The Relationship between Grammar Competency, Reading Habit and Student Writing Ability in Forming News Item Text

dra. rahmiwati marsinun, m.si., kons.; dr.h. atiq susilo, m.a; hartoyo, m.a, ph.d;

This study investigated the relationship between grammar competency (reported speech) as X1, to students' writing ability in forming news item text as Y (X1 to Y), the relationship between reading habit as X2 to writing ability (X2 to Y), and both of grammar competency (reported speech) and reading habit to students' writing ability in forming news item text (X1 and X2 to Y) of 182 students in the third grade of SMA PGRI 3 Bogor. Only 98 students were the sample of this study. the method of sample selection was cluster random sampling with a lottery technique. Two questionnaires were given to the 98 students on 23-26 of July 2012 to get the data. The researcher got the writing result on 10-14 of September 2012. After being analyzed by using SPSS system, the result indicated that there were correlations among the variables. Grammar competency (reported speech) has a greater correlation to the students' writing ability. It gave contribution about 53.4% to the result of students' writing while reading habit only gave 14.9%. Further research on the same study is recommended.