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Besides that, the teacher in SMP N 1 Matesih never used study group or pairs in teaching reading. The writer found out that there were gaps among the students in
the class. Only some students who have a good achievement and are active follow the teaching-learning process and the others were passive. Most of them
were sleepy, bored, and not enthusiastic to follow the teaching and learning process. So that, the interaction in the class was low.
Dealing with the problems above, the researcher wants to use Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition CIRC technique to improve students‟
reading comprehension.
B. The Preparation of Action Research
The situation before the research was identified in the pre-research. The pre-
research was carried out to identify the students‟ problems, especially in reading comprehension. By identifying the problems, the researcher will decide
how to overcome the problem. There were some steps in the pre-research, such as: observing the teaching and learning process, interviewing the students, giving
questionnaire to the students, and conducting the pre-test to the students. After that, the researcher analyzed the data and identified the problems.
Based on the interview, the students said that during the lesson the teacher just read the written text without knowing whether the students got the
information or not or just translating. Their teacher just applied classical method in teaching reading. Besides that, most of the students said that reading was a
difficult subject, and most of them said that understanding English text was difficult, especially how to get the meaning of words or sentences, the main ideas,
detail information, etc. This statement was supported by the result of the questionnaire. The questionnaire and the result of the questionnaire were in
Appendix 2.a. and 2.b. From the result of questionnaire, the researcher concluded that 1 there
were 18 58.06
students who stated that they got difficulty
in reading English text; and 2 there were 19 61.29 students who stated that understanding English
texts was difficult. From the statement above, it can be proved that reading
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English texts was more difficult than the other skills. 3 There were 2 6.45 students who stated that individual was easier way to understand the English text;
20 64.51 students who stated that group was easier way to understand the English text; 6 19.35 students who stated that pairs was the easier way to
understand the English text; and at last, there were 3 9.67 students who stated that classical was easier way to understand the English text. 4 There were
5 students 16.12 who stated that detail information was easy; 18 students 58.06 who stated that detail information was difficult; and 8 students
25.80 who stated that detail information was the most difficult. 5 There were 7 students 22.58 who stated that language feature was easy; 15 students
48.38 who stated that language feature was difficult; and 9 students 29.03 who stated that language feature was the most difficult. 6 There was
1 student 3.22 who stated that generic structure was the easiest; 9 students 29.03 who stated that generic structure was easy; 13 students 41.93 who
stated that generic structure was difficult; and 8 students 25.80 who stated that generic structure was the most difficult. 7 There was 1 student 3.22 who
stated that word meaning was easy; 19 students 61.29 who stated that word meaning was difficult; and 11 students 35.48 who stated that word meaning
was the most difficult. 8 There were 5 students 16.12 who stated that main ideas was difficult; and 26 students 83.87 who stated that main ideas was the
most difficult. 9 There were 9 students 29.03 who stated that referents was easy; 20 students 64.51 who stated that referents was difficult; and 2 students
6.45 who stated that referents was the most difficult. 10 There was 1 student 3.22 who stated that the aut
hor‟s purpose was easy; 22 students 70.96 who stated that the
author‟s purpose was difficult; and at last, 8 students 25.80 who stated that the
author‟s purpose was the most difficult. In the pre-research, the researcher also conducted a pre-test, the researcher
designed a test to fin d out the students‟ reading comprehension. Before the test
was applied, it had been tried out in another class, that was Class VIIIC. There were 40 students in Class VIIIC. Then, the researcher analyzed the result to know
whether the pre-test items was valid and reliable by using internal validity and
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reliability. There were 50 items for try-out, and 44 items were valid. So the researcher used 40 items for the pre-test, that was focused on detail information,
generic structure,
language feature,
main ideas,
referents, words
meaningvocabulary , and the author‟s purpose. The result of the validity and
reability can be seen in Appendix 4.d. The result of the pre-test was also used to make groups. The materials of
the pre-test were reading texts for Class VIII semester 2 of SMP. According to the result of the pre-test, the scores of the students in reading comprehension
were low. There were 31 students who joined the pre-test. Based on the pre-test
scores, it can be seen that 4 students 12.90 was poor, 16 students 51.61 were fair, 11 students 35.48 were good, and none of them was very good. The
students‟ result of the pre-test was in Appendix 5.d. The writer and the collaborator had two procedures in grouping the
students, they were: 1 arranging the position of the students based on their achievement. The achievement was taken from the result of the pre-test. The
position of the students was arranged from the highest achievements to the lowest achievements; 2 putting the students into groups, and each group consists of four
students. The group members were taken from mix levels high, average, and low level. The position of the groups was in Appendix 9.b.
C. The Implementation of Cycle 1
