Abstract

• This study intended to investigate the correlation between students’ reading habits and writing ability in descriptive text. The sample was comprised of 494 (247 males and 247 females) undergraduate students from respective course years in University for the Development of the National Races of the Union, UDNR. The Reading Habit Indicator Questionnaire (RHIQ) developed by Hidayati (2021) and Writing Ability Test (WAT) were used as the research instruments in conducting the study. The descriptive statistics, independent samples t-test, one way ANOVA and Post Hoc (Tukey HSD) and Spearman’s rho correlation were computed in order to explore the reading habits and writing ability of students according to gender and course year as well as to investigate the correlation between them. Based on the results, most of the students have good reading habits and excellent writing ability. According to gender, there was no significant difference between reading habits of students. However, there was a significant difference between writing ability of students by gender. Moreover, there were significant differences between students’ reading habits and writing ability by course year. It can be concluded that there was a positive correlation between reading habits and writing ability of students (rs = .241).