h. Group leaders in the base groups can be appointed to encourage
other group members to ask questions to the expert if they do not understand. The expert is the main source of information about his
or her part of the group.
i. Asses student learning and provide closure. It is important to
debrief when the jigsaw is complete. One way of doing it is by calling randomly on students to present what their groups learned,
if further explanation is needed, the teacher should help the discussion.
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4. The Advantages and The Disadvantages of Jigsaw Technique
It is likely to any strategies, jigsaw also has advantages and disadvantages. Kessler stated that “The jigsaw technique allows the
teacher to use several texts or information sources at different levels of linguistic or conceptual difficulty, in one class.”
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It means that the teacher can modify texts and the sources can be variety. Meanwhile, Kessler also
explain the benefits derived also for students: The jigsaw strategy supports the communicative approach in language
teaching. In the jigsaw classroom, students in small group are dependent on the others in the group for the information they need in
order to learn a topic or complete task.
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According to Nassanius, the advantages of jigsaw are:
First, it is remarkably efficient way to learn the material. Jigsaw strategy helps to solve the problem of classes that are too large to
offer many opportunities for students to speak. Second, the jigsaw process encourages listening, engagement, and
empathy by giving each member of the group an essential part to play in the academic activity.
Third, students are held accountable among peers. Learning from each other will lead them to value each other as contributors to their
common task. A further affective benefit of this would be the increase of studen
t’s motivation and self esteem. Fourth, jigsaw processes build interpersonal and interactive skills.
Fifth, jigsaw promotes learner responsibility and autonomy. Group
52
Yassir Nassanius, KOLITA 7: Konferensi Lingustik Tahunan Atma Jaya 7 Tingkat internasional, Jakarta: Pusat kajian Bahasa dan Budaya Unika Atma jaya, 2009, pp. 224-225.
53
Carolyn Kessler editor, Cooperative Language Learning, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, inc., 1992, p. 137
54
ibid.
work places responsibility for action and progress on each member of the group somewhat equally. As group members, they must work
together as a team to accomplish a common goal. As active participants in the learning process, students would be less dependent
on the teacher and be more autonomous.
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And the disadvantages of jigsaw are: First: some students may be very resistant to this strategy.
Second: some shy students will be very uncomfortable at first while others prefer to work alone. It is true that many students, especially
adult-age students, prefer to work alone because that is the way they have learned ever since they started going to school. It is important to
help the students see that language is for communicating with people and working in a group would be beneficial for them.
Third, non-motivated students may not take their responsibility seriously.
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To sum up, the writer thinks that jigsaw is actually an interesting method that appropriate to be used in learning English especially in
learning reading, because it can build a good cooperation among students when they are learning, it also can make the students explore their
knowledge by sharing it to their friends. But in the other hand, this method is not good enough for unmotivated students because they will not
seriously join the learning process.
D. The Previous Study
The first previous study is conducted by Firman entitled “Improving Students’
Reading Ability in Learning Narrative Text through Jigsaw Technique ” A
Classroom Action Research in the Second Grade of SMP Al-Hidayah Lebak Bulus. The result of his study shows that the students are motivated and
interested in participating actively in the group activity, because the students can teach others and learn from others. And he concluded that jigsaw technique can
improve students reading comprehension achievement which also means that jigsaw can improve their reading ability. It can be seen from pretest and posttest.
The average of pretest is 5.01 and the average of posttest is 7.62.
55
Nassanius, 2009, Loc. Cit.
56
Ibid, p. 226.
