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English speaking countries or countries considering English as a foreign language including Indonesia realize its importance. Therefore, English is taught as a foreign
language in schools in Indonesia as an effort to produce competitive generations. One of language skills that is emphasized in schools in Indonesia is the
reading skill since it is considered as one of the essential skill as stated by Nunan 2003:68, reading is an essential skill for learners of English as second language
which is a fluent process of readers combining information from a text and their own background knowledge to build meaning, and the goal of reading is comprehension.
Besides, as stated here, more knowledge is needed by the students to comprehend the meaning of a text. Thus, a strategy such as discussing and sharing knowledge among
students is considered as a prospective way to achieve it. The process of discussing and sharing knowledge can be held through a
cooperative learning strategy that is a technique in which the students are divided into pairs or groups. The team-pair-solo is one of the cooperative learning strategies,
developed by Kagan. In this study this method is believed as a prospective way to achieve reading comprehension.
1.2 Reasons for Choosing the Topic
Reading is considered as an essential skill as cited in http:EzineArticles.com, reading can help students in mental development. By reading, students involve
greater levels of concentration and add the conversational skills. Students will find
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more new words and phrases through reading activities so that they can improve their vocabulary; moreover, it helps students to develop other skill of language. Besides,
the most essential one is that it is an indulgence that by reading, the students may add information available on various topics and knowledge about many things in the
world. Since reading is considered as an important skill to be developed, a
prospective strategy to reach this goal is needed. Here, cooperative learning is expected to be a good way to improve the students understanding upon a text.
Cooperative learning that is proposed here is team-pair-solo technique. In this technique students will work in small group; therefore, the students may share their
knowledge related to their understanding toward the text. By doing this, students can add more information about the text. Afterwards, the students work in pairs so that
they can internalize their understandings and are given more opportunity to share what they have already known. Then, they work individually to express their
knowledge that they have and get from the discussion they have done previously. Team-pair-solo developmentally helps students, who are incapable of solving
problems on their own, solve the problems as an individual. According to the statements above, those all are the reason why this topic is
chosen. It is expected that this study will be very useful for those who are related to this study especially those who concern with the educational aspect.
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1.3 Research Question
The problems that become the concerns of the discussion is: 1 How can team-pair-solo improve the students’ achievement in reading
comprehension? 2 What aspects of reading comprehension skills influence the students ’ achievement
in reading comprehension?
1.4 Statement of the Hypothesis
