The correlation between the attitude towards english and the english achievement of grade eight students

In the era of globalization, English is spoken by millions of people worldwide. English is the most commonly used spoken language by foreigners and that is important because it is the language that links the whole world together. Based on the problem statement formulated in chapter I, this thesis intends to investigate whether there is a correlation between the attitude towards English and the English achievement of the second year student of Santa Clara Junior High School Surabaya. The research data were gathered from 141 grade eight students of Junior High School in Surabaya. Students' attitudes were elicited through a questionnaire (developed specifically for the present study)using Likert Scale, which was administered to all the students. Students’ achievement was elicited using UTS (mid-term test), which was constructed by the school English teacher.The Correlation between the students’ attitude towards English and their English achievement was calculated using Statistical Formula - Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation. To help the researcher calculate the correlation, the researcher used SPSS (Statistical Packages for the Social Sciences) version 21. The result of the data analysis shows that the students’ attitude toward English is correlated positively to theirachievement. The calculation of the coefficient correlation resulted in 0.540. It means that the correlation is of a medium-high level. Furthermore, it means that the student who has a positive attitude toward English will possibly achieve better in English. Finally, this study is intended to give a recommendation for the teacher to increase students’ positive attitude so that the students can achieve better