The Role of Motivation for Reading in Reading Comprehension

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the level of students’ motivation, reading comprehension, and their association. A descriptive survey design was employed. The participants of this study were first-year students of Debre Markos University. Out of the Sixty-six participants who were selected using a simple random sampling technique, only sixty-one were included. A questionnaire was used to find out students’ level of motivation for reading and a test was employed to determine students’ level of reading comprehension. A quantitative method was used to analyze the data gathered. To analyze the data gathered about the level of students’ motivation for reading, and reading comprehension, descriptive statistics were used. As motivation for reading was measured at ordinal level, Median was used. The median is the middle category of the distribution data. On the other hand, Mean was used to describe reading comprehension as the level of measurement is continuous. To analyze the relationship between motivation for reading and reading comprehension, spearman rho was used because the variables are ordinal and continuous respectively.  The data were analyzed using SPSS (version 21). The students appear to have a moderate level of motivation for reading. Furthermore, students’ level of reading comprehension was low. Moreover, the result reveals that there was a significant positive relationship between motivation for reading and reading comprehension.