IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION SKILLS BY USING JIGSAW TECHNIQUE AT THE SECOND YEAR OF SMAN 1 KALASAN YOGYAKARTA IN THE ACADEMIC YEAR OF 2011/2012

The type of this research was action research. The study attempted to solve the problems related to the students’ reading comprehension. The objective of this research study is to improve reading comprehension of Grade XI students of SMAN 1 Kalasan through jigsaw technique. The steps of this research were reconnaissance, planning, conducting action and observation, and having reflection. The participants of the research were the researcher, the English teacher, and the students of Grade XI IPA of SMAN 1 Kalasan. There were two forms of the data in this study. They were qualitative and quantitative data. The qualitative data were obtained by doing observation, interviewing the students, the principal, the researcher’s assistant and the English teacher, making field notes, and holding the discussion with the English teacher as a collaborator. Meanwhile, the quantitative data were obtained from the students’ reading score of pre-test and post-test and they were analyzed by using descriptive statistics in SPSS 17 program. There were four elements of descriptive statistics in describing the result of test. Those were frequencies distribution, mean, standard deviation, and conversion table. Moreover, to know whether or not there was a significance of the students’ reading improvement between pre-test and post test score, the researcher used t-test. This research applied theoretical and time triangulation to get trustworthiness in analyzing the qualitative data. In addition, the validity of the qualitative data was obtained by applying democratic validity, outcome validity, and process validity. The results of the research show that using jigsaw technique can improve the students’ reading comprehension and the students’ reading involvement in the reading class because the findings reveal three results. First, the use of jigsaw can improve students’ reading comprehension. The students’ improvement is supported by the result of t-test analysis. According to the t statistic, t value = - 7.595; sig. = 0.000; it means that the score difference is significant because sig. < 0.05. Second, there were improvements of students’ involvement in the reading class toward the application of jigsaw technique. They were more active in every activity, they were willing to participate in the group discussion, and they were more serious to finish the tasks in groups. They were also motivated to work in groups and they were motivated in reading the English text