ABSTRACT

This study is about the correlation between the students’ activity in watching English TV
programs and their vocabulary mastery. Since it is still doubted whether or not there is a
significant correlation between the students’ activity in watching English TV program and
their vocabulary mastery, the writer conducted a research to obtain the answers to those
questions. The population of this research is forty from the fourth semester students of the
English Department of Semarang State University who were randomly selected by using a
method of Moser Graham called lottery method. The writer stated the null hypothesis of the
research as follows: “There is a significant correlation between the students’ activity in
watching English TV programs and their vocabulary mastery”. The obtained values from the
analyses of the test result, the correlation is 0.668 and the critical value of the Pearson with
the 5 % significance level is 0.312, it can be concluded that the working hypothesis is
accepted. Furthermore, the value obtained from computing the data to answer the question of
the research shows that the significant coefficient correlation or t is 5.53. That are greater
than critical value of t distribution in the table with the 5 % significance level was obtained
the value 2.02, so it can be concluded that the hypothesis is accepted because t or 5.53 is not
between –2.02 and 2.02. Based on the result, the writer concludes that the students’ activity
in watching English TV programs gives a useful contribution for them to enlarge vocabulary.

Therefore, the writer would like to offer suggestions to the English students that they should
increase their frequency in watching English TV programs in their spare time. Besides that
she suggest that they should give a more attention to the context in learning vocabulary
because it plays an important role in determining an appropriate meaning.