Improving Students’ Reading Skill through Think Pair Share (An Action Research in Eighth Grade Students of SMP Negeri 1 Ngadirojo in Academic Year 2010/2011).

Oleh :
Endah Safitri - X2207051 -

Endah Safitri. X2207051. Improving Students’ Reading Skill through Think Pair Share (An Action Research in Eighth Grade Students of SMP Negeri 1 Ngadirojo in Academic Year 2010/2011). A Thesis, Surakarta: Teacher Training and Education Faculty of Sebelas Maret University, 2011. This research is aimed at: (1) describing whether or not Think Pair Share can improve students’ reading skill, and (2) identifying the classroom situation when the Think Pair Share is implemented in the teaching and learning process. The method used in this research was a collaborative action research with an English teacher (teacher SL). The research was conducted in two cycles at the 8E grade students of SMP Negeri 1 Ngadirojo from April 16th to June 2nd 2011. There are two kinds of data: qualitative and quantitative data. The qualitative data were collected by using observation, questionnaire, interview, diary, and document. Then, the quantitative data were collected by using test (pre-test and post-test). Qualitative data were analyzed by using 5 stages suggested by Burns (1999: 157- 159) as follows: assembling the data; coding the data; comparing the data; building interpretation; and reporting the outcomes. The quantitative data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics. The research findings show that the use of Think Pair Share could improve students’ reading skill and classroom situation of English class. The improvement of students’ reading skill includes: (1) Students are able to identify the main idea of the text; (2) Students are able to find implicit information of the text; (3) Students are able to find the explicit information from the text; (4) Students are able to infer meaning (vocabulary); (5) Students are able to determine references. Besides, the improvement of students’ reading skill can be seen from the improvement of the mean score of pre-test, first post-test and second post-test, that is 46.76, 63.14, and 67.94. The classroom situations also improve. The improvement of classroom situations include: (1) Almost all students give more attention to the teacher explanation; (2) Students’ behavior change. They do not do the useless activity during the lesson; (3) Students are more motivated and give more response toward the teacher’s instruction; (4) Students are not shy and afraid to ask if they has difficulty; and (5) They tend to be active students. Think Pair Share can be applied in teaching learning process. Hopefully, by implementing Think Pair Share, the students can improve their reading skill. The researcher hopes that what the researcher has done will inspire the English teachers to conduct Think Pair Share in their classroom.