STUDENTS IMPROVEMENT IN READING COMPREHENSION ON RECOUNT TEXT THROUGH NUMBERED HEAD TOGETHER

Satria Supriadi, Rismaya Marbun, Stevanus Buan English Education Study Program, and Languages and Arts Education Department, Teacher Training Education Faculty of Tanjungpura University in Pontianak E-mail: satriasupriadi.ss@gmail.com Abstrak Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk meningkatkan kemampuan memahami teks bacaan para siswa kelas VIII SMPN 8 Pontianak terhadap teks recount dengan menggunakan teknik Numberhead Together. Teknik Numberhead Together adalah salah satu teknik pembelajaran kooperatif yang dapat memotivasi siswa untuk memahami pelajaran yang diberikan secara independen. Untuk mengamati perkembangan pemahaman membaca para siswa, Penelitian Tindak Kelas dilaksanakan selama tiga kali. Selama penelitian berlangsung, nilai rata rata kelas pada penelitian pertam adalah 46.57, nilai rata-rata kelas penelitian kedua adalah 58.71 dan nilai rata-rata kelas pada penelitian ketiga adalah 69. Ketiga nilai penelitian tersebut membuktikan Numberhead Together telah berhasil meningkatkan kemampuan siswa dalam memahami sebuah teks bacaan. Kata Kunci: Membaca, Pembelajaran kooperatif, Numberhead Together Abstract This research aimed at improving students reading comprehension on recount text through numberhead together for eighth year students of SMP Negeri 8 Pontianak in academic year 2012/2013. Numberhead together is one of cooperative teaching strategies which can encourage students to comprehend the lesson independetly. In order to observe the students improvement, action research was conducted in three cycles. During the improvement treatment, the mean score of students reading comprehension in the first cycle is 46.57, the second cycle is 58.71 and the third cycle is 69. Those three mean scores had proved that Numbered Heads Together succeeded to improve the students reading ability. Keyword: Reading, Cooperative Learning, Numberhead Together

eading is one of the types of learning. Reading is an activity in transferring the information from the text to the readers. It is one of the four basic skills that are required by students in learning English. It means reading is an interaction between the reader and the writer by using a media. The media is a text.

Most of people can read an English text but it does not mean all of them understand. A good reader must find the meaning of the text or the purpose of the writer. Texts consist of spoken or written words that have the purpose of conveying the message. Nuttal (1982: 4) also enlightened that reading is a result of the interaction between the perception of graphic symbols that represent language and the readers language skills; cognitive skills and the knowledge of the world. To grasp all the language skills, teacher will be the main facilitator to help the students as the foreign language learners. For foreign language learners, the purpose of reading in a foreign language is language improvement as Nuttal (1982, p. 3) says that the students only need to learn the foreign language and comprehend the learning. So, the major goal of reading text is comprehension. One of the text types that had to be comprehend in eighth grade students of SMPN 8 was recount text. Recount text is the text which tell experiences of past events of somebody. The generic structures of recount text are orientation, event/ events, and reorientation. a. Orientation : It provides details of who/what/when/where. Orientation can be found in first paragraph. b. Event/events : Describing series of event that happened in the past. It can be found in middle paragraph, the event can be just one or more. c. Re-orientation : It is optional. Stating personal comment of the writer to the story. It can be found in the last paragraph. Beside the generic structure, another thing which also should be the point of teaching is the language features. The language features of a recount text are: a. Introducing personal participant; I, my group, etc b. Using chronological connection; then, first, etc c. Using past verb; looked, went, changed, etc d. Using simple past tense During pre-observation in SMP Negeri 8 Pontianak, the researcher found that the students had difficulties to get information from the recount text. The students difficulties are to get the main idea of the text and to classify generic structure. The students seemed confused when the teacher asked them a set of reading comprehension questions for example: Where did they go? What does the word they in line 1 refer to? Who was on vacation? . Those questions for some students were easy to answer, but for some others were not. The difficulties happened because the students were lack of vocabularies, and comprehension skills. The student could read the text. But they didnt know what the t ext told. It made the students get low score of that test. Mostly are below of the standard minimum achievement or KKM. To solve those problems, researcher found that cooperative learning was the answer. According to Slavin (1995: 2), cooperative learning refers to a variety of teaching methods in which students work in small groups to help one another learn academically, to discuss and argue with each other, to assess each others current knowledge and fill in gaps in each others understanding. It involves students interaction in team to accomplish learning objectives that guided by some principles

The first principle is Positive Interdependence. Students perceive that they need each order in order to complete the groups task. It is necessary because a group success greatly depends on each members effort. For that reason, team members are obliged to rely on one another to achieve the goal. If any team members fail to do their parts, everyone suffers consequences. Thus, the students work and help each others in completing the groups task. The second is Face-to-face Promote Interaction. In cooperative way, students promote each others learning by helping, sharing and encouraging efforts to learn. Students explain, discuss and teach what they know to classmates. Teacher structures the group, so that the students can sit and talk together to find out the solution of each aspect of the assignment. The third is Individual and Group Accountability. The cooperative learning groups should not consider individual success only. They should consider all individual success as the goal of the group also. Students must continually assess and support each person to achieve the common goal. So, every student in the group is responsible for the success. The fourth is Interpersonal and Small Group Skills. Group cannot function affectively if students do not have and use the needed social skills. Teacher teaches these skills as purposely and precisely as academic skills. Collaborative and cooperative skills include leadership, decision making, trust building, communication and conflict management skills. Then, the last is Group Processing. Students must learn how they are functioned as a group and how they have used the necessary social. Those principles of cooperative learning draw many advantages for the teaching and learning process. Cooperative learning model enable the teacher and students to have some positive values as follow: 1. Improving academic performance among high and low achieving students. 2. Making constantly favorable achievement for minority students. 3. Giving positive effects on students self esteem, social relations, attitudes toward mainstream students and race relations. 4. Understanding the material better by having collaboration between the students. There are some popular techniques that can be used with all students to learn content (such as science, math, social studies, language arts, and foreign languages). However, they are particularly beneficial to ELLs for learning English and content at the same time. Slavin (1995) stated most of these techniques are especially effective in teams of four; round robin, roundtable, write around, numberheads together, jigsaw, and tea party. This research chose Numberheads together to improve students reading comprehension since it can give same opportunities for each student to actively engage in the teaching and learning process. Kagan (1992: 20) who developed Numbered Heads Together technique describes that in this technique the teacher gives numbers to each student and gives questions to every student based on their numbers. It is one of the way to ensure more equitable response opportunities by stop calling on students who raise their hands.

The steps for using numbered heads that was done by the researcher in the classroom are: 1. Students counted off The researcher divided the students into 7 groups which consisted of 5 students for each group. Before grouping the students, the researcher had mapped the students achievement. The researcher selected seven students with the highest achievement and placed it in every group. After dividing the group, the researcher ask the students to count. So, every student had his/ her own number to answer the question later. Since there were 10 questions to be answered, every student had to answer two questions. 2. Posed a question/problem The researcher gave 20 minutes for students to comprehend the text. Then, posed a question or problem to the class. 3. Students put heads together Then, the researcher asked the students to put their heads together or discuss to make sure that everyone in the group had the answer. 4. Researcher called a number The teacher called a number from 1-5. All the students with that number stood up. For example the researcher called the student who got number one. There were seven students who stood in front of the class. All of the standing students should give their groups answer. Standing students with different answers should explain their groups thinking. The phases in teaching reading comprehension of recount text by using NHT are: a. Pre-activity Phase 1: Preparation 1) The teacher does the apperception 2) The teacher explains the learning by using NHT technique 3) The teacher states the learning purpose 4) The teacher motivates the students b. Whilst activity Phase 2: The learning by using NHT First step 1) Numbering: The teacher divides the students in groups that consists of 5 students and gives the students numbers 1 until 5. 2) The students join their groups Second step Giving question: The teacher gives questions about the recount text. Third step Think together: The students think together and share their opinions about the answers of the questions. The students ensure their members of the groups of the answers. Fourth step 1) Answering: The teacher calls numbers, the students that have the number called must raise their hands and answer the questions or present it in front of the class.

2) The teacher observes the results and motivates the groups that have not success in answering the questions. 3) The teacher evaluates the learning result of the students. c. Post-activity Phase 3: Closing 1) The students and the teacher conclude the material. 2) The teacher asks the students to review the material that has been taught. A. Method of Research The researcher will conduct a classroom action research. The researcher conducted the stages of action research with the collaborator. The collaborator took the notes in the form of field notes and observation checklist. The stages as stated by Cohen, Manion and Morrison (2000: 226) are as follows: 1. Planning stage The researcher prepared lesson plan, teaching media, observation checklist table and field notes. 2. Acting stage The researcher acted in classroom as a teacher and treated the students with the technique. 3. Obsering stage The researcher worked with a collaborator to observe what was happening in reality. On this stage, the collaborator filled the observation checklist table and field notes. 4. Reflecting stage Based on the observation, the researcher got feedback to reflect to the next cycle. This research was conducted for the eight grade of SMPN 8 Pontianak. The researcher chose VIII C as the subject of the research because the student in that class is having the problems in reading comprehension of recount text. Triangulation method will be used as technique of data collecting in this research. Cohen, Manion, Morrison say (2000:112): Triangulation may be defined as the use of two or more methods of data collection in the study of some aspects of human behavior. The researcher used observational checklist, fieldnote, and an achievement test of students works as the tool of data collecting. The observation was done by the researcher and the collaborator. It was recorded in filled note. The achievement of the students work was calculated into a mean score.The formula is presented below: =

Note: m= the students average score x = the sum of students score N = the number of students

Then, to conduct the achievement test, the researcher used three types of questions. These types of question are suitable for junior high school students. Actually there are six types of question, but the cognitive domain level of junior high students only comprehend those three levels. The researcher provides table specification of the test as follow: Level of question types Knowledge (Remembering) Comprehension (Understanding) Applying TOTAL Subject Matter Characters Setting Vocabulary Inference Details Number of test items 1 4, 6 9 2, 3 8 10

Table 1 Specification of the Test B. Research Findings This classroom action research was conducted in three cycles. Every cycle consisted of planning stage, acting stage, observing stage, and reflecting stage. The acting stage was conducted in one meeting (2 x 40 minutes) that was performed during the teaching-learning process. The problems of the students in reading recount that usually occured during the teaching and learning process are as follow: 1) The students were confused in mentioning the generic structure of recount text and also in determining the paragraphs which was included in the generic structure. 2) The students could not find the information of the recount text given very well. The information of the recount text given such as the setting and the characteristics of the characters. In the first cycle, the researcher started by asking the students experience. It helped the students understand more about recount text. It was effective as the brainstorming since recount text also talked about somebody experience. Another reason was both of them have same features of text characteristics such as tenses and sequence of the text. After they understood what recount text was, the researcher started to give the materials. But in the end, the most of students were still found difficulty to find generic structure and language features. They were still hard to understand the questions and to find the information of the text. Based on the result, it could be concluded that the first cycle was not satisfying and needed more effort to reach the goal with this technique. Students achievement score is presented below:

No 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

Score 40 40 70 40 40 40 40 60 25 80 60 25 25 80 40 40 40 40 40 70 40 40 60 55 50 50 25 40 95 20 20 40 80 40 40 TOTAL 1630 Table 2 Students Achievement Score in the First Cycle

Name* X1 X2 X3 X4 X5 X6 X7 X8 X9 X10 X11 X12 X13 X14 X15 X16 X17 X18 X19 X20 X21 X22 X23 X24 X25 X26 X27 X28 X29 X30 X31 X32 X33 X34 X35

= 1630 35 = 46.57

In the second cycle, the teacher and the researcher used paper as the media. The students were asked to identify the generic structure and to understand the recount text. They had to find the difficult words. Each student was given one paragraph and they discussed it with their work group. In the second cycle, the students could find the generic structure of recount text. However, the second cycle still had been unsuccessful. The researcher needed more effort to reach the goal. The students achievement score is displayed on a table below: No 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 Name* X1 X2 X3 X4 X5 X6 X7 X8 X9 X10 X11 X12 X13 X14 X15 X16 X17 X18 X19 X20 X21 X22 X23 X24 X25 X26 Score 55 60 70 40 40 60 60 60 50 90 60 50 50 80 60 75 75 75 60 70 60 60 60 55 50 50

X27 40 X28 40 X29 100 X30 40 X31 40 X32 60 X33 80 X34 40 X35 40 TOTAL 2055 Table 3 Students Achievement Score in the Second Cycle.

27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

= 2055 35

= 58.71 In the third cycle, the teacher and the researcher applied some strategies to overcome the problems from the second cycle. The researcher also actively monitored the students discussion. The resaearcher ensured that all the students answered the questions by themselves. The students might have discussion with the teacher by asking for information or suggestion. During the observation, the students were more active and felt enjoy during the teaching learning process in the third cycle. They also showed a good team work and togetherness. They tried to find out information in the text. The researcher concluded that the third cycle had been successful. Based on the assessment in this meeting, the students had higher scores than the two previous meetings. It showed that the students had been accustomed with this technique. They assisted each other, so the lower achievement students could understand and participate. The students score is presented below: No 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Name* X1 X2 X3 X4 X5 X6 X7 X8 Score 65 65 70 65 65 65 75 70

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

65 80 70 70 65 80 70 65 70 70 70 65 70 75 65 65 65 65 65 65 85 70 65 70 80 65 65 TOTAL 2415 Table 4 Students Achievement Score in the Third Cycle. =

X9 X10 X11 X12 X13 X14 X15 X16 X17 X18 X19 X20 X21 X22 X23 X24 X25 X26 X27 X28 X29 X30 X31 X32 X33 X34 X35

= 2415 35 = 69

Based on KKM (Kriteria Ketuntasan Minimum) of English subject is this school, 100% of students passed the criteria. The researcher stopped the cycle because the goal had been reached. The research had successfully proved that Numberhead Together can improve students reading comprehension.The

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researcher made a diagram to show the significant improvement of the students comprehension during the three cycles.
80 60 40 20 0 Cycle 1 Cycle 2 Cycle 3

Figure 1. The Diagram of Students Mean Score in the First, Second and Third Cycle C. Discussion This classroom action research was conducted in three cycles. Every cycle consisted of planning stage, acting stage, observing stage, and reflecting stage. The acting stage was conducted in one meeting (2 x 40 minutes) that was performed during the teaching-learning process. The problems of the students in reading recount that usually occured during the teaching and learning process are as follow: 1) The students were confused in mentioning the generic structure of recount text and also in determining the paragraphs which was included in the generic structure. 2) The students could not find the information of the recount text given very well. The information of the recount text given such as the setting and the characteristics of the characters. Both the teacher and the collaborator worked together to compute the students individual score and the mean score. The research findings showed that the students mean score in the first meeting is 46.57. It is qualified poor. It was far from the goal. It meant that the researcher had to think the better preparation for the next cycle to make the students got the better mean score. The students mean score in the second meeting is 58.71. It is qualified poor to average. It was better than first cycle but still unsuccessful. The researcher needed the better preparation for the next cycle. In the third meeting, the students mean score is 69. It was qualified average to good. The percentage of students achievement of each question was presented as follows: Based on KKM (Kriteria Ketuntasan Minimum) of English subject is this school, 100% of students passed the criteria. The researcher stopped the cycle because the goal had been reached. The research had succeed to use this technique. Conclusion According to Nuttal (1982: 22) understanding is the central process of reading and must be the focus of teaching process. It means the students get and understand the information that the writer wants to tell within the text by
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themselves. So, to help the students, the researcher applied Numbered Head Together. During the teaching and learning process, Numbered Heads Together (NHT) succeeded to ensure the same accountability and the opportunities for the students in the teaching learning process. So, It could avoid the students that were passive in teaching learning process; for example when the teacher posed questions, not only the smart students answering but also all the students based on their number. Furthermore, Numbered Heads Together was about group work. It was effective to encourage another student to study because the high achievement students could share their knowledge and comprehension to the low achievement students. The students would be able to learn and explore the learning by themselves. In conclusion, NHT technique was effective to teach reading comprehension. Thus, teacher could use this technique as one of alternative ways to encourage students participation and activate their knowledge before, during and after reading in order to get the the students comprehension. In relation to students improvement in comprehension, the research findings of the classroom action research showed satisfying of students improvement. The students comprehension of recount text was improved significantly in every cycle by implementing this teaching technique. Students reading comprehension of recount text was improved by applying the teaching techniques. The mean score was increased from 46.57, 58.71 to 69. Bibliography Cohen Louis, Lawrence Manion & Keith Morrison. 2000, Research Methods in Education, 5th edn, U.S.A: Routledge Falmer. Kagan, Spencer. 1994. Cooperative Learning. San Clemente, CA: Kagan Publications. Nuttal, Christine. 1982. Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language. London: Heineman Educational Book Ltd. Slavin, R.E. (1995). Cooprative learning: Theory, research, and practice (2nd ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

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