Enhancing the Seventh Grade Students’ Reading Comprehension Achievement by Using Student Teams-Achievement Divisions (Stad) Strategy

Abstract

This classroom action research was intended to enhance the VII-C grade students’ reading comprehension achievement by using STAD strategy. The reason for choosing VII-C was that this class had the lowest score in reading comprehension. Based on the interview and observation, the strategy implemented by the teacher was not too effective. It was probably because of the teacher did not allow the students to do certain strategy so that the students didn’t show their enthusiasm in the teaching and learning process. Moreover, the high achiever students were not willing to help and work with the low achievers. Therefore, STAD was chosen to enhance the students’ reading comprehension achievement. STAD is a part of cooperative learning in which the students are divided into groups consisted of 4-5 member, then they will teach each other about the material given and they should consist of heterogeneous members. This research was done in one cycle which consisted of three meetings. The first and second meetings were the implementation of the action while the last meeting was intended for the reading comprehension test. The criteria of success determined by the researcher was 75% of the students achieved the standard minimum score (78) and 75% of the students actively participated in the teaching and learning process. The results of observation in Cycle 1 showed that the percentage of the students’ active participation increased from meeting 1 that was 75% to 91% in meeting 2. It means that the strategy has been successful to encourage the students’ participation. Besides, the percentage of the students who achieved the standard minimum score increased from pre-Cycle that was 31.25% to 81.25% in Cycle 1. It can be concluded that Cycle 1 was succeeded in enhancing the students’ reading comprehension achievement because more than 75% of the students achieved the standard minimum score. The action was stopped because the result of the observation and reading comprehension achievement test had achieved the minimum requirement. Based on the results above, it can be concluded that the use of STAD strategy could enhance the seventh grade students’ reading comprehension achievement and their active participation. Therefore, it is suggested for the English teacher to use STAD as an alternative strategy to teach reading comprehension and other skills such as listening comprehension. Since the members of the group were decided and chosen by teacher, sometimes they felt uncomfortable with their teammates, therefore, it is suggested for the English teacher to divide the students into heterogeneous group and let the students to choose the team members equally by themselves. For the students, it is expected that the use of STAD strategy can make them help each other to improve their reading comprehension achievement. For future researchers, it is expected that the result of this research can be used by future researchers to conduct further research dealing with a similar topic by using the same research design on different language skill, such as listening comprehension to enhance the students’ listening comprehension achievement through STAD strategy. Besides, the researcher also suggests future researchers to implement the STAD strategy for different level of subjects, schools, and different text type of genre as well