Improving Students’ Reading Comprehension Through Cooperative Integrated Reading Composition (Circ)

Abstract

The objectives of the research were to know the use of CIRC technique could improve the students’ reading comprehension, and to know the strengths and weaknesses of CIRC implementation during the teaching and learning process. The method of the research was CAR. The subject of this research was the eighth grade students of MTsN Bendosari Sukoharjo especially VIII.D grade students in academic year 2012/2013. The researcher implemented one of technique Cooperative Learning that was CIRC in improving students’ reading comprehension. The data were collected from quantitative and qualitative. The quantitative data was collected from test, and the qualitative data were collected from observation, interview, documentation and questionnaire. These data were analyzed by using mean score to see the improvement of pre-test and test-cycle, and to get conclusion as the result of this research. This research was conducted in two cycles of action, each of the cycle consisted of three meetings. The result of this research showed that the students’ reading comprehension improved. The students’ mean score in pre-test was 52.3, in test-cycle 1 was 64.7, and in test-cycle 2 was 75.5. Related to the improvement of students’ reading comprehension, the students were able to determine the title or topic of the text, main idea, generic structure, purpose of the text, reference, synonym or antonym, detailed information and undetailed information. From the improvement of test result in each cycle, it showed that using CIRC made the students got better understanding or comprehending the text. During the implementation of the actions, the researcher was helped by the collaborator observed the strengths and the weaknesses of CIRC during the teaching and learning process. It was found that the students were more active in discussing. They also felt more interested in reading, enjoyed in joining the lesson by grouping. But, some students in each group still looked shy or afraid in presenting their work in front of the class.