IMPROVING THE GRADE EIGHT STUDENTS’ PARTICIPATION AND THEIR READING COMPREHENSION ACHIEVEMENT BY USING NUMBERED HEADS TOGETHER (NHT) TECHNIQUE AT MTs N ARJASA

Abstract

This was a classroom action research focusing on the use of Numbered Heads Together Technique to improve the eighth grade students’ participation and their reading comprehension achievement. The subjects of this research were the students of class VIII-C at MTs N Arjasa in the 2014/2015 academic year. This class was chosen because the students in that class could not achieve the standard requirement score of English which was 75. There were only 45.1 % or 13 students out of 30 students who got the standard score. Moreover, this class were less motivated in joining reading class. In this research, the researcher used NHT Technique in teaching reading comprehension to the students because the researcher believed that this technique was appropriate to solve the problems faced by the students. NHT is one of the cooperative learning strategies that train the students to solve the problems together with their teams. Besides, by applying this technique, the students will have motivation and it decrees the students’ boredom and monotonous in teaching learning process. This research was conducted on March 24th - April 28th, 2015 in 2 Cycles. Each Cycle consisted of two meetings and a reading comprehension test. In this classroom action research, the researcher taught reading comprehension by using NHT Technique to class VIII-C and the observer of the actions was the English teacher of class VIII-C. There were two kinds of important data in this research: primary data and supporting data. The supporting data were taken through interview and documentation while the primary data were collected through observation and xiv reading comprehension achievement test. The collected data were analyzed by using simple statistic with percentage formula. From the observation of the students’ participation done during the teaching learning process of reading comprehension by using NHT Technique in Cycle 1, the average result of the students’ active participation was only 63.33%. It means the target percentage of the students’ active participation was not achieved yet. Further, the observations were continued to Cycle 2. The average result of the students’ active participation increased 13.82, from 63.33% in Cycle 1 to 77.15% in Cycle 2. The finding proved that the use of NHT Technique could improve the students’ active participation. Moreover, the result of reading comprehension achievement test in Cycle 1 indicated that only 20 students (66.67%) out of 30 students achieved the standard minimum score that was 75. This result had not achieved the success criteria of the research yet. Thus, the actions were continued to Cycle 2. In Cycle 2, the result of the students’ reading comprehension achievement test showed that there were 23 students (76.66%) out of 30 students could achieve the standard minimum score that was 75. It means that the result of the students’ reading comprehension achievement improved 9.99% from 66.7% in Cycle 1 to 76.66% in Cycle 2. This result showed that the success criteria of this research had been achieved in Cycle 2. Based on the results above, the hypotheses of this research were accepted and it is suggested to the English teacher and the future researchers to use NHT Technique as an alternative technique in teaching reading comprehension