THE CORRELATION BETWEEN STUDENTS’ SPEAKING INTEREST AND THEIR SPEAKING ABILITY AT PLUS SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL OF RIAU PROVINCE

This research was correlational research, which was aimed to find out the correlation between students’ speaking interest and speaking ability. There were two variables used in this research. The first was variable X (Students’ Speaking Interest) and variable Y (Speaking Ability). The subject of this research was the tenth grade students at Plus Senior High School of Riau Province whereas the object of this research was the correlation between students’ speaking interest and speaking ability. The population of this research was 100 students. To choose the sample, the researcher used simple random sampling technique and got 40 students as the sample. In collecting the data, the researcher used questionnaire for students’ speaking interest and oral test (storytelling) for speaking ability. From the data analysis which had been done by using SPSS 16.0 version, it could be seen that there was a significant correlation between speaking interest and speaking ability. It could be shown that the probability of score sig.t is 0.001, smaller than the significant alpha of 0.05 (sig.t < 0.05). It meant that H0 was rejected and Ha was accepted. In other words, there was a significant correlation between speaking interest and speaking ability. The researcher also found that 26.52% speaking ability of the tenth grade of Plus Senior High School of Riau Province was influenced by speaking interest. Then, the other 73.48% was influenced by other factors. Key Words: Correlation, Students’ Speaking Interest, Speaking Abilit