CORRELATION OF POETRY READING INTEREST AND LANGUAGE STYLE MASTERY TOWARD IX GRADE STUDENTS’ SKILL IN FREE POETRY WRITING IN SMP NEGERI 2 LEMBAH GUMANTI

Research aims to find the correlation of poetry reading interest and language style mastery toward IX grade students’ skill in writing poetry in SMP Negeri 2 Lembah Gumanti. The hypothesis in this research are (1) reading interest contributed toward students’ skill in writing poetry, (2) language style mastery contributed toward students’ skill in free poetry writing, (3) reading interest and language style mastery contributed toward students’ skill in free poetry writing. This research is a quantitative research using correlation approach. The population in this research was 158 grade IX students in SMP Negeri 2 Lembah Gumanti with 29 students as sample. This research was using simple random sampling as the sampling technique. There are three steps in getting the data, first questionnaire was used in order to find reading interest, second objective test was used in order to find language style mastery and performance test was used to find free poetry writing skill. The data was analyzed using correlation and regression technique. In order to test the first and second hypothesis, a simple correlation and regression technique was used, meanwhile in order to test the third hypothesis, a multiple correlation and regression technique was used. Based on the data analysis, it is showed that IX grade students’ skill in free poetry writing in SMP Negeri 2 Lembah Gumanti can be seen as follow. First, students’ reading interest got the average score 65% in score range 55-65% . Second, students’ language style mastery got the average score 65,35% in score range 66-75% (more than enough qualification). Third, students’ skill in free poetry writing got the average score 61,79% in score 55- 65%. Fourth, there was a correlation between reading interest and language style mastery toward IX grade students’ skill in free poetry writing in SMP Negeri 2 Lembah Gumanti, it can be seen from Fscore < 1,87, and thitung >ttabel 4,498>1,7. It can be concluded that the RESULTS of free poetry writing test (Y) and the questionnaire of reading interest (X1) have homogenous variant