THE CORRELATION BETWEEN PRIOR KNOWLEDGE AND READING COMPREHENSION OF THE SECOND YEAR STUDENTS OF SMPN 21 SIAK

In accordance with the symptoms, the writer has some problems that should be discussed and overcome. This research is aimed to find out the correlation between prior knowledge and reading comprehension. The subject of this research is the second year students of SMPN 21 SIAK whereas the object of this research is prior knowledge and reading comprehension. The population of this research is 400 students and the writer take 10% as the sample for this research. In collecting the data, the writer used questionnaire for prior knowledge and test for reading comprehension. From the data analysis which has been done by using SPSS, it can be seen there is no significant correlation between prior knowledge and reading comprehension. It can be shown by the explanation below: 1. The score of correlation coefficient is 0.473<0.361 insignificant level of 1% (see the table of product moment) it means that Ha is accepted which is indicates that there is no significant correlation between students prior knowledge and reading comprehension. 2. The probability of score sig. (2-tailed) is 0.008>0.05. it means that Ha is accepted. In order words, there is significant correlation between prior knowledge and reading comprehension. Direction of correlation between two variables is positive. It means that the higher the prior knowledge will influence their reading comprehension, so the prior knowledge has relation with reading comprehensio