Keywords : correlational study, ability, identifying, idioms, reading comprehension
Reading is said as the most important receptive skill for academic needs. Reading material in university level especially in English Department often includes idioms. It is assumed that students who have good ability in identifying the meaning of idioms also have good reading comprehension. Thus, the objective of the study is to find out the correlation between students’ ability in identifying the meaning of idioms and reading comprehension at English Department of FKIP Lambung Mangkurat University in batch 2014.
The researcher used correlational study as the type of research. The population of this research was 124 students and the sample was 50 students. The technique sampling was cluster random sampling. The instruments used were idiom test and reading comprehension test.
The result shows that the coefficient correlation between both variables is 0.478 which is bigger than rtable in the degree significance 5% (0.273). It shows that there is a correlation between students’ ability in identifying the meaning of idioms and reading comprehension in the medium level. The result of t-test shows that tcount (3.773) is bigger than ttable in the degree significance 5% (2.011). Therefore, there is a significant correlation between students’ ability in identifying the meaning of idioms and reading comprehension.
It is suggested that students to enrich their knowledge of idioms and reading comprehension. It is also suggested to the lecturers to give more input of idiom as it can help the students to learn English.