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3.3 The Research Subject Determination Method
In this research, the researcher used purposive method to determine the research subjects. The population of this research was the grade eight students of
MTs N Arjasa in the 20142015 academic year. This school had 5 classes of the grade eight students in which each class consists of 30 – 32 students. Therefore,
the research subjects were taken purposively by considering that the students had problems in reading ability. Therefore, the researcher took grade VIII- C that had
the lowest mean score 71.3, see Appendix M of reading comprehension achievement as the research subjects.
3.4 The Operational Definitions of the Terms
In this research, there were some terms that are important to be defined operationally for avoiding the broad interpretation of the terms between the writer
and the reader. The terms which was important to be defined were NHT technique and reading comprehension achievement as follows:
3.4.1 Numbered Heads Together NHT Technique
Numbered Heads Together NHT Technique is one of the teaching models of Cooperative learning that developed by Kagan in 1993. It is a kind of
technique that promotes positive discussion while the students work in groups. The purpose of this technique used for helping students to understand the text and
answer the comprehension questions together with their groups successfully. Besides, it was intended to increase the students’ active participation in learning
reading comprehension. Moreover, this technique was hopefully could decrease the students’ boredom in learning reading comprehension in the classroom. In this
research, the students of class VIII C divided by eight groups that consist of 5 members in each team. Then, the researcher numbered the students 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5
in each team randomly. After that, the researcher posed the questions. After the question was posed, the researcher gave limitation to the students to think about
the answers. Next, the teacher asked each student to write hisher own answer on hisher own sheet. Then, the students were asked to put heads together to share,
28 confirm, and teach each others. So they could find the best answers in this stage.
The last, the teacher called a number at random to answer the question. For those who called by the teacher, he she has to responded the teacher’s calling by raising
hand or standing up.
3.4.2 Reading Comprehension Achievement
In this research, reading comprehension achievement covered with the students’
competence in
comprehending the
text considering
word comprehension, sentence comprehension, paragraph comprehension, and text
comprehension. It could be identified from the students’ reading comprehension test score after the students learned reading comprehension by using NHT
technique. It was done after the action is accomplished by the researcher and the English teacher collaboratively.
3.4.3 Narrative Text
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