Abstract:
This study was conducted to investigate whether there is correlation between the participants'
reading proficiency in Service English and their performance in Geography, History, and the
overall English language at HTTC first year Geography and History students. To achieve this
end, the researcher employed reading proficiency tests and document analysis as data gathering
instruments. The reading proficiency tests were aimed at generating quantitative data about the
students' current reading ability or proficiency whereas the document analysis was meant to
secure students' performance in their content area subjects under study in the first semester of
the academic year. The researcher administered the three different reading proficiency tests at
various times for 86 randomly selected participants from which the fours' results were rejected
for they were considered invalid for the analysis. The reliability of each test was estimated and
the average measure was found to be 0.812 using split-half reliability analysis. Then, the analysis
was carried out based on 82 participants' reading proficiency test results and their content area
per/ormmices secured from the HTTC students' record and admission office. The data gathered
were analyzed for descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation), correlation, partial
correlation, and independent sample t-test by the 14 version of SP SS. The finding of correlation
revealed that the participants' reading proficiency in Service English is positively correlated with
their performance in Geography, History, and the overall English language (i.e., r=0.393,
r=0.408, and r=0.371 at p<O. 05, respectively). The finding of this study also unveiled that there
is significant correlation among the performances in content area subjects selected for this study:
Geography and History (i.e., r=0.326, p<0.05), Geography and overall English language (i.e.,
r=Q.432, p<0.05).' The finding revealed, however, that there is significant but poor correlation
between performance in H1st01y and overall English language (i.e., r=0.243, p<0.05). With
regard to gender, the finding unveiled that the participants' performance has shown no
statistically significant difference in their reading proficiency in Service English, performance in
Geography, and Overall English language (i.e., t=0.214, t=l.290, and t=0.464 at 80 df and 2-
tailed significance level, respectively). The participants' gender, however, has shown a
statistically significant ~priation on their performance in History in this study (i.e., t= 2. 070, at 80
df and 2-tailed significance level). Finally, the study was come to its end by calling for further
research which solicited the use of regression analysis to investigate the cause-effect
relationships of the variables under study and other content area subjects (from social and
natural sciences) as well.
