The Impact Of Cooperative Integrated Reading And Composition (Circ) On The Students? Reading Skill

Abstract

Reading is one of difficult skill to develop to a high level proficiency. Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC) can be an example of teaching technique that can improve the students? reading skill. This paper presents the experimental research finding which its objectives were to identify (1) the students? reading skills taught with and without using CIRC, (2) the students? reading skills with different learning styles, and (3) the interaction effect between the technique and students? learning styles on their reading skills. The subjects were the tenth grade students of one of Senior High School in Jepara consisting of six classes. Two classes were randomly selected to be an experimental group and a control group. The data were obtained from observation, questionnaire and pretest/ posttest. The findings reveal that, started from the similar level in pretest (all F<3.98, p: .01), the students of the experimental group perform better on reading skill than the control group (F>3.98 and p: .01), indicating that CIRC increases students? reading skill better than the teaching technique used by their teacher. Then, students?

learning styles, collaborative and independent students, do  not  differ significantly from one another in their effect on the students? reading skill (F<3.98 and p: .01). Finally, it was found that there was no interaction between treatments and learning styles.

Key words: CIRC, learning styles, students? reading skill