Peer Tutoring: an Effective Technique to Teach Reading Comprehension

Reading is a demanded skill that should be mastered by students. With reading, students can gain much information. In fact, the reading comprehension of many students is still low, worrying, unsatisfactory, and far from the expectation. Students are reluctant to read due the fact that texts are difficult to understand. This condition leads the teachers to apply some teaching techniques in reading class. One of them is peer tutoring. Peer tutoring is a technique where the students play the roles of a tutor and a tutee. This technique helps students to focus on what is important. By generating questions and answering them, the students review and reformulate their knowledge about the text so that it provides students more chance to enhance their understanding toward the text. The students gain a better understanding of the materials by learning from each other. This article is aimed at describing the use of peer tutoring in teaching reading and what happens with the class when peer tutoring technique is applied. It is hoped that peer tutoring can enhance students' confidence and motivation in reading class. Besides, the class becomes active and alive. It is, therefore, recommended that teachers use peer tutoring in teaching reading comprehension.