The correlation between students' vocabulary knowledge and essay writing performance

One of the fundamental English language learning skills that students should acquire is writing. Also, it is one of the trickiest skills for students to learn when studying English. One of the causes is that students have lack of vocabulary knowledge. This research aims to discover the correlation between students’ vocabulary knowledge and essay writing performance in the 8th semester at the University of Sunan Ampel. This study encompasses the correlation between students’ vocabulary knowledge and essay writing performance and students’ perceptions regarding the impact of vocabulary knowledge on their writing performance. The research is conducted by using a correlational design, the instruments of this study were testing and questionnaires. The population of this research was the 8th semester in the University of Sunan Ampel which consisted of 40 students as a sample. The coefficient result of the correlation between both variables shows a correlation between students' vocabulary knowledge and essay writing performance with a coefficient between 0.76 and 0.99 which is categorized as a strong correlation