TEACHING BY COOPERATIVE LEARNING TO IMPROVE STUDENTS ACHIEVEMENT IN READING COMPREHENSION

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1 TEACHING BY COOPERATIVE LEARNING TO IMPROVE STUDENTS ACHIEVEMENT IN READING COMPREHENSION Afrizal Pengawas SMP Dinas Pendidikan Kab. Muaro Jambi Abstract: The purposes of this research were: 1) to study the effects of cooperative learning on English reading skill development of 28 first year students in SMP Negeri13 Muaro Jambi, 2) to survey the students attitudes towards cooperative learning method used in English classroom, and 3) to examine their cooperative learning behaviors. The instruments used were the reading comprehension test, the questionnaire of attitudes towards cooperative learning, the cooperative learning behavioral assessment form, and the observation. The writer administered the English reading comprehension test for action in cycle 1 and action in cycle 2. Results indicate that the students obtained higher reading comprehension scores for the cycle 2 than the cycle 1. As to their attitudes towards cooperative learning, the findings indicate that most students rated cooperative learning moderately positive. Also, assessment forms show they performed good cooperative learning behaviors in their tasks. So the conclusion that cooperative learning can improve students attendance, can take away the big burden of running large classes, That the group members have the responsibility of updating the students who were absent on what they missed makes they feel they are not alone. Keywords: cooperative learning, achievement, reading comprehension There are four skills in language term, namely reading, speaking, listening, and writing. Each skill has special characteristic whether it is in teaching strategies or in the way to study them. From the four skills of language above, the researcher is eager to choose reading comprehension. Because the researcher regard that reading is as the first skill which is taught to the students in school. Reading skill is always given the main emphasis. As it is stated in the 2002 curriculum of English for SMP, the main goal of teaching English is to make students able to read. It means that the main goal of English teaching and learning for Indonesian students is to comprehend, that is to fully understand written or printed information. Reading is a receptive language process. It is a psycholinguistic process in that it starts with a linguistics surface representation encoded by a writer and ends with meaning which the reader constructs. Because reading is a psycholinguistic process, it may be an active and passive reading. However, reading process is an attempt to drill or explore the textual passage in reading text. An active reading condition depends on the way in teaching it to the students. The approaches which are used in teaching reading influence the students interest in doing that. The teacher should choose the appropriate approach in order to get the good students achievement in reading comprehension. Many reading methods have been used in classrooms alternately. The results show that 147

2 148, J-TEQIP, Tahun VI, Nomor 2, November 2015 some are successful with a particular group of students but some are not. Actually, what should be taken into consideration now is the way the knowledge is presented. As we know, teacher centred approaches taking place in traditional classrooms do not produce active recipients and result in fossilized language learning. It is not effective enough to promote language acquisition. During the past decade, a new approach called Cooperative Learning seemed to attract a lot of attention and became popular. This conceptual approach is based on a theoretical framework that provides general principles on how to structure cooperative learning activities in a teacher s specific subject area, curriculum, students, and setting. Teachers can use this approach to stimulate students to acquire the knowledge as well as create interpersonal and team skills. Based on the explanation above, in solving reading problem, the researcher will attempt cooperative learning. In this way Students prefer to work in pairs which consists of four to five students in comprehending the reading text. In the case of it, reading is not a passive, but rather an active, and in fact an interaction process has been recognized for some time in first or native language reading (Goodman: 1967) Reading competence is essential to personal enrichment and the development of intelligent citizenship. By reading, the students can enlarge or enrich their knowledge and experience because most of information they need is served in written form. Traditionally, classes always consist of good students and weak students. The weak students sit in isolation as they lose confidence in their ability to learn English. Working in groups, therefore, is believed to help solve this problem. Shy students who don t like to speak in a large class are more comfortable speaking out in smaller groups. Group members can complement each other s strengths and weaknesses in English. Each student has a different background and ability in English, which he or she can bring to the group. For example, one student might have a strong vocabulary that can supply to students with a solid background in grammar. Furthermore, poor students will benefit from interaction with better ones, and good students will feel proud that they play an important role in helping their weaker classmates. The problem is identified as having to the following aspect: Can teach by cooperative learning improve students s achievement in reading comprehension? The objective of this research is to answer the problem in formulating the problem point, namely to find out improving students achievement in reading comprehension by cooperative learning. The result of this study are hoped to give contribution to: 1) Teachers of Junior High School to understand about cooperative learning, 2) Teachers of Junior High School can get advantages and feedback of using cooperative learning, 3) The writer in order to apply cooperative learning in teaching English reading. Definition Operational of this study are: 1) Cooperative learning (CL) is as concepts and techniques for helping students learn together, 2) Reading Comprehension is read to get informations in the text. Definitions of Cooperative Learning Cooperative learning is a generic term for various small group interactive instructional procedures. Students work together on academic tasks in small groups to help themselves and their teammates learn together. Cooperative learning is one strategy for group instruction which is under the learner-centred approach. Many educators give the definitions of cooperative learning:

3 Afrizal, Teaching by Cooperative Learning, 149 Cooperative learning is an instructional program in which students work in small groups to help one another master academic content. (Slavin, 1995). Cooperative learning involves students working together in pairs or groups, and they share information.they are a team whose players must work together in order to achieve goals successfully. (Brown, 1994). In addition, Kessler (1992) proposes the definition of cooperative learning particularly in language learning context: Cooperative learning is a within-class grouping of students usually of differing levels of second language proficiency, who learn to work together on specific tasks or projects in such a way that all students in the group benefit from the interactive experience. According to Johnson (2005), cooperation is not assigning a job to a group of students where one student does all the work and the others put their names on the paper. It is not having students sit side by side at the same table to talk with each other as they do their individual assignments as well. It is not having students do a task individually with instructions that the ones who finish first are to help the slower students. On the contrary, cooperative learning is a teaching strategy in which small teams, each with students of different levels of ability, use a variety of learning activities to improve their understanding of a subject. Each member of a team is responsible not only for learning what is being taught but also for helping teammates learn, thus creating an atmosphere of achievement. Students work through the assignment until all group members successfully understand and complete it. Cooperative learning (CL) can be defined as "concepts and techniques for helping students learn together. Elements of Cooperative Learning Cooperative efforts are expected to be more productive under certain conditions. The followings are the five basic elements of cooperative learning. 1. Positive Interdependence The first requirement for an effectively structured cooperative learning environment is that students believe they sink or swim together. (Johnson, Johnson & Stanne, 2000) That is, cooperation occurs only when students perceive that the success of one depends on the success of the other. Whatever task students are given to perform, each group member must feel that his or her contribution is necessary for the group s success. Students have to learn to work together in order to accomplish tasks. This is why learning task must be designed in a way that makes them believe, they sink or swim together. Through the assigned material, students learn to achieve the goal. Therefore, a number of ways of structuring positive interdependence are carried out such as reward, resources, or task responsibilities to supplement goal interdependence. Each group member has a unique contribution to make to the joint effort because of his or her resources or role or task responsibilities. 2. Face-to-Face Interaction The second element of cooperative learning requires face-to-face interaction among students within which they promote each other s learning and success. Johnson (2005) suggests that it is necessary to maximize the opportunities for them to help, support, encourage, and praise each other. Such promotive interaction helps to promote the following: - orally explaining how to solve problems - teaching one s knowledge to other - checking for understanding - discussing concepts being learned

4 150, J-TEQIP, Tahun VI, Nomor 2, November connecting present with past learning 3. Individual and Group Accountability The third element leads to the belief What students can do together today, they can do alone tomorrow. The purpose of cooperative learning groups is to make each member a stronger individual. Individual accountability exists when the performance of each individual student is assessed, and the results are given back to the groups. Therefore, the group knows who needs more assistance, support, and encouragement in completing the job. Johnson & Johnson (1991) suggest some common ways to structure individual accountability. These include giving an individual test to each student, randomly selecting one student to represent the entire group, or having students teach what they have learned to someone else. 4. Interpersonal & Small Group Skills Students must be taught the social skills and be motivated to use them. Social skills which are needed for both teamwork and task work include leadership, decision making, trust building, communication, and conflict management skills. (Johnson, Johnson, & Holubec, 1993). 5. Group Processing Group members should think about how well they have cooperated as a team and how to enhance their future cooperation. Some of the keys to successful processing are allowing sufficient time for it to take place, emphasizing positive feedback, maintaining student involvement in processing etc. To be cooperative, group members must promote each other s learning and success face-to-face, hold each other personally and individually accountable to do a fair share of the work, use the interpersonal and small group skills needed for cooperative efforts to be successful, and process as a group how effectively members are working together. These five essential components must be present for small group learning to able truly cooperative. There needs to be an accepted common goal on which the group will be rewarded for their efforts (Johnson & Johnson, 1991) Numbered Heads Together Cooperative learning can be structured in many different models. As Olsen & Kagan (1992) stated, all cooperative learning models share the idea that students work together to learn and are responsible for their teammates learning as well as their own. The general ones are Student Teams-Achievement Divisions (STAD), Teams Games - Tournaments (TGT), and Jigsaw II. Moreover, some are designed for use in particular subjects at particular grade levels such as Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC) for reading and writing instruction and Team Accelerated Instruction (TAI) for mathematics. The approach used in this research is based on Numbered Heads Together is a cooperative learning strategy that holds each student accountable for learning the material. Students are placed in groups and each person is given a number (from one to the maximum number in each group). The teacher poses a question and students "put their heads together" to figure out the answer. The teacher calls a specific number to respond as spokesperson for the group. By having students work together in a group, this strategy ensures that each member knows the answer to problems or questions asked by the teacher. Because no one knows which number will be called, all team members must be prepared. This cooperative learning strategy promotes discussion and both individual and group accountability. This strategy is beneficial for reviewing and integrating subject matter. Students with special needs often benefit when this strategy is used.

5 Afrizal, Teaching by Cooperative Learning, 151 After direct instruction of the material, the group supports each member and provides opportunities for practice, rehearsal, and discussion of content material. Group learning methods encourage students to take greater responsibility for their own learning and to learn from one another, as well as from the instructor (Terenzini & Pascarella, 1994). There are some steps to do numbers head together: 1) Divide the students into groups of four and give each one a number from one to four,2) Pose a question or a problem to the class, 3) Have students gather to think about the question and to make sure everyone in their group understands and can give an answer, 4) Ask the question and call out a number randomly, 5) The students with that number raise their hands, and when called on, the student answers for his or her team. Teaching Reading Comprehension As stated by Hornby the term teaching means to cause somebody to know or be able to do something. Teaching a child to read a story book, for instance, means causing the child to be able to read the story book (Hornby, 1986: 886). Reading is an active and interactive activity to reproduce the word mentally and vocally and tries to understand the content of reading text. It is important to bear in mind that reading is not an invariant skill, that there are different types of reading skills, which correspond to the many different purposes we have for reading (1989:33). In classroom, in student s reading activities, the writer is sure that they have many purposes, among others are to graduate from their school and to provide themselves with the knowledge to continue their studies whatever their purposes are. In order to achieve the goal, the comprehension ability in reading is needed. According to Olson and Diller (1982:42), reading comprehension is a term used to identify those skills needed to understand and apply information contained in a written material. Reading competence is essential to personal enrichment and the development of intelligent citizenship. By reading, the students can enlarge or enrich their knowledge and experience because most of information they need is served in written form. The curriculum of English for SMP states that the teaching of English should cover the four language skills; (listening, speaking, reading and writing). Reading skill is always given the main emphasis. As it is stated in the 2002 curriculum of English for SMP, the main goal of teaching English is to make students able to read. It means that the main goal of English teaching and learning for Indonesian students is to comprehend, that is to fully understand written or printed information. If we say that a certain student is good at comprehension we mean that the student can read accurately so as to get the maximum information from the text with the minimum of misunderstanding (Swan, 1992:1). The teacher can use some methods of teaching reading so that the students can enjoy and be stimulated in learning EFL reading comprehension. METHODOLOGY OF RESEARCH This research will use classroom action research. In this occasion the researcher would like to improve students achievement in reading comprehension and also to make the activities in classroom more quality, enjoy and fun. The classroom action research was conducted for the first semester for the first year students of the school of SMPN 13 Muaro Jambi in The way to do the research are: early reflection (refleksi awal), action planning (perencanaan tindakan), doing the action (pelaksanaan tindakan), observation (pengamatan), reflection.

6 152, J-TEQIP, Tahun VI, Nomor 2, November 2015 Planning of cycle 1 a. Early reflection In this step the researcher identify some problems and analyse the problems that happened in SMPN 13 Muaro Jambi class VII for the first semester 2013/2014. b. Formulate some problems operationaly. In this step, the researcher formulate some problems in the class, especially about strategy that used in the class. c. Formulated Hipothesis to act/do (merumuskan hipotesis tindakan). The hipothesis: Cooperative learning can improve students ability in reading comprehension in SMPN 13 Muaro Jambi. d. Arrange the Action Research (Menyusun rancangan tindakan) 1) Make basic competence 2) Make Lesson Plan 3) Make students sheet for discussion (lembar diskusi siswa). 4) Arrange the class activities (pengelolaan kelas) 5) Arrange the tools to collect the data; observation sheet, note about the activies and the process about teaching and learning, instrument of test (instrumen penilaian). e. Doing of the Action Research (Pelaksanaan Tindakan). 1) Introduction (pendahuluan) Apperception: a) teacher explains the objective of the teaching and learning and motivate students to study, b) teacher makes groups each group at about five or six students, c) teacher explains about how to work in group to students. 2) Main Activities 3) Last activities f. Observation g. Reflection h. Recursion Technique to collect the data The data in this research is collected by observation, questionnaire and documentation study. The result of cycle 1 is reflection to make better for cycle 2. Data Analyse Data analyse will be done as descriptive qualitative based on the observation and the result of the study. The steps are: 1) Reduction, by checking the data collected 2) Interpretation, by guessing the possibilities 3) Inferetion, by concluding about the result of the teaching and learning is there any improvement about students quality. 4) Follow up activities; make some steps to remedy to the next steps. 5) Conclusion RESULT OF THE STUDY This chapter deals with the students achievement s of reading comprehension. The students are teaching by given the cooperative learning (Numbered Heads Together) teaching method. The result of Data Analysis Data Analisis is done to three goups they are: observation from teachers (rekan sejawat), data from teachers reflection (data refleksi guru), and result from students achievement: they are about class situation and students achievement. Class Situation During teaching and learning process there are some important events: - When teachers and students make a group works there are some students seem confused and not focused to look for their group works. - During teaching and learning some students did not work with their

7 Afrizal, Teaching by Cooperative Learning, 153 friends, but almost of the students were very anthusiastic to do the test. They work together with friends and very active. From result of class observation it is stated that; there are some advantages from recursion(perbaikan): students have motivation to study, students actively to do tasks from teacher, stduents are brave to presentation their result, students give some comments and ideas. And also they give suggestion to teacher relates to teaching and learning at that time. a. Students Achievement (Prestasi Belajar Siswa) In this research it is applicated to stdudents mastery as individual, with KKM is 70. And as classical it is mastery if percentage is 85 percent for all of students in the class. Students achievement is found out from test 1 and test 2. As individual: Total students = 28 Students mastery in learning = 19 students Percentage for students mastery in learning = 19:28 x 100% = 67,85 Students who did not master 7 students, percentage students who did not master = 7:28 x 100% = 25 % As classical: Based on the result above it is sated that student still do not master because to reach the mastery the percentage must take 90%. But in this research students achievement after cycle 1 only got 67,85%, whereas to get a mastering it is needed about 13%. b. Reflection In teaching and learning, it is found out the result of observation: Teacher did not give motivation as maximalize. Teacher must organize time effectively. Students do not have a big anthusiame during teaching and learning. Tabel 1.Students Achievement for cycle I STATEMENT No. Mark Not Master Master V V Jumlah Skor 1780 Rata-Rata Skor 63,57 Tercapai Note: M : Master NM : Not Master Students Master : 19 Students Not Master : 9 Percentage of Master : 63, 57%

8 154, J-TEQIP, Tahun VI, Nomor 2, November 2015 c. Revision There are some weakness in teaching and learning from cycle I. So that teacher must revision for the next cycle. Teacher must give the objectives of teaching and learning, and ask students to involve for every activity that will be done. Teacher must distribute time effectively, by giving only the important information. Teacher must be as a good motivator for the students, so that they will be anthusiastic in following the class. Cycle II a. Planning In this cyle, researcher prepare lesson plan, test examination, and compliment tools. b. Doing the Action (PTK) The classroom action research for cycle I is done at the 8 th March In this cycle teaching and learning is done based on Lesson Plan and revision from cycle 1. From the table, the percenttage of students achievement is about 72,60. And students master about 76,00% or 25 students from 28 students who has mastered. This result show us if for the cycle 2 students achievement has increased. It is caused the students help eache other. It means students who has high achievement help students who are low. Beside that teacher has good class and time management. c. Reflection For the cycle 2 teacher has applied Number Heads Together better. It can be seen from students activities and the result of students achievement. So it does not need revision anymore. But the most important thing to teacher is to always pay attention and maximalize of doing this cooperative learning, so the objective of teaching and learning can be reached better. Tabel 2.Students Achievement for cycle I STATEMENT No. Mark Not Master Master Total Score (Jumlah Skor) Rate (Rata-Rata Skor Tercapai) ,57 Note: M : Master NM : Not Master Students Master : 19 Students Not Master : 9 Percentage of Master : 63, 57%

9 Afrizal, Teaching by Cooperative Learning, 155 Recommendation for the future study 1. The results of the study reveal that cooperative learning has increased students English reading skill. Therefore, a replication of the study could be conducted with other groups at the graduate or undergraduate levels in other skills such as writing, speaking, or listening. It would be worthwhile to investigate how effecttive is cooperative learning on other skills so that instructors can use findings for improving and developing their teaching process. 2. As this research is mainly based on NHT model, future research should focus on comparisons between different models of cooperative learning in order to determine if other cooperative learning models are equally effective in producing students desired. 3. For examining students cooperative learning behaviors, an observation technique with a particular checklist can be employed by the instructor instead of using an assessment form checked by students themselves. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION From the action classroom action research, There are some benefits of cooperative learning and would like to share ideas as follows: 1. Although some students are not concerned about grades, or interested in participating in class, if a group s performance depends on individual contributions, they have to come. They don t want to miss a class in which all assignments are handed out, and they didn t want to disappoint teammates. They do care about their peers. They know that members cannot work without them. Moreover, they don t want to miss the points from the quiz. I dare to say that cooperative learning can dramatically improve attendance. 2. Cooperative learning can maximize the students interaction in English, and it can take away the big burden of running large classes. Therefore, the teacher has to change his or her role to be a motivator or problem solver. 3. That the group members have the responsibility of updating the students who were absent on what they missed makes they feel they are not alone. Isolation and alienation are the predictors of failure. BIBLIOGRAPHY Brown, H. (1994). Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Johnson, D. (2005). Cooperative Learning: Increasing College Faculty Instructional Productivity. Johnson, D., Johnson, R., & Holubec, E. (1993). Co-Operation in the Classroom. Edina, MN: Interaction Book Company. Johnson, D., Johnson, R., & Stanne, M. (2000). Co-Operative Learning Methods: A meta-analysis. Kessler, C. (1992). Cooperative Language Learning: A Teacher Resource Book. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Slavin, R. (1995). Cooperative Learning: Theory, Research, and Practice. Massachusetts: Allyn and Bacon.