The Effect of Using Numbered Heads Together (Nht) Technique on the Students’ Reading Comprehension Achievement

Abstract

This research was conducted to investigate the effect of using Numbered Heads Together (NHT) technique on the seventh grade students’ reading comprehension achievement at SMP Negeri 9 Jember in the 2019/2020 academic year. Based on the result of the interview with the English teacher, it revealed that the students’ motivation in accomplishing the exercises was the biggest problem in teaching reading. It happened because the low achiever students usually depended on the other students from higher achievers to accomplish the exercises when they worked in small groups. Therefore, the researcher conducted the experimental research by using Numbered Heads Together (NHT) technique. According to Kagan (1994), NHT technique focused on construction knowledge in learning reading through the cooperation and social interaction. This technique was effective because it trained all students in groups to be responsible in comprehending the materials and working cooperatively. Moreover, there were three kinds of data collection method used in this research, namely reading comprehension test, interview, and documentation. The students’ scores in reading comprehension test were used as the primary data, while the secondary data were collected by conducting interview and documentation. The participants of this research were the seventh grade students of SMP Negeri 9 Jember in the 2019/2020 academic year. The homogeneity test was conducted to 121 students from Class VII C to Class VII F. The result of the homogeneity test revealed that the population was homogeneous. Thus, the researcher determined the experimental and the control groups randomly by lottery. Therefore, Class VII D was determined as the experimental group and Class VII C as the control group. The design of this research was quasi-experimental with post test only design because it aimed to investigate whether or not there was significant effect of using NHT technique on the students’ reading comprehension achievement. The experimental and control groups were taught reading using different treatments. The experimental group was taught reading using NHT technique. Meanwhile, the control group was taught reading using Question and Answer technique. The post test was administered after both groups had been taught reading comprehension twice. The results of the post test were analyzed using Independent Sample T-test formula by SPSS. Based on the calculation, the mean score of the experimental group (64.19) was higher than the control group (56.13). It also showed that the value of sig. (2-tailed) was 0.029. It was lower than 0.05 which could be concluded that there was a significant difference in the means between the two groups. This result indicated that there was a significant effect of using NHT technique on the students’ reading comprehension achievement.