The aim of this research is to find out: (1) whether there is a significantdifference in the achievement of reading skill between the students taught usinglearning cell and those taught using direct instructional method; and (2) whetherlearning cell is more effective to teach reading than direct instructional method.Related to the objectives of the research, the method used in this researchwas quantitative through experimental approach in order to analyze the collecteddata. The research was conducted in August-September 2014. The population ofthis research was the eighth grade students of SMP N 14 Surakarta in theacademic year of 2014/2015. From the whole population, two classes were takenas the sample where each class consisted of 33 students. The sample were classVIII A as the experimental group and VIII B as the control group. The samplingtechnique used was cluster random sampling. The data were collected byconducting a test and were analyzed by using t-test formula.The computation of the data shows that: (1) there is a significantdifference in reading skill between the students taught using learning cell andthose taught using direct instructional method; and (2) learning cell is moreeffective than direct instructional method to teach reading for junior high schoolstudents.