Presented as One of the Requirements to Obtain SI Degree of the English Education Program of the Language and Arts Education Department of The Faculty of Teacher Training and Education Jember University

Abstract

According to the result of preliminary study in the form of interview with the English teacher of SMP Negeri 2 Sukowono Jember, it was found that the students of class VIII-B had difficulties in comprehending reading texts because they lack of vocabularies and also interest in reading comprehension. It is because the English teacher never used any new technique or approach when teaching reading to the students. Besides, the students also lack of participation in the classroom during the teaching and learning reading comprehension. The researchers tried to overcome the problem by applying STAD Technique. Student Team Achievement Division (STAD) is a model of cooperative learning technique developed by Robert Slavin (1986) which is referred to as student team learning techniques. This technique assigns the students to four or five members as a heterogeneous group involving high, average and low achieving students of diverse genders and ethnic background. It involves question and answer activity among the students. So, the students can be participated well during the teaching and learning process. The design of this research was classroom action research with cycle model. The subjects of this research were class VIII-B of SMP Negeri 2 Sukowono Jember that consists of 39 students, in the second semester 2009/2010 academic year. The research target was 75% students got score at least 71 and 75% students actively involved in the teaching and learning reading comprehension through STAD Technique. The actions in cycle covered 1) planning of the action, 2) implementation of the action, 3) observation and evaluation, and 4) analysis and reflection.