The role of motivation for reading in reading comprehension

Abstract

The purpose of this descriptive study was to investigate the level of students’ motivation, reading comprehension, and their association. The participants of this study were first-year students of Debre Markos University. Out of sixty-six participants only sixty-one were selected using a simple random sampling technique. A questionnaire was used to examine the students’ level of motivation for reading and a test was employed to determine the students’ level of reading comprehension. A quantitative method was used to analyze the data. To analyze the data gathered to determine 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. 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.  The data were analyzed using SPSS (version 21). The students were found to have a moderate level of motivation for reading. Furthermore, the students’ level of reading comprehension was low. Moreover, the result revealed that there was a significant positive relationship between motivation for reading and reading comprehension.