The correlation between vocabulary and speaking achievements of the English Department students of the 1994/1995 and 1995/1996 academic years of Widya Mandala Catholic University

In language study, there are four skills that the EFL students have to learn, they are: speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Among those skills, speaking is the most important one. The students find that it is difficult to speak English fluently. To make it easier for the students to master the speaking skill, we can use another skill, that is vocabulary skill. The students, then, can easily express their ideas, thoughts, and feelings and to communicate in English if they have and master vocabulary skill. The objective of this study, therefore, is to find out whether there is a correlation between vocabulary and speaking achievements of the students who enrolled at the English Department of Widya Mandala Catholic University in the1994/1995 and 1995/1996 academic years. In conducting this study, the writer assumes the students have learnt vocabulary and speaking skills, the students have the ability to use English vocabularies and can speak in English, the scores on the two variables (vocabulary and speaking) are independent, and the relationship between the two variables must be linear. The research design used in this study is a correlation-type of descriptive study. This design is concerned with determining the extent to which variation in one variable is associated with another variables. The subjects of this study are ninety students of the1994/1995 academic year and ninety-five students of the1995/1996 academic year. Those students are the subjects of this study because they have already taken each subject of Vocabulary I, Vocabulary II, Speaking I, and Speaking II in the same time, all of them are in the same level; they belong to the Integrated Course classes, and the material taught in this two academic years is similar. The writer can find out the correlation between their vocabulary and speaking achievements in each semester, starting from the first until the second semester. The final scores of vocabulary and speaking achievements are needed as the data. The results of this tests, then, are statistically analysed by using Pearson Product Moment's formula to find out the value of correlation coefficient. The results of this study is that there is no a significant correlation between Vocabulary I and Speaking I achievements of the 1994/1995 academic year and between Vocabulary II and Speaking II achievements of the 1995/1996 academic year. There is a significant correlation between Vocabulary II and Speaking II of the 1994/1995 academic year and between Vocabulary I and Speaking I of the 1995/1996 academic year