IMPROVING STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION THROUGH COOPERATIVE READING GROUPS TECHNIQUE (A Classroom Action Research in the First Year Students of the English Department of Unswagati Cirebon in the 2010/2011 Academic Year)

The objectives of the research are: (1) to know whether Cooperative Reading Groups technique can improve students’ reading comprehension of the first year students of English Department of Unswagati or not; (2) To know the strengths and the weaknesses of Cooperative Reading Groups technique when it is used to teach reading in the first year students of English Department of Unswagati. The subject of the research was the first grade students of English Department of Unswagati Cirebon in the 2010/2011 academic year. This research was conducted in two cycles. Each cycle consisted of four meetings. The procedure of the action research consisted of planning, acting, observing, and reflecting. The data were collected through questionnaire, interview, and test. To analyze the quantitative data, the researcher applied descriptive statistics. It was used to compare the scores and means of the pre-test and post-test. The prêt-test was conducted in the preliminary research while the post-test was conducted at the end of cycle 1 and 2. The result of the test was used to know how well the students comprehended the text. To analyze the qualitative data, the researcher analyzed the improvement of teaching learning process based on the result of questionnaire and interview using the theory of analyzing the qualitative data written by Lynch (1997: 139-147). The result of the research showed that: (1) cooperative reading groups technique could improve students’ reading comprehension in (a) identifying main idea of the text; (b) finding the pronoun reference; (c) recognizing the word meaning in context; (d) finding detail information from the text; and (e) making inferences of the text. The improvement of the students’ comprehension can be proved that the mean score of the pre-test is 54.3, post-test of cycle 1 is 65, and post-test of cycle 2 is 81.9. (2) The strengths of Cooperative Reading Groups technique when it was applied to teach reading comprehension are: (a) the students were more active when taught by CRG technique; and (b) the students felt more enjoyable in joining teaching learning process. Meanwhile, the weaknesses of cooperative reading groups technique when it was applied to teach reading comprehension are: The students made big noise when teaching learning process was in progress and the different opinion in every group made them difficult to work together. Based on the result of the research, it can be concluded that Cooperative Reading Groups technique can improve the students’ reading comprehension. Therefore, it is recommended that teachers and students use Cooperative Reading Groups technique as a good alternative technique in teaching and learning reading