POSITIVE CONNECTION OF EXTENSIVE READING AND WRITING FLUENCY IN EFL LEARNING

Accepted: 20 November 2020 Extensive reading and writing fluency in language learning get connected each other. The benefits include gains in reading and writing competence and skills. However, how far they get connected in EFL learning has not been discussed so far. This study examined connection of extensive reading and writing fluency of the thirty-two students of the English Education Department at a university in Palangka Raya Kalimantan Tengah Indonesia. The correlational design was applied in this study. The online Extensive Reading Test (ERT) developed by Extensive Reading Foundation was used to get the students' extensive reading scores. To gain the students' writing fluency scores, a Writing Fluency Test (WFT) was applied. For the data analysis, it used Pearson product moment correlation. Results show that there is a moderate positive correlation of the students' extensive reading and writing fluency. It is indicated with rxy = 0.408 > rtable = 0.340 at 5%. In short, the extensive reading activities have positive connection to writing fluency of the students in language learning. Therefore, extensive reading activities should always be integrated with writing activities in the context of Indonesian EFL learning. Corresponding Author:

Extensive reading and writing fluency in language learning get connected each other. The benefits include gains in reading and writing competence and skills. However, how far they get connected in EFL learning has not been discussed so far. This study examined connection of extensive reading and writing fluency of the thirty-two students of the English Education Department at a university in Palangka Raya Kalimantan Tengah Indonesia. The correlational design was applied in this study. The online Extensive Reading Test (ERT) developed by Extensive Reading Foundation was used to get the students' extensive reading scores. To gain the students' writing fluency scores, a Writing Fluency Test (WFT) was applied. For the data analysis, it used Pearson product moment correlation. Results show that there is a moderate positive correlation of the students' extensive reading and writing fluency. It is indicated with rxy = 0.408 > rtable = 0.340 at 5%. In short, the extensive reading activities have positive connection to writing fluency of the students in language learning. Therefore, extensive reading activities should always be integrated with writing activities in the context of Indonesian EFL learning.

INTRODUCTION
In Indonesia, English considered as a foreign language, is taught at every level of education begening from the primary to higher level of education. In P a g e | 45

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LET: Linguistics, Literature and Language Teaching Journal Vol. 10 No. 2 2020 teaching english as a foreign language (EFL), the four skills to be taught are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Listening and speaking are recognized as the receptive skills, and reading and writing are known as the productive skills (Fatimah & Suharto, 2017). However, reading and writing are assumed as the skills that got connected each other in Indonesian EFL learning context.
In EFL learning, reading is a fluent process of readers combining information from a text and their own background knowledge to build meaning and the goal of reading is comprehension (Ahmed, 2016;Nunan, 2003). It means that reading activities becomes very simple in collecting information from a text combined with background knowledge to achieve an understanding. Brown (2003) divided reading as four types of reading: perceptive reading, selective reading, interactive reading and ex tensive reading. In the reading comprehension, it needs extensive reading to reading comprehension practice. In extensive reading it involves long texts and that exposes learners to "large quantities of material within their linguistic competence" (Grabe & Stoller, 2002). In its place, reading has always been regarded as an important skill in teaching and learning EFL. In other words, learners should be exposed to lengthy texts that they are able to comprehend.
According to Nunan (2003), the goal of reading is comprehension in which fluent process of readers combines information from a text and their own background knowledge to build meaning. Readers can read at a much higher level of comprehension, learning new conceptual information from texts, synthesizing new information from multiple texts, critiquing information in texts, and using their comprehension skills to reinterpret texts. For the reading comprehension experience in the teaching and learning, it needs the reading process: pre-reading, whilst reading and post reading activities (Miftah, 2013). Therefore, reading comprehension is something important in reading activities to understand and comprehend the text.
To improve reading comprehension skill, readers need practice and the reading strategy use such as extensive reading. Grabe and Stoller (2002) suggested to use extensive reading that involves long texts and that exposes P a g e | 46 Nor Fitriansyah LET: Linguistics, Literature and Language Teaching Journal Vol. 10 No. 2 2020 learners to "large quantities of material within their linguistic competence".
Extensive reading is a 'learn to read' not 'read to leran'. It practices the skill of reading by reading for information -reading story book for example with the aim of enjoying the reading without consciously knowing they are learning. One of the ways to assist students have reading comprehension skill, it should provide them with extensive reading activities, but it can be combined with intensive reading activities (Miftah, 2013).
The benefits of extensive reading are to build reading fluency-not necessarily to learn new things, to deepen their knowledge of already met language items, and to get a better sense of how these fits together communicatively (Karimpour & Aidinlou (2016). Karimpour and Aidinlou (2016) demonstrates that extensive reading raises vocabulary knowledge. It might not be unexpected that it aids students get better readers. Research in both L1 and L2 explains that we" learn to read by reading". In short, the more language users read the better reader they will be, and readers have good extensive reading level will be good readers.
To assess reading, Brown (2003) mentions that reading assessment can be based on reading types of performance: perceptive, selective, interactive, and extensive readings. Perceptive reading tasks involve attending to the components of larger stretches of discourse: letters, words, punctuation, and other graphemic, symbols, bottom-up processing is implied. In selective reading, in order to ascertain one's reading recognition of lexical, grammatical, or discourse features or language within a very short stretch or language, certain typical tasks are used: picture-cued tasks, matching, true/false, multiple choice, etc. A combination of bottom-up an top-down processing may be used.
Next, interactive reading activities focus on reading as a process of negotiating meaning; the readers bring to the text a set of schemata for understanding it, and inactive reading are anecdotes, short naratives and descriptions, excerpts from longer texts, questionnaires, memos, announcements, directions, recipes, and the limke (Brown, 2003). It focuses on an interactive task is to identify relevant features (lexical, symbolic, grammatical, and discourse) P a g e | 47

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LET: Linguistics, Literature and Language Teaching Journal Vol. 10 No. 2 2020 within texts of moderately short length with the objective of reataining the information that is processed. Top-down processing is typical of such tasks, although some instances of bottom-up performance may be necessary. Last, extensive reading applies to texts of more than a page, up to and including profesional articles, essays, technical reports, short stories, and books. It should be noted that reading research commonly refers to "Extensive reading" as longer stretches of discourse, such as long articles and books that are usually read outside a classroom hour (Brown, 2003).
Meanwhile in term of writing in EFL learning, writing is the mental of work of inventing ideas, thinking about how to express them, and organizing them into statements and paraghraph that will be clear to a reader (Nunan, 2003).
Writing is more than a medium of communication. It means that writing is not just the way to communicate to each other but also as means of ideas and emotional expression. Moreover, writing takes study and practice to develop (Oshima & Hogue, 2006). In other word, writing is a process not a product and it is a progressive activity. Therefore, when people write something for the first time, they have already been thinking about what they are going to say it and how they are going to say it.
In writing activities, a writing fluency is considered as the skill level that produces writen language rapidly, appropriately, creatively, and coherently and using linguistics structures to achieve rhetorical and social purpose (Harmer, 2004;Latif, 2012). Therefore, writing fluency is the top level in writing skill because it fulfills various aspects such as creativity, speed, coherently, appropriately, and also the structure of language. Nunan (2003) stated that writing is the mental of work of inventing ideas, thinking about how to express them, and organizing them into statements and paragraphs that will be clear to a reader. Based on Nunan's (2003) statement of writing, writing it is not just about as simple as writers write something on the paper but it is more complex so the reseacher are able to express what they want to express and make it clear to reader. To write means to act in both a physical and a mental action. At the most basic level, writing is the physical act of P a g e | 48

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LET: Linguistics, Literature and Language Teaching Journal Vol. 10 No. 2 2020 committing words or ideas. On the other hand, writing is the mental work of inventing ideas, thinking about how to express them, and organizing them into statements and paragraphs that will be clear to a reader.
In writing activities, writers should apply the writing process: planning, drafting, editing (reflecting and revising), and final version (Harmer, 2004;Miftah, 2015). In planning stage, experienced writers plan what they are going to write. Before starting to write or type, they try and decide what they are going to say. For some writers this may involve making details notes (Harmer, 2004).
When planning, writers have to think about three main issues: to consider the purpose of their writing since this will influence the language they use and the information they choose to include, to consider the audience they are writing for, this will influence the choice of language -whether, for example, it is formal or informal in tone, and to consider the content structure of the piece -that is, how best to sequence the facts, ideas, or argument which they have decided to include.
In drafting stage, writers are going to write the we have to draft, the text may be done in the first attempt but we have to assumpt that it will be amended later. As the writing process proceeds into editing, a number of drafts may be produced on the way to the fina version (Harmer, 2004). In additing stage, it is reflecting and revising the draft. After writing a draft, writers have to read through what we have written to see whre is works and where it does not. Perhaps the information is not clear, the way something reason is ambiguous or confusing, after we see what that does not work perfectly then we have to change it, revise it, that is what we called editing. The last stage is writing final version. Once writers have edited our draft, making the changes they consider to be necessary, they produce the final version (Harmer, 2004).
For the writing development, a skill of writing particularly writing fluency should be applied and continuously developed to have better skill in writing.
Writing fluency includes producing written language rapidly, appropriately, creatively, and coherently and using linguistic structures to achieve rhetorical and social purposes (Latif, 2012). On the other hand, some researchers adopting process-based definitions of writing fluency view it as the richness of writers' P a g e | 49

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LET: Linguistics, Literature and Language Teaching Journal Vol. 10 No. 2 2020 processes and ability to organize composing strategies, and the speed of lexical retrieval while writing. It can be argued that assessing writing fluency has been greatly influenced by speaking fluency measurement since that time (Latif, 2012).
To assess writing, Nodoushan (2014) suggests three categories such as holistic, analytic and trait-based. In writing fluency assessment, it uses trait-based to assess writing fluency both analytic and holistic scoring were a priori in that they assumed a pre-determined set of criteria which could distinguish good writing from poor writing, and according to which each piece of writing could be evaluated. Writing fluency puts how writers should write rapidly, appropriately, creatively, and coherently. To assess writing fluency, Stapleton (2001) suggests to use two scoring rubrics: the first rubric is to measure students' writing in term of 'context' called as (quality), and the second one is to measure students writing fluency 'time' as (quantity).
In the context of EFL learning in Indonesia, it is assumed that extensive reading and writing are very relevant because learners often combine these two skills into life, starting when they were kids learning to read and they definitely try to write to make them faster in understanding text. Learners are learning for an exam by trying to write down what they have read and learning to know whether they understand the text comprehensively and they can remember it clearly.
Research investigated relationship between reading and writing skills in the context of ESL/EFL have been conducted (Ahmadi, 2012;Atilgan, 2013;Bahrani, 2011;Kirin, 2010;Miftah, 2013;Sakurai, 2017). Some research which foccus on investigating extensive reading and writing in the context of studies of L1, ESL and EFL were conducted by Kirin (2010) and Ahmadi (2012). Kirin (2010) reported that the high reading group the reading comprehension ability was proved to be statistically enhanced which did not facilitate writing skills.
Meanwhile, a study result by Ahmadi (2012) showed positive effect extensive reading on grammatical accuracy and writing fluency in improving writing ability.
Research about extensive reading and the language competence development was conducted by Bahrani (2011) andMiftah (2013). Bahrani (2011) claimed that learners can develop more specialized competence by spending more hours P a g e | 50

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LET: Linguistics, Literature and Language Teaching Journal Vol. 10 No. 2 2020 behind their reading activities, and Miftah (2013) reported that extensive reading strategy as an important in the English learning can improve learners' reading comprehension. Also, Atilgan (2003) and Sakurai (2017) did research investigate the role of extensive reading on writing in terms of vocabulary building. Atilgan (2003) claimed that extensive reading is effective for the contribution to students' writing performance in term of vocabulary development, while Sakurai (2017) reported that extensive reading influences some sub-skills of writing such as vocabulary and grammar.
In short, in the context of EFL learning, extensive and writing are interrelated each other due to the contribution to the English skills development.
The research in the context of ESL/EFL learning conducted by Ahmadi (2012)

Research Design
The type of this research is quantitative research following Creswell (2014), an inquiry approach useful for describing trends and explaining the relationship among variables found in the literature. To conduct this inquiry, the researchers specify narrow question, locates or develops instrument to gather data to answer questions, and analyzes numbers from the instrument using statistics.
To conduct this research, it was used correlation design with a statistical test to determaine the tendency or pattern for two data of the extensive reading and writing fluency to vary consistenly (Creswell, 2014). There is no manipulation of the variables in this kind of research (Ary et al, 2010). This study P a g e | 51  The are two kinds of research instruments; Extensive Reading Test (ERT) and Writing Fluency Test (WFT). To get information about students' extensive reading activity the researcher adapted a questionnaire develoved by Ahmed (2016). The questionnaire used to collect data on the point of view of students about their extensive reading activity. The questionaire of six items close-ended questions related to students extensive reading activity as shown in Table 1. To get information about student's writing fluency, researcher also did a test to the sample and gave them an order to write an Argumentative Writing with minimum words is 500 and maximum time is 100 minutes, they should make a text rapidly, appropriately, creatively, and coherently and using linguistics structures. The score of the writing fluency were divided into two: the quality of the argumentative text and the writing quantity/fluency. The quality of the argumentative text were measured by a scoring rubric adapted from Stapleton (2001) as shown in Table 3, the quantity of the argumentative text were measured by a scoring rubric adapted from Stapleton (2001)  write an argumentative paragraph rapidly, appropriately, creatively, and coherently in linguistics structures. The score of the writing fluency were divided into two; the quality of the argumentative text and the writing quantity. So there were 3 kinds of scores: the first was extensive reading score with 100 as a maximum score, the second was writing quality score with 50 as maximum score, and the last is writing quantity score with 50 as a maximum score. Then the score of writing quality and witing quantity were combined into a writing fluency score with 100 as a maximum score.

Data Analysis
For the next research method, the collected data were then analyzed to find out the correlation between extensive reading and writing fluency. To analyze the collected data, it was through the steps: calculating the extensive reading score by using an online site from Extensive Reading Foundation, finding scores of students writing fluency test by applying the inter-raters technique (Nodoushan, 2014) (first rater was the first researcher, and the second rater was the English lecture of the university), and finding out the correlation coefficient between P a g e | 57

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LET: Linguistics, Literature and Language Teaching Journal Vol. 10 No. 2 2020 extensive reading and writing fluency by using a formula of the Pearson Product Moment and calculating them by using SPSS 20.0 program.

Students' leisure time activities
Results of analysis of the students' extensive reading activities were gained from a questionnaire develoved by Ahmed (2016) Table 5 showed that the leisure time activities were 14 students of surf net, 14 students of watching television, 8 students of sports, 13 students of computer games, 12 students of study, and 14 students of extensive reading. Based on this result the reaseraher found that were only 14 students did the extensive reading in their leisure time,and which mean only (39% students). However, 22 students or 61% students did not do the extensive reading.  extensive reading. In this part of questionnaire students were allowed to chose more than one activities.

Amount of time spent on extensive reading
Results of analysis in this term showed that there were only 14 students did the extensive reading, and they had different amount of time spent on extensive reading. Majority students spent 1-2 hours (19%). It is followed by less than 1 hour (11%) and 2-3 hours (8%). For the rest 22 students, they not do the extensive reading, or none amount time spent on extensive reading per day (61%).
This result is shown in Table 6. 2 -3 hours 3 8 Table 6 illustrates the distribution of amount spent on extensive reading by students who do the extensive reading in their leisure time based on the result of leisure time activity questionnaire. Table 7 illustrates the distribution of types of reading materials by the students. They were able to choose more than 1 type. The result showed that most of students (22 students) chose comic/novel as reading materials, 18 students used e-book as reading materials, 16 students used articles as their source for reading activities, and 9 students chose magazine/newspaper as their reading materials. For the preferred language as shown in Table 8, 16 students (44% students) preferred both languages (Bahasa Indonesia and English) (44%), 12 students (33% students preferred Bahasa Indonesia, and the rest 8 students (22% students) preferred English as the language of their reading materials. For particularly their spending time on surf net, as shown in Table 9, most of students spent more than 4 hours to surf on net for 16 students (44% students), 1-2 hours for 7 students (19% students), 2-3 hours for 7 students (19% students), 3-4 hours for 4 students (11% students), and less than 1 hour for 3 students (6% students). P a g e | 60

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LET: Linguistics, Literature and Language Teaching Journal Vol. 10 No. 2 2020 3-4 hours 4 11 More than 4 hours 16 44 Meanwhile, reading frequency of a book that the students have already read as shown in Table 10, it showed most of students 83% of them (30 students) already have read at least 1 book last year, meanwhile the others 17% of them (6 students) have not read at least a book. Writing Fluency

Students' writing fluency scores
Result of the analysis of the writing fluency test showed that there were two main parts: the quality and the quantity scores. Both score from quality and quantity were combined to get the final writing fluency score. The students' total scores of writing fluency are shown in Table 12.

Result of normality test
The normality test was used to know whether the data were normal or not.
The result of normality test from the calculation using SPSS 20.0 is shown in Table 13.  Table 9 shows that the level significance of extensive reading score in Shapiro-wilk's table was 0.172 > 0.05. It means that the data were normal distribution. Meanwhile, the level significance of writing fluency score was 0.053 > 0.05. It means that the data in normal distribution. To summarize, the data from students' extensive reading and writing fluency scores were normal.

Result of linearity test
The linearity test was used to know whether the data were linear or not.
The result of linearity test from the calculation using SPSS 20.0 is shown in Table   14. In Table 14, the significance value showed the data value was 0.556 and it was higher than 0.05, which means there was a significant linear relationship between students' extensive reading scores and students' writing fluency scores.

Result of homogeneity test
To know whether the data were homogen or not, it used the homogeneity test. The result of homogeneity test from the calculation using SPSS 20.0 is shown in Table 15.  Table 15 shows that the value of variable significant of extensive reading score (X) and writing fluency score (Y) = 0.169 > 0.05. It can be concluded that the variable data of extensive reading score (X) and writing fluency score (Y) were same variant.

Students' Extensive Reading and Writing Fluency
Result of the analysis of the correlation between students' extensive reading and writing fluency scores was gained from the calculation of the   Table 16 shows that the coefficient correlation was 0.408 and the siginificant was 0.020. However, to prove it, the value of "r" based on the calculation degree of freedom was known that df = N-nr =, N = 32, nr = 2, df = 32 -2 = 30 and the rtable was 0.3494. The result showed that the robserve 0.408 is higher than rtable 0.3494 at 5%. It can be concluded that the alternative hyphothesis (Ha) was accepted and the Null hyphothesis (Ho) was rejected. The robserve was 0.408. So, there was a positive moderate correlation between extensive reading and writing fluency. The result of this correlation can also be described in Figure   2.  Figure 2 shows that the dots were spread in line, so it can be concluded that there was correlation between students' extensive reading score (X) and students' writing fluency score (Y). Based on the Table 16 and Figure 2, it can be concluded that students' extensive reading gave a contribution 16.64 % to students writing fluency of the sixth semester students of the English Education Department at a university in Palangka Raya Kalimantan Tengah Indonesia. The better students' extensive reading, the better their writing fluency.
From the results of the current research, there was a positive moderate correlation between extensive reading and writing fluency. The same result also was found in a study by Sakurai (2017). It was found that the extensive reading influences some sub-skills of writing, but the effect is not remarkable enough to affect the total. The previous study concluded that the extensive reading just had a low correlation to the writing performance. It was rarely found a high or very high correlation between those variables. On the other hand, a study conducted by Kirin (2010) was different from the present study results. The study found that according to the coefficient values, relationships between extensive reading and writing abbiity rarely existed and the result was correlated at a moderate level (r = P a g e | 68

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LET: Linguistics, Literature and Language Teaching Journal Vol. 10 No. 2 2020 0.543). The result of this study was at a moderate it is simillar level and it is still prove that there was a positive correlation between extensive reading and writing fluency. In addition, the study which was different result from the present study. It was a study done by Poorsoti and Asl (2016). This study was an experimantal study and it reported that extensive reading did not have any significant effect on the EFL learners' writing accuracy.
To summarize, the result of the current study is more focused in the context of EFL learning in Indonesia. However, it is different from the other context of EFL learning in other countries. Moreover, there was also different from the other context of ESL learning.

CONCLUSION
The current research focuses on investigating the correlation between students' extensive reading and their writing fluency in the English learning particularly in the context of Indonesian EFL learning. The research findings show that there is a moderate positive correlation between students' extensive reading and and their writing fluency in English learning activities. From this research, in EFL learning, it is suggested to apply more extensive reading because of its importance for the development of reading comprehension and to keep writing skill practice for the higher level of writing fluency. English teachers should guide and encourage their students to be engaged in extensive reading activities and writing practices for both skills better. Also, future researchers are suggested to analyze not only the correlation between extensive reading and writing fluency, but also the factors that could affect both variables with larger samples.