IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION THROUGH STUDENT TEAMS ACHIEVEMENT DIVISION OF THE SEVENTH GRADE STUDENTS OF SMP N 3 KEDIRI IN ACADEMIC YEAR 2013/2014

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1 IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION THROUGH STUDENT TEAMS ACHIEVEMENT DIVISION OF THE SEVENTH GRADE STUDENTS OF SMP N 3 KEDIRI IN ACADEMIC YEAR 2013/2014 NI PUTU THERISA APRIANTI ENGLISH EDUCATION STUDY PROGRAM FACULTY OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION MAHASARASWATI DENPASAR UNIVERSITY DENPASAR 2014 ABSTRACT The undertaking of the present classroom action research was mainly based on the preliminary observation which was carried out to the seventh grade students of SMP N 3 Kediri in academic year 2013/2014 who was chosen as the subjects of the study. The result clearly pointed out that the students ability in reading comprehension especially in finding specific information was categorized low. Thus, the present study was proposed to answer the research questions: can reading comprehension of the seventh grade students of SMPN 3 Kediri in academic year 2013/2014 be improved through STAD? The classroom action research was carried out through implementing STAD in two planned cycles. The result of the post-test in each cycle obviously showed that there was significant improvement concerning the subjects ability in reading comprehension especially in finding specific information genre. This result can be seen from the progressing mean score of pretest (48.21), post-test 1 (59.82) and post-test 2 (76.42). To support this research, the researcher was administering the questionnaire and it showed that the quantity of the subjects who strongly agreed with the implementation of the technique. To sum up, the present classroom action study proved that STAD could improve students reading comprehension of the seventh grade students of SMP N 3 Kediri in academic year 2013/2014; in addition, the subjects also responded positively the implementation of STAD. Key Words: STAD, Reading Comprehension

2 INTRODUCTION Reading is one of the four basic skills which should be mastered by the student. Reading is a process of getting information from written words. Reading is an important skill in our daily life because it can gives many advantages for us. Through reading, we can obtain plenty of information which can expand our knowledge. By reading, students also learned much of what they need to know for their different school subject. Reading helps the students to develop their critical thinking and finally it influences the success of their academic achievement. The success of teaching and learning process in the classroom or outsides the classroom is influenced by reading habit. Students can get many vocabularies that they need by reading that can be applied in speaking and writing; however, reading is not simply a process of getting the meaning of what the readers read because the readers have to interpret what they have read and comprehended. A reader needs comprehension to catch the content of message or information from the text. Therefore, the first point to be made about the reading process is reading comprehension. Reading comprehension is an effort to understand, evaluate, and also recognize the author s ideas of reading text. Reading comprehension is very important to be mastered by the students, because in reading comprehension, the students are expected to get the main ideas and the detail information from the text well. Additionally, reading skill is used in the final examination. So the students must have a good reading comprehension if they want to pass the exams and graduate from the school. Many efforts have been done by the expert in education field to improve the way in teaching reading and the students ability in reading comprehension. For example, by proposing and applying many kinds of reading techniques, selecting authentic materials used in reading

3 comprehension. Unfortunately, poor reading comprehension still occurs for alarming number of the students. Based on the preliminary observation conducted of the researcher and the English teacher of seventh grade students in SMPN 3 Kediri, most students had problem on reading comprehension especially in the class seventh G. Students in this level have difficulties in identifying the information of reading passage, the students could not find specific information which is included in the text that was given by the teacher. Therefore, in the present study, one of the cooperative models, Student Teams Achievement Division which will be abbreviated as STAD will be used as a model of teaching which is expected to be able to solve the problem faced by the seventh G class students of SMPN 3 Kediri. STAD is one of all cooperative learning methods used as teaching techniques that can be done in teaching reading comprehension. Although need more time to do this technique; however, this technique makes the students to work together to learn and be responsible for their team mates. The implementation of STAD can motivate the students to learn reading comprehension because there are several quizzes for individual after they have done teams assignment and also there is a reward for them who get good achievement in the end of teaching and learning process. Research Problem Therefore, the present study is intended to figure out the answer of the research question as follow can reading comprehension of the seventh grade students of SMPN 3 Kediri in academic year 2013/2014 be improved through STAD? As what has been aforementioned, the present study is intended to find out whether or not reading comprehension of the seventh grade students of SMPN 3 Kediri in Academic Year 2013/2014 can be improved through Student Teams Achievement Division (STAD).

4 The Objective of Study To find out whether or not reading comprehension of the seventh grade students of SMPN 3 Kediri in Academic Year 2013/2014 can be improved through Student Teams Achievement Division (STAD). THEORETICAL AND EMPIRICAL REVIEW In this chapter the researcher would like to describe some theories related to the study. The theories of the study are divided into four parts: (1) the conception of reading comprehension, (2) the importance of reading comprehension (3) the conception of student team achievement division (STAD) (4) assessing reading comprehension. Conception of Reading Comprehension Caldwell (2008:177) states reading comprehension is about relating background knowledge to new knowledge contained in the written texts. Our ability to understand what we read is highly dependent upon the background knowledge that we bring to the act of reading. The Importance of Reading Comprehension Through reading the readers will know about the text, get main idea of the text or get the point of the reading materials. Westwood (2001:10) states that Readers must use information already to acquire to filter, interpret, organize, reflect upon and establish relationships with the new incoming information on the page. Student Team Achievement Division (STAD) Arends (2007:352) states that In the STAD model of cooperative learning; students in heterogeneous teams help each other by variety of cooperative study method and quizzing procedures. Because the students will be divided into some groups and each members in a group will divided in different sex, ethnic, ability. Therefore, they can share the together.

5 Assessing Reading Comprehension Assessment is a crucial component of the effective teaching of reading. It provides teachers with information about what their students know and can do. In addition, it is important tool for monitoring the ongoing reading development of students and it provides teacher and school with the information about how well their programs and teaching practice are meeting the learning needs of their students, March (2002:135). RESEARCH METHOD The present study would be carried out in one of the seventh classes in SMP N 3 Kediri, that is, the seventh G. This class consisted of 28 students with 13 males and 15 females. This class was chosen as the subject of the study because based on the preliminary observation they were considered to have crucial problems in their reading comprehension especially in identifying specific information of the text. The present study made use of a Classroom Action Research (CAR) design which consisted of cyclical process; in addition, in every cycle there will be four interconnected activities such as: Planning, Action, Observation and Reflection. In the present study, the researcher would implement one of cooperative learning model, student teams achievement division in improving reading comprehension especially in identifying specific information. In order to see the improvement of reading comprehension of the subject, some lesson would be conducted by the researcher based on Classroom Action Research procedure. In this case, the teaching learning processes were done following cycles in which each cycle consists of two sessions. Each session in that cycle consists of four interconnected activities. They are namely planning, action, observation, and the last was reflection.

6 In relation with what has been stated above, there were two research instruments that are used in collecting data in this study. They were test consist of pre-test and post-test and questionnaire. In addition, there were two important kinds of instruments which were used to collect the data of this classroom action research; they were the test which included pre test and post-test, and questionnaire. The data that was going to be analyzed includes the data was in the form number that was collected from pre-test and post-test. And, the data in the form of percentage that showed the effectiveness of the technique used in the study. FINDINGS AND DISSCUSSION Finding As what has been explained above, the present study made use of a cyclical process of Classroom Action Research (CAR). The present study was mainly intended to find out whether or not reading comprehension of the seventh grade students of SMPN 3 Kediri in Academic Year 2013/2014 can be improved through Student Teams Achievement Division (STAD) especially in identifying specific information. After finishing the computation of validity, the reliability, the level of difficulty and the discrimination power of the test item, the researcher carried out pretest and post-test to know the students reading comprehension. After carrying out the cyclical process into practice, the findings of the present classroom action research can be elaborated as follows. Pre- Cycle The present classroom action research was initiated by preliminary observation. The aim of preliminary observation is to figure out the Initial reflection of the subject so that the researcher knows their problem. In the preliminary observation, the researcher did interview with the English teacher who taught the subjects of the study in the seventh grade students especially in class G in order to get additional data. The results of the interview were in line with the

7 researcher s experience in teaching the subjects. Administering pre-test also was done by the researcher to make sure the problems occurred in the study. In the pre-test, the students were asked to answer 20 questions in the form of multiple choice tests. The result of the pre-test showed that the lowest score from 28 students was 20 and the highest score was 75 and could be reached by only one subject of the present study. It showed that 96.43% of the subjects under study got score less than the minimum standard passing grade for seventh grade students of SMPN 3 Kediri that was 72. The mean score of the pre-test which was followed by 28 subjects was Therefore, the researcher tried to improve their reading comprehension by implementing STAD in the cyclical process. Cycle I Cycle I was carried out based on the results of the preliminary observation. It was started with a planning which it was done to determine what to do in the action and the instruments used for collecting data. As mentioned earlier that subject under investigation, students in class G of seventh grade student in SMP N 3 Kediri, had low ability in reading comprehension, so all the plan was concerned on improving it progressively. The topic of the Cycle I for each session was different. The topic in the session I was descriptive text, while the topic in the session II was announcement text. After the teaching learning process in session I and session II, post-test was administered to the subjects under study. The result of the post- test cycle I showed that the lowest score of the total 28 subject of the study was 35 and could be reached by only one subject of the present study. It showed that 3.57% of the subjects under study got more than the minimum standard passing grade for seventh grade students of SMPN 3 Kediri that was 72. The improvement could be seen by the mean score of the post-test in cycle I was This result, even though it was still low, showed that there was an improvement from the result of the pre-test which the mean

8 score in the pre-test was The difference of the grand mean figure of pre-test and the posttest in cycle 1 was Even though there was a positive improvement, the researcher decided to continue to the next cycle, cycle II, to get a better improvement. Cycle II Cycle II was started with planning which had already been revised from the previous version. This revision was made based on the results of the post-test. The researcher revised the lesson plan which was made in the first planning. In the planning, additional material presentation was prepared. If in cycle I the material was explained verbally and need more time in the pre activities, in cycle II the time in whilst activities more than in the cycle I. During the teaching learning process, the students responded positively on the material and they became more active in the classroom. In the quiz which was given by the researcher to the students also got positive respond than the quiz which was given in the cycle 1. After the teaching learning process which was followed by 28 subjects, post-test was administered. The form of post- test in the cycle II was same in the cycle I that was multiple choice tests; however, the degree of difficulties both the cycle I and cycle II were different. The post test was administered in the cycle II more difficult and the text which was provided in the text is longer. They were instructed to identify 20 questions related with the text which had given. The result of the post-test cycle II showed that the lowest score of the total 28 subject of the study was 55 and only two students could not reach the minimum standard of passing grade students. In addition, the highest score of the post-test in the cycle II was 85. The result also showed that 26 subjects of the present study could reach the minimum standard of passing grade students. It showed that 92.85% of the subjects under study got more than the minimum standard passing grade for seventh grade students of SMPN 3 Kediri that was 72.

9 The improvement can be seen from the result of the post-test in cycle II was while, the mean score of the post-test in cycle I was The difference of the grand mean figure of the post-test in cycle 1 and the post-test in cycle II was Furthermore, the additional data was collected through administering the questionnaire. The questionnaire was also administered to know the student s response toward the application of student teams achievement division in their learning process. The data was taken to find out the percentage of student who really agree, agree, quite agree and disagree of the technique applied based on the questionnaire given. It was found that there were 56.97% of the subjects really agreed, 38.88% agreed, 4.15% quite agree, 0% disagreed on the implementation of the technique. These findings supported the major findings of this study. It was also clearly indicated the subject s positive response in reading comprehension through student teams achievement division. The result of the questionnaire showed the quantity of the subjects who really agreed with the implementation of the technique. Discussion The present study was intended to improve reading comprehension through the implementation of student teams achievement division of the seventh grade students of SMP N 3 Kediri in Academic year 2013/2014. Based on the result of the post-tests in the cycle I and the post-test in cycle II, the research question, can reading comprehension of the seventh grade students of SMPN 3 Kediri in academic year 2013/2014 be improved through STAD? can be confidently answered that yes, it can. STAD could significantly improve the seventh grade students of SMP N 3 Kediri in academic year 2013/2014 especially in class seventh G grade students.

10 The results of the analysis above were considered as the findings of the present classroom study, which could be summarized as the following the grand mean in the pre-test was 48.21, the grand mean in the post-test in the cycle I was 59.82, and the grand mean in the post-test in cycle II was It showed that there was improvement of the students score before the implementation of student team achievement division. Although, there were two students have not reached the minimum of passing grade students that was 72; however, 80% of the students could improve their reading comprehension through STAD. CONCLUSION The main data required for the present classroom action study were gathered through administering initial reflection and reflection to the subjects under study. Some supplementary data were also collected by means of administering questionnaire at the end of the cycle. The resulted mean figures increased significantly. The final findings of the present study convincingly revealed that student teams achievement division could improve the reading comprehension of the seventh grade students of SMPN 3 Kediri in academic year 2013/2014 especially in class G of the seventh grade students. The result of the analysis of questionnaire scores was significantly proved that the attitudes and the learning motivation of the subjects under study changed quite positively. Suggestion Based on the result of the study, some suggestions are presented to improve the students reading comprehension those are: The writer suggests that the teacher should try to use STAD in teaching reading comprehension. The students of SMP N 3 Kediri are suggested also to keep on motivate in reading comprehension, read some books or going to library to read some books and then comprehend

11 the meaning because it is important activities to know about vocabulary, grammar, and enrich experience and knowledge. Since the benefit of STAD was only experimental in improving reading comprehension especially to the seventh grade students of SMP N 3 Kediri in academic year 2013/2014; therefore for the other researchers who conduct similar research, it is suggested to apply it in different level of the students. REFERENCE Arends, R. I. (2007). Learning to Teach (Seventh Edition). New York: the McGraw- Hill Companies. Andrew, J. (2008). Teaching Reading and Writing. United States of America: Rowman & Littlefield Education. Brown, H.D. (2004). Language Assessment Principle and Classroom Practice. United States of America: Longman. Burns, A. (2010). Doing Action Research in English Language Teaching. New York: Routledge. Caldwell, J.S. (2008). Reading Comprehension A Primer for Teachers and Coaches. New York: The Guildford Press.