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83 

 

 
ELT FORUM 6 (1) (2017) 

 

Journal of English Language Teaching 

 
http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt 

 
 

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF COOPERATIVE 

INTEGRATED READING AND COMPOSITION 

(CIRC) TO IMPROVE WRITING IN DESCRIPTIVE 

TEXTS 

 

 

Kamila Nurul Ibriza  
 

English Department, Faculty of Languages and Arts, Universitas Negeri Semarang, Indonesia  

 

Article Info 
________________  
Article History: 

Received in June 

2017  
Approved in July 2017 

Published in August 2017 
________________  
Keywords: CIRC, 
technique, writing, 
descriptive.  
  
____________________ 

 
Abstract  
___________________________________________________________________ 
This paper is based on a study which investigated the eighth grade students’ achievement in writing 

descriptive text. The study aimed to find out the effectiveness of Cooperative Integrated Reading and 

Composition (CIRC) technique to teach writing of descriptive and to investigate the significant difference of 

students’ writing achievement between the students who were taught using that technique and those who 

were not. The study employed quasi-experimental non-equivalent control group design. The data were pre-

test, and post-test scores. The result of the study shows that the mean score of the pre-test in the 

experimental group is 63.97, while in the control group is 64.46. Therefore, the result of post-test increased. 

In the post-test, the mean score of the experimental group is 76.26, and the control group gets 71.13. 

Moreover, the t-test result is 2.847 and ttable is 2.024. It can be clearly seen that tvalue is higher than 

ttable. It means that the hypothesis of H1 is accepted and H0 is rejected. Based on the proven hypothesis, it 

could be proven that Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC) is effective to teach writing 

of descriptive text for the eighth grade students of junior high school students. 

  
 © 2017 Universitas Negeri Semarang 

  


 Correspondent Address: ISSN 2252-6706 
B3 Building FBS Unnes  

Sekaran, Gunungpati, Semarang, 50229  

E-mail: unnes_english@yahoo.com  



K. Nurul Ibriza / Journal of English Language Teaching 6 (1) (2017) 

84 

 

INTRODUCTION 

Students should learn all of the language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and 

writing) particularly in order to guide them to be able to communicate with other people who 

also speak English. Communicating in language learning not only happens in a spoken way 

by using spoken language, but also in the form of written language. Spoken and written 

languages are two different aspects of language in the language skills. Spoken deals with 

speaking and listening, whereas written language deals with reading and writing. 

According to Boardman and Frydenberg (2002: 31-47), to create a good writing, there 

are some components that we need to consider; coherence, cohesion, unity, and 

completeness. A product of writing is considered as good if there are coherence, cohesion, 

unity, and completeness in it. Those are difficult components to master for the students in 

junior high schools even in universities. 

Moreover, teachers play important roles in teaching and learning process such as 

designing lesson plan, preparing learning materials and media, and evolving teaching 

techniques. Relating to teaching writing, a teacher should find appropriate and interesting 

technique to make the students easy in writing. Furthermore, not only considering the 

technique, but also the teacher should consider the process of writing in resulting a good 

writing product. It is in line with Brown‟s statement. Brown (2001: 335), “Writing needs a 

process of thinking, drafting, and revising that requires specialized skills, skills that not every 

speaker develop naturally”. It means that students need a lot of practices to master writing 

skill in order to produce a good text. Writing cannot be done in short times, it needs some 

stages in the process of writing. It is different from other skills which can be done in short 

times. In the process of planning, drafting, revising and editing, we will often re-plan, re-draft, 

and re-edit before we get the product of writing. 

According to curriculum 2013, students of junior high school are demanded to 

comprehend descriptive text. There are standard and basic competencies in teaching writing 

of junior high school in line with Curriculum 2013. Its standard competence is revealing the 

meaning of short functional text and simple short essay in the form of descriptive to interact 

with surrounding. Meanwhile, its basic competencies is revealing the meaning and simple 

rhetorical step in the simple short essay using written language accurately, fluently, and 

appropriately to interact with the closer surrounding in the form of descriptive. For the 

students of junior high school, those competencies are difficult to be achieved especially in 

writing descriptive text.  

Descriptive text is one of the text types or genres given to junior high school. According 

to Gerot and Wignell (1995: 208), descriptive text has social function to describe a particular 

person, place, or thing. It has two generic structures. They are: 1) Identification: identifies 

phenomenon to be described and 2) Description: describe parts, qualities, and characteristics. 

Furthermore, Gerot and Wignell mentions the lexicogrammatical features of descriptive text. 

They focus on specific participants, use of attributive and identifying process, frequent use of 

epithets and classifiers in nominal group, and use of simple present tense. 

Descriptive text belongs to one of the difficult genres of writing for junior high school 

students. It is difficult for them because there are many aspects to consider such as generic 

structures and lexicogrammatical features. Beside those aspects, they always get stuck when 

they are asked to describe someone or something. This matter is caused by some cases not 

only because of their lack of vocabularies, grammar, or lexicogrammatical features, but also 



K. Nurul Ibriza / Journal of English Language Teaching 6 (1) (2017) 

85 

 

the teaching method or teaching method of teaching and learning source that are not 

appropriate for them. The teacher tend to use monotonous teaching techniques. They use 

lecturing technique by explaining the materials using power point. They explain the material 

while the students are looking it at the projector screen. After that, the students are asked to 

describe directly after they got the topic whereas they do not understand the materials. Hence, 

the teaching and learning process become monotonous and so it influences the atmosphere of 

the class automatically. The students get bored quickly and do not comprehend the materials 

well. Moreover, the teacher directed the students to work individually in writing. As a result 

they merely did their work inactively without participating in the learning process. The 

teacher seldom gave a feedback to the students‟ writing. She usually gave the students a topic 

to write about, asked them to submit it, and then just returned the marked sheets without 

discussing them with the students. Besides, the students had difficulties in developing their 

ideas, using sentence patterns, choosing appropriate words and they were confused deciding 

what to write about. It was shown from the duration they need to compose a text in fact, the 

number of students left their papers blank.  

In this study, I consider that Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC) 

can solve the problems above. Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition is one of the 

cooperative learning techniques which can be an effective way in teaching writing. Richard 

and Rodgers (2001: 192) state that cooperative learning is an approach to teaching that makes 

maximum use of cooperative activities involving pairs and small groups of learners in the 

classroom. In cooperative learning, teachers teach students collaborative or social skills so 

that they can work together more effectively. Cooperative learning provides and facilitates 

students to work together in group (pair of team) in order to accomplish their work at the end 

of the learning process, every individual is responsible for learning something by using his or 

her own way. CIRC technique is categorized as cooperative learning which mainly involves 

students learning from each other in groups. In this technique, teacher prepares instruction as 

the focus of the lesson. Students practice the points taught by the teacher in preparation for 

quiz (Faridi, 2012:80). Moreover, Durukan (2011: 103) states that CIRC technique is 

developed to support traditionally used “skill-based reading groups” approach. Firstly, 

reading groups are established in the classroom. Next, students are paired off within the 

groups. When the teacher works with a reading group, couples try to teach each other 

meaningful reading and writing skills by using reciprocal learning technique. They help each 

other in performing basic skill-building activities (such as oral reading, contextual guessing, 

asking questions, summarizing, writing a composition based on the story, revising-correcting 

composition). 

In CIRC, students work in pairs on a series of cognitively engaging activities, including 

reading to each other, predicting how stories will end, summarizing stories, and practicing 

spelling, decoding, and vocabulary. The students will be asked to create a descriptive text 

with the model of one of their group members. It makes the students will be easy to describe 

the object because they will observe it directly, not just imagine that. 

Therefore, based on the explanation above, hopefully Cooperative Integrated Reading 

and Composition (CIRC) can be a successful way to solve those problems above. It is in line 

with my objectives in conducting this study that by using CIRC technique, it can be an 

appropriate technique to teach writing of descriptive text and can be an effective way to 

improve the students‟ writing skill mastery especially in writing descriptive text. 



K. Nurul Ibriza / Journal of English Language Teaching 6 (1) (2017) 

86 

 

METHODOLOGY OF THE RESEARCH 

This study employed a quasi-experimental which used non-equivalent control group 

design I used this design, because firstly, this design required two classes, one was as 

experimental group and the other was a control group; and secondly, selecting the subject 

randomly was impossible to me.  

 This study was conducted in one of the state junior high school in Kudus. Population 

of this study was eighth grade students of one of junior high school in Kudus in the academic 

year 2016/2017. There were seven classes of the eighth grade students of that school. On the 

average, each class consisted of 39 students. The sample of this study were two classes of 

eighth grade students in that school. The first class as the control group and the second class 

as the experimental group. I chose the sample based on some consideration; these classes are 

taught by the same teacher, these classes have given the same facilities from school, these 

classes are never taught by using CIRC technique, these classes are taught the same material 

that is descriptive text. 

In this study, I used written test as instrument, then analyzed the result of the test (pre-

test and post-test) using t-test formula. It is used to know whether there is any significant 

difference between the students who were taught by using CIRC technique and those who 

were not. If the tvalue is higher than ttable, it means that there is significant difference 

between two means. On the other hand, if tvalue is lower than ttable, it means that there is no 

significant difference between two means. Before computing the t-test value, I had to find the 

normality and homogeneity of experimental and control groups‟ pre-test to find out that the 

data was normally distributed and homogeneous.



K. Nurul Ibriza / Journal of English Language Teaching 6 (1) (2017) 

87 

 

RESULT AND DISCUSSION 

The data were obtained from the students‟ achievement in writing of descriptive text. I used 

analytic scale for rating composition task by Brown and Bailey as cited by Brown (2004: 244-245) to 

analyze the pre-test and post-test writing product of the students. The analytic scale covers five 

components of writing; organization, content, grammar, punctuation and spelling, and style. The 

following tables show the average of each component both in pre-test and post-test of the control and 

experimental group.  

 

Aspects Pre-test Post-test 

Average of organization 15.1 15.6 

Average of content  12.8 14.9 

Average of grammar 9.9 12.2 

Average of punctuation and spelling 11.6 13.6 

Average of style 15.0 15.0 

Table 3.1 Average of each Component both in Pre-Test and Post-Test of the Control Group 

 

Aspects Pre-test Post-test 

Average of organization 12.3 16.1 

Average of content  13.4 16.5 

Average of grammar 9.8 12.8 

Average of punctuation and spelling 14.2 14.9 

Average of style 14.2 15.7 

Table 3.2 Average of Each Component both in Pre-Test and Post-Test of the Experimental Group 

From the table above, it can be seen that the average scores of each component of writing on 

the two groups were improved on the post-test. 

After analyzing the students‟ writing product of pre-test and post-test, then I calculated the 

scores. The following table shows the mean scores for pre-test and post-test for all aspects of 

students‟ mastery. 

Group Mean of Pre-test Mean of Post-

Test 

The Difference between Pre-

Test and Post-Test 

Experimental 63.97 76.26 12.29 

Control 64.46 71.13 6.67 

Table 3.3 The Result of Pre-Test and Post-Test mean Scores of the Experimental and Control 

Groups 

Table 3 gives the information about the mean of pre-test of the experimental group is 63.97 

and their mean of post-test is 76.26. Meanwhile, in the control group, the mean of pre-test is 64.46 

and the mean of post-test is 71.13. The difference between pre-test and post-test of the experimental 

group is 12.29 and the difference between pre-test and post-test of control group is 6.67. 

To make the difference easier to be understood, I applied the mean score between the control 

and the experimental groups into the chart as follows: 

 



K. Nurul Ibriza / Journal of English Language Teaching 6 (1) (2017) 

88 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Diagram 3.1 The Mean Score between the Control and Experimental Groups 

The chart 1 describes about the pre-test and post-test result of experimental and control 

groups. The chart 1 shows the result of post-test of both groups increased. Meanwhile, in the control 

group, there was less improvement than the experimental group. It meant that the difference of 

mean score in the experimental group was higher than in the control group. 

After getting the data of the experimental and control groups, the normality of those data 

were analyzed to make sure the data were normally distributed or not. Based on the data of pre-test 

normality computation in the experimental group, the   value was 2.398 and   table was 7.815. Since 

  value was lower than   table (2.398<7.815), then it could be concluded that the pre-test of 

experimental group was said to be normally distributed. Beside that, according to the data 

computation of pre-test in the control group, the   value was 5.160 and   table was 7.815. Since   value 

was less than   table (5.160<7.815), it could be inferred that the pre-test of control group was said to 

be normally distributed. 

Moreover, I computed the normality of post-test of both groups. The post-test normality 

computation of the experimental group showed   value was 1.974 and   table was 7.815. Since   value 

was less than   table (1.974<7.815) so the post-test of experimental group was considered to be 

normally distributed. For the control group, the normality computation resulted   value was less than 

  table (5.517<7.815) so the post-test of control group was considered to be normally distributed too. 

Beside calculating the normality of pre-test and post-test, I computed the homogeneity of both 

tests. The objective of homogeneity (F-test) is to test the hypothesis whether the two samples are 

from the same normal population with equal variance or from two normal populations with equal 

variances or not. Therefore, homogeneity is important to be checked. If        ≤        it means that 

the data had the same variance and they were homogeneous. From the pre-test homogeneity 

computation of both groups, I found that        (1.061) <        (4.10). It could be concluded that 

the experimental and control group had the same variance. It meant that the population of the two 

groups were homogeneous. Meanwhile, from the post-test homogeneity computation of both 

groups, it resulted        was 1.829 and        was 4.10. Since        was less than         

(1.829<4.10) so I concluded that the population of the two groups was homogeneous.  

After the data were considered as normal and homogeneous, I applied the t-test. In order to 

know the t-test result, it is needed to find the mean score and score deviation of the post-test of the 

two groups. The score deviation of the post-test of experimental group was 1699.436 and the control 

group was 3108.389. After computing the score deviation, the result can be put into the t-test 

formula. Based on the calculation, it resulted        = 2.847. For     , with df = 39-1= 38, so 

55

60

65

70

75

80

Pre-
test

Post-
test

Experimental Group Control Group



K. Nurul Ibriza / Journal of English Language Teaching 6 (1) (2017) 

89 

 

       = 2.024. Since        exceeded        (2.847>2.024), the null hypothesis (H0) was rejected and 

the working hypothesis (H1) that there were significant difference in writing achievement between 

the students who were taught by using CIRC technique and those who were not, was accepted.  

The objective of this study were to find out whether CIRC was effective to teach writing of 

descriptive text or not and to find out how much the significance difference between control group‟s 

achievement after taught by using regular technique (lecturing) and experimental group„s 

achievement in writing of descriptive text after taught by using CIRC as the technique to teach 

writing of descriptive text at the eighth grade students of one of the state junior high school in Kudus 

in the academic year of 2016/2017. 

The mean scores difference between pre-test and post-test of the experimental and the control 

group were calculated to know the improvement of the students‟ writing skill before and after getting 

the treatment. In the pre-test, the mean score of the control group and the experimental group were 

64.46 and 63.97. According to the pre-test result, it could be concluded that the ability of two group 

was relatively same. The mean score of pre-test of the experimental and control group also had slight 

difference, so it was said to be normally distributed and homogeneous. 

After the students received the treatment, the mean scores of the two group increased. 

However, the mean score of the post-test of experimental group was higher than control group. The 

experimental group‟s mean score was 76.26 and the control group‟s mean score was 71.13. The 

score indicated that after getting the treatment, the experimental group achieve a better result than 

the control group.  

Teaching writing of descriptive text by using CIRC technique made an upgrading of the 

students‟ writing ability more than teaching them by lecturing technique. It could be seen in the 

average of each aspect of writing components both in the pre-test and post-test. (see table 1 and 2) 

Based on the average of each aspect of writing components both in the pre-test and post-test, it 

could be seen that the students‟ writing ability of descriptive text increased. Increasing ability 

involved the whole aspects of the components of writing; organization, content, grammar, 

punctuation and spelling, and style. 

The students‟ ability in organizing their ideas was so bad before getting the treatment. They 

lacked of understanding of how to give an appropriate title, to make effective introductory paragraph 

or give supporting sentences for generalizations. Some of them, even, did not give the title for their 

texts. After teaching the students by using CIRC technique with the help of explanation from the 

teacher the students of the experimental group were better in organizing their ideas compared to the 

control group. 

Relating to the content, there is a significance difference between the content of students‟ 

writing in the pre-test and post-test for both groups. In the pre-test, the students did not know about 

what they had to write in their descriptive text. Therefore, they only produced very simple sentences. 

After getting the treatment, the content of the students‟ writing improved, especially in the 

experimental group. They chose one of their group members to be the subject description. The 

improvement of the content of the experimental group‟s writing was higher than the control group. 

Talking about the grammar, generally, the students‟ grammar was still weak. Most of the 

students in both of the groups lack of understanding of how to produce some sentences into a good 

structure in terms of simple present tense and adjective order.  

However, after the experimental group and control group received the treatment, they showed 

improvement in their grammar. The treatments given to both the experimental group which was 

CIRC technique and control group which was lecturing technique gave significant contribution to 

the students‟ punctuation and spelling. Before the treatment was given, the students did not know 

how to use the appropriate words and had problems in vocabularies. In the pre-test, the students 

could not find appropriate words for showing their ideas. After the students of the experimental 



K. Nurul Ibriza / Journal of English Language Teaching 6 (1) (2017) 

90 

 

group were treated by using CIRC activities in which there were revising and editing, they had 

known what register should be used according to particular topics appropriately. Whereas, the 

control group which was taught by using lecturing technique still got the problems in the case of 

register. It was proven by their average score of style of post-test which was same as their average 

score of style in pre-test. 

Both of treatments in the experimental group which was CIRC technique and control group 

which was lecturing technique did not give significant contribution to the students‟ punctuation and 

spelling. The gain of these aspects depended more on the teacher‟s explanation and correction 

during the treatments.  

Based on the average of each aspect of writing components, both in the pre-test and post-test 

between the experimental and control groups, I inferred that there was a significant effect in teaching 

writing of descriptive text by using CIRC technique. Moreover, the        was higher than         

       obtained 2.847 and        was 2.024. It proved that the difference is statistically significant. 

From that data, it can be concluded that there was significant difference between the group which 

was taught by using CIRC technique and the group which was by using the lecturing technique as 

the English teacher‟s regular technique. The data also indicated that the use of CIRC technique to 

teach writing of descriptive text was effective.  

CONCLUSIONS 

Based on the result of the data analyzes and research findings, I concluded that firstly the 

student of experimental and control group relatively have equal level in writing of descriptive text 

before getting the treatment by using CIRC technique. It could be seen by the result of pre-test in the 

control group that was slightly different from the experimental group. Since there was only slightly 

difference in the pre-test result between two groups, it could be concluded that the two groups were 

homogeneous before getting the treatment.  

Secondly, after calculating the t-test, I concluded that there was significance difference of 

achievement in writing of descriptive text of the students who were taught by using CIRC technique 

and those who were taught by using the lecturing technique since the t_valuewhich was higher than 

t_(table.). In other words, this t-test result revealed that the working hypothesis of this study was 

accepted that the null hypothesis was rejected. 

 Lastly, I inferred that CIRC technique gave contribution to improve students‟ achievement 

in writing of descriptive text. It could be seen from the mean scores differences between pre-test and 

post-test of experimental and control groups. The mean scores difference between pre-test and post-

test of control group was lower than experimental group. By comparing the mean scores difference 

of both groups and this scores achieved by each group in two tests (pre-test and post-test), I come to 

conclusion that CIRC technique was effective to be used in teaching writing of descriptive text and it 

gave higher significant difference of the experimental groups‟ achievement in writing of descriptive 

text than the control group. 

REFERENCES 

Boardman, C. A., and  Frydenberg, J. 2002. Writing to Communicate Paragraph and Essays. New York: Pearson 

Education, Inc. 

Brown, H. Douglas. 2001. Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy, Second Edition. 

New York: Pearson Education, Inc. 

Brown, H. Douglas. 2004. Language Assessment: Principles and Classroom Practices. New York: Pearson Education, 

Inc. 



K. Nurul Ibriza / Journal of English Language Teaching 6 (1) (2017) 

91 

 

Durukan, Erhan. 2011. Effects of Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC) Technique on 

Reading-Writing Skills. Educational Research and Reviews, 6/1. pp. 102-109. 

Faridi, Abdurrahman. 2012. Language Teaching Theories. Semarang State University: Unnes Press. 

Gerot, Linda, and Peter Wignell. 1995. Making Sense of Functional Grammar. Sydney: Gerd Stabler. 

Richards, J. C. &Theodore S. Rodgers. 2001. Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching. Cambridge: 

Cambridge University Press. 

 

 


