based on the explanation, the researcher assumes that Reader response strategy and reading
interest can make students easier to comprehend the narrative text. Therefore, the researcher
wants to conduct research to find out the effect of the reader response strategy and students'
reading interest towards students' reading comprehension of narrative texts in the eighth
grade Al-Mukhlisin junior high school Ciseeng Bogor.

Reading is regarded to be a very important aspect in the lives of the individuals,

no matter what professions they are engaged in or what are their career
prospects, reading plays a fundamental role in an individual’s life. The habit of
reading only has numerous advantages and there are no disadvantages in
reading. Reading performs the major part of enhancing the knowledge of the
individuals. Reading enables an individual to become aware of what is going
around him; the technological advancements and other improvements and
progressions taking place in the world generates knowledge and information
within an individual’s mindset through reading. Books are considered to be the
most common aspects of reading and besides books, there are many things that
individuals read in order to gain knowledge, information and acquire awareness.
Different sources of reading are computers, articles, books, newspapers,
documents, internet, magazines, journals, research manuscripts and popular
articles. In this research paper, there has been generation of information
regarding the reading interests of the adults. There are reading materials of
children, some of the children also become avid readers and read most of their
time, but there are differences in the reading materials of different age groups.
The main purpose of this research paper is to generate informationregarding the
reading interests of adults.