Understanding of Students Teams Achievement Division STAD Technique.

c. Equal opportunities for success It means that what students contribute to their teams is based on their improvement over their own past performance. 33 It is the important steps to ensure that all students have an opportunity to contribute to their team. In addition, there are five major components in Student Teams-Achievement Divisions STAD technique; 34 a. Class Presentations In a class presentation is initially introduced material in STAD. It is directly conducted by the teacher or a kind of lecture-discussion, but could include audiovisual presentations. Actually, class presentation in STAD is the same as usual teaching, the only differences is that the teacher must be clearly focused on the STAD unit. As a result, students realize they must to pay attention during the class presentation, because it will help them to do well while discussing in the team and on the quizzes, and teams score is determined by their quiz scores. b. Teams In team normally consists of four or five students who represent a cross- section of the class in terms of academic performance, sex, and race or ethnicity. As a team, each student has responsibility to make sure that all team members are learning, and, more specifically, to prepare its member to do well on the quizzes. The team meets and starts to study the worksheet after the teacher delivered the material. Most often, the study involves students discussing problem together, comparing answers, and correcting any misconceptions if teammates make mistakes. In fact, in STAD technique team become the most important one. It is because at every point emphasis is placed on team members doing their best 33 Ibid., p. 4. 34 S lavin, op. cit., 71 —73. for the team, and on the team doing its best to help its member. Not only that, team also provides the peer support for academic performance that is important for learning, and it provides the mutual concern and respect that are important for such outcomes as intergroup relations, self-esteem, and acceptance of mainstreamed students. When assigning students to team, it is important to make sure that the team represents a cross-section of the class and each of the team consist of high performer, low performer, and average performer. The high performer in this term is based on the score in the class, and not necessarily compared with national norms. The important point is do not let students to choose their own team, because they tend to choose other like themselves. Here are the steps in assigning students to team:  Make copies of team summary sheets. Make one copy of a team summary sheet for every four and five students in the class. Here is the example of team summary sheet. Table 2.1 Example of Table in Team Summary Sheet Team Name : Team Member 1 2 Total Team Score Team Avarage Team Award  Rank Students. On a sheet of paper, rank the students in your class from high to lowest in past performance. Use whatever information to this. It may be difficult to be exact in your ranking, but do the best you can.  Decide on the number of teams. Each team should have four members if possible. To decide how many teams you will have, divide the number of students in the class by four. However the number of team is actually depend of the amount of the students in the class, and the teacher can decide their own number of the teams wisely.  Assigning students to teams. In assigning students to team, balance the teams so that a each team is composed of students whose performance levels range from low to average to high, and b the average performance level of all the teams in the class is about equal. Here is the example of table in assigning students to team: Table 2.2 The Example of Table in Assigning Students to Team Level Range Rank Team Name High-Performing Students 1 A 2 B Average-Performing Students 3 A 4 B Students 5 A 6 B  Fill out team summary sheets. Fill in the names of the students on each team on your team summary sheet. 35 c. Quizzes The students have to take individual quizzes after experiencing one or two periods of teacher presentations and one to two periods of team practice. In this opportunity, students work their assessment individually, they are not allowed to ask and help one another during the quizzes. This is the time to prove that every student has responsible for knowing the material. d. Individual Improvement Scores Individual improvement score is used to give each student a performance goal if they had worked harder and perform better in their individual quizzes. The success of the team score is mostly based on individual improvement 35 Slavin, Ibid., pp. 74 —75. score. It is because any students can contribute maximum points to his or her team in this scoring system, but no students can do so without doing his or her best work. Individual assessment score is come from the degree to which their quizzes scores exceed their base scores. Each student is given ―base‖ score according to students‘ past performance on similar quizzes. Individual improvement score in this terms means the point that students get from the degree of individual quiz scores exceed their base scores. The rule is as follows: 1 Quiz score more than 10 points below base score = 0 2 Quiz score 10 points below to 1 point below base score = 10 3 Quiz score base score to 10 points above base score = 20 4 Quiz score more than 10 points above base score = 30 5 Perfect paper = 30 e. Team Recognition Teams may earn certificates or other rewards if their average scores exceed a certain criterion. Students‘ team scores may also be used to determine up to 20 percent of their grades.

2. The Advantages and Disadvantages of STAD Technique

As the writer explained in introduction that STAD is one of the techniques in cooperative learning, it is a technique where the group work is applied. Some advantages and disadvantages can be gained when teaching using STAD. a. Advantages of using STAD 1 By using this technique, the amount of talking for individual students increasingly 2 It promotes learner autonomy by allowing students to make their decision in the group without being told what to do by the teacher. 3 It encourages skills of cooperation and negotiation between the studerits 4 The condition of learning more relax and the students knowing more each other than before. 5 The students will get new experience in solving the problem with others. b. Disadvantages 1 It takes much time to organize the group 2 The class situations become noisy so the teacher need the voice the students.

E. Review of Previous Study Related to Research

Some studies related to the implementation of Students Team Achievement Divisions STAD technique proved that STAD can be used to improve students‘ knowledge in many kind of learning subject. Among which, there are three studies that the writer consider as a basic consideration in holding a research. The first is the research conducted by Jony Anto, Padmadewi, and Putra with the title ―The Effect of STAD Technique and Learning Motivation toward the S tudents‘ Reading Competence .‖ 36 They identify the effect of implementation of STAD technique and learning motivation toward students‘ reading competence of the eight year students of SMP N 3 Ubud. Based on the result of their study showed there was a significant different effect toward students ‘ reading competence between the students taught by using STAD and conventional method. The relationship between this research and the writer‘s research is the variable used. They used STAD technique and reading comprehension as variables. However, the writer in this skripsi has focusing the types of text that used in her research, that is, discussion text. Another previous study related to research is from Alireza Jalilifar with his paper research entitled ―The Effect of Cooperative Learning Technique on College Students‘ Reading Comprehension.‖ 37 Alireza investigated the impact of Students Team Achievement Division STAD and Group Investigation GI, which are two techniques of Cooperative learning, on students‘ reading comprehension achievement. The result of his research revealed that STAD is a 36 Jony Anto, Padmadewi, Putra. The Effect of STAD Technique and Learning Motivation toward the Students‘ Reading Competence. Electronic Journal Program Pasca Sarjana Universitas Pendidikan Ganesha. 1, 2013. 37 Alireza Jalilifar, ―The Effect of Cooperative Learning Technique on College Students‘ Reading Comprehension ‖, Thesis on Shahid Chamran University of Alwaz Iran: 2009. Unpublished. more effective technique in improving EFL reading comprehension achievement whereas GI did not enhance reading comprehension significantly. According to Alireza team rewards, as one of the central concepts of STAD, may have a strong impact on learners‘ performance in reading comprehension. The relationship between th is research and the writer‘s research is the use of variables, cooperative learning and reading comprehension. However in this skripsi, the writer has chosen STAD as a determined technique. Then, if Alireza conduct the research in college, while the writer do the research in the third grade students of SMA Fatahillah. The last previous study is from Rifki Hadyan which held the research by the title ―The Implementation of The Cooperative Learning method in Teaching Reading Comprehension.‖ 38 The research was conducted to find out whether or not cooperative learning improved students‘ reading comprehension.‖ The design employed in this research was Classroom Action Research. The finding of the study showed that cooperative learning method STAD and Jigsaw improved the students‘ comprehension in reading descriptive text. This research is in line with the writer‘s research both in research design and variables. However, the writer in this ―skripsi‖ has different focus. The writer focuses on STAD technique, one of types of cooperative learning method, and the type of text used is discussion text.

F. Thinking Framework

Reading is one of the essential skills that is needed for students. By reading many books students can get much information. It can also facilitate students with a lot of sources that was gotten through book that have been written in English. However, most students face difficulty in comprehending the text. It is because they have limited vocabularies. The other students, who have a good English vocabulary, just had the ability to recognize the word but they could not draw a conclusion of what the author extends. Then, they are unmotivated in learning 38 Rifki Hadyan, ―The Implementation of the Cooperative Learning Method in Teaching Reading Comprehension ‖, Thesis on English Education Study Program of Indonesia University of Education: 2013. Unpublished.