118 | IJET| Volume. 9, Issue 1. July 2020 Copyright 2020 Mas Khasila Imani, Titis Setia Yanti, Ulfa Vadhila, & Ahmad Fauzi are licensed under Creative Commons Atrribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. THE USE OF NUMBERED HEADS TOGETHER TO IMPROVE THE 10TH GRADE STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION ACHIEVEMENT AT MAN 2 LAMONGAN Ahmad Fauzi, fst@uinsby.ac.id, Getari Adyagarini, getari.aadyagarini@gmail.com Mas Khasila Imani , Titis Setia Yanti, Ulfa Vadhila , Faculty of Education and Teacher Training, UIN SunanAmpel Surabaya. Syaikhul Hadi, Man 2 Lamongan Abstract— Among the four language skills, which are listening, reading, speaking, and writing, reading is one of the most vital skills to be mastered by students in all grades. Reading gives students immense input of knowledge and information through various texts. Nonetheless, in the classroom, reading activities are long considered monotonous and not attractive. Therefore, it becomes an urge for the teachers to apply the more exciting technique to teach reading. In response to that matter, the teacher can use the Numbered Heads Together technique as an alternative technique in teaching reading. This study explores the implementation of Numbered Heads Together in teaching descriptive text and describes the students’ reading comprehension in the application of Numbered Heads Together. The subject of this study was the students’ tenth grade of MAN2 Lamongan. This study is a qualitative case study conducted in two meetings. In the first meeting, the teacher just taught the descriptive text without any techniques. In the next meeting, the teacher introduced the method and applied it to the class. The data of this study collected from the result of the students’ task. The result of this study shows that the implementation of Numbered HeadsTogetherassisted the students to engage actively in the whole process of learning. After using this technique, the number of students who got excellent achievement increased. It means that the students’ reading comprehension improved after the implementation of NHT. In conclusion, NHT is a superb technique to be used in teaching descriptive text. It is especially for tenth-grade students, since it helps them to overcome their difficulties in reading, creates a positive atmosphere in the class, and builds a good interaction for both the teachers and students. Keywords: numbered heads together, descriptive text, reading. 1. INTRODUCTION English is undeniably an essential mean of communication which is globally used by people in many countries. Being an international language, English inevitably brings merits to its learners. It is a must for the students to learn four language skills to master English, which is listening, reading, speaking, and writing. From those skills, reading considered getting a particular focus. Even though reading is a receptive skill, the students cannot neglect its importance. Reading is the gate door to gain new knowledge. It is important to teach reading mailto:fst@uinsby.ac.id mailto:getari.aadyagarini@gmail.com 119 | IJET| Volume. 9, Issue 1. July 2020 Copyright 2020 Mas Khasila Imani, Titis Setia Yanti, Ulfa Vadhila, & Ahmad Fauzi are licensed under Creative Commons Atrribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. effectively because the reading skill has a major contribution to the mastering of listening, 1110 | IJET| Volume. 9, Issue 1. July 2020 Copyright 2020 Mas Khasila Imani, Titis Setia Yanti, Ulfa Vadhila, & Ahmad Fauzi are licensed under Creative Commons Atrribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. speaking, and writing. Unfortunately, it seems that the teaching of reading in the classroom is often monotonous and not interesting. There are some ways to motivate students to read. The students have to be encouraged to read by applying suitable techniques. Therefore, teachers are supposed to find a suitable technique and create some fun activities in the reading class. Previous research findings have proven that when the task involves various learning activities and problem-solving skills, the students’ achievement is facilitated more by cooperation rather than competition. Hence, in this study, the researcher suggested an alternative way of teaching reading, which is through cooperative learning. Cooperative learning is one of the alternative ways to teach English. In Cooperative Learning (CL), students make small groups and work together. Students can achieve their goal if other students also reach their goal, so they need to cooperate in their groups. There are several types of cooperative learning. One of them is Numbered Head Together (NHT) technique. This technique gives each member in the group the same opportunity to participate in the activities. No student is more active than another. In reality, not all the students in the class want to participate when the teacher gave some challenges and quiz. Only the students who always answers the questions is the active one in the class. So, the condition should balance when the teacher teaches in the category in which all the students have a chance to participate in the class. NHT allows every student to give their contribution once. Therefore, it encourages them to be active during the learning process. Numbered Head Together technique is suitable to be used in reading class because it gives a chance for all members of the group to provide responses, increase their motivation, improve their ability in reading and create a better classroom relationship, including teacher-student and student-student link. Those kinds of activities provide a joyful atmosphere in reading class so it will not regard as monotonous. Therefore, teaching reading through Numbered Heads Together is expected to provide the students with a better achievement as it allows for opportunities for all students to work both cooperatively and individually. Deriving from the problems as mentioned earlier, the researcher decides to research the use of Numbered Heads Together. The objectives are to describe the use of Numbered Heads Together in teaching reading descriptive text and the students’ reading comprehension in reading descriptive text during the implementation of NHTB conducting this study. The researchers expected that this technique could help the students to overcome their difficulties in reading descriptive text. This study addresses the objectives of the implementation of teaching descriptive text for the tenth graders of MAN 2 Lamongan. 2. METHOD The data were analyzed qualitatively by using descriptive analysis—the data obtained during the data collection phases done. There was a step of the data analysis technique in which the students’ tasks presented to get the score representing the students’ reading comprehension ability. The researcher uses a reading rubric to analyze the data. This technique adapted from a marking guide for open-ended questions by Heaton (1998). After getting the result, the data will categorize into four mastery levels of comprehension in reading those were “Excellent,” “Good,” “Fair,” and “Poor.” Eventually, the researcher described all the data into a paragraph. 120 | IJET| Volume. 9, Issue 1. July 2020 Copyright 2020 Mas Khasila Imani, Titis Setia Yanti, Ulfa Vadhila, & Ahmad Fauzi are licensed under Creative Commons Atrribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 2.1 Research Design Based on the research problem and the objectives aforementioned, the most appropriate design for this study was descriptive qualitative research. Descriptive research evolves the description, recording, analysis, and interpretation of the condition that exists. Arikunto (2013)stated that descriptive research expands the data of the condition that existed. Observed and explained events will occur each time without observation or analysis. Based on Creswell said, the researchers collect data themselves by examining documents that received from an interview, then transcribing the data from the previous step and coding it become some categories so, the researcher will be more comfortable to establish the finding and the last the researcher can represent and make a report from their outcome and continuous to the next step that is causing the validity of the accuracy of the results. 2.2 Respondents This study was conducted in MAN 2 Lamongan, and for the subject of this study, we took tenth-grade students from the tenth language one class. The class consisted of 22 girls and 15 boys, 37 students. The descriptive text had taught in this class, and NHT had not implemented to teach descriptive text in this class, so the researcher determines to choose this subject. 2.3 Data Collection Method The researcher obtained the data by collecting the result of the student’s tasks to investigate the student’s ability in reading comprehension when the technique was applied. This study using students’ responsibility as an instrument to conduct the research, and this study only focuses on the implementation of NHT for teaching descriptive text. To get the data, the researcher provided fifteen questions that still related to the text for students, the question concern of specific and general information of the text, and the answer of students would describe the comprehension degree of the subject. The result of the students would be the data to analyze by the researcher. Observation uses as a technique since this study categorized as qualitative. Observation is one of the techniques used in qualitative studies. Students’ task was the data to investigate the student’s ability in reading comprehension when the NHT technique implemented in teaching descriptive text. At the end of each meeting, the exercise will have to investigate the students’ comprehension of the text or not. The question in the form of a short answer, and the students should do it individually. 3. RESULT The researcher needs two meetings to conduct this research. In the first meeting, the researcher began the implementation of Number Head Together in the class. The researcher had prepared-well everything before the level started in the first meeting. In the last meeting before, the teacher had explained the material about the descriptive text without the technique. It can help the teacher when they want to implement the NHT technique in the class. In the first meeting, before the teacher asked the students to read and discussed the text, the teacher introduces the topic briefly. It can help the students to prepare themselves and review their knowledge about the issue. Number Head Together was applied while reading. But, for the steps, we are transforming from Kagan’s structure. Kagan (1989), after classifying the group and awarding numbers, the researcher could only pose the question and seek the students to respond. Next, the students should put together to make confident which every student in each group is familiar with the answer. After that, the researcher was calling the number, then the 121 | IJET| Volume. 9, Issue 1. July 2020 Copyright 2020 Mas Khasila Imani, Titis Setia Yanti, Ulfa Vadhila, & Ahmad Fauzi are licensed under Creative Commons Atrribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. students who got the name should respond to the question. In this study, a question sought by the researcher, and they reassure that every group tolerated each fellow knew the response. After the number head was calling, the students who choose should respond to the question. The teacher’s part was not prominent. In the whole process, the students embroiled. It already coordinates at the first of the class. A visible identification about what the students had to do and did not to do was giving. The teacher let the students wot the time that they should finish the job. The teacher continually reminds the time. It was beneficial cause the students might not complete the task on time. When the students gave an incorrect answer, other groups had a chance to respond. Awarding some reward when the students might answer aright, it was benefit way to give feedback. An accolade was great to point for this activity. As well as saying” right answer” then gift thumbs up. By applying number Head Together, the students more favorable. It could make excellent classroom relationships. For example, teacher-student contact, preferably as the teacher gave some opportunity for the students to participate. Meantime, student-student contact as well, too, as they collaborated to resolve the matter together. Moreover, they might share their idea in the discussion section. It made the students to a cooperative interaction between every group. Eventually, of the implementation of the method, the teacher at all times provides a quiz. Then, the core in every meeting was summing up—the level of reading comprehension of students elaborated, starting from the first meeting until the last meeting. The students’ task in the first meeting showed that the students made a mistake in replying to the questions about synonyms. However, it showed half of the students in the class unsuccessful respond to those varieties of issues, with misinterpretation, the query related to an error in vocabulary. Indeed, almost the students might break up the task well. There was no matter with another question dealing with the generic concept. Mostly the students respond well of Explicit information and implicit information in the text. Based on the result, it might be sum up, which is the students were good at reading based on the level of reading comprehension dominantly. Probably, It shows from half of them whom the students were well through to an excellent standard. Mostly the students unsuccessful in answering the inquiry was dealing with word synonym. Nevertheless, the students might answer the question of dealing with the generic concept of the text. In the last meeting, the result of the students’ task pointed out which all of the students were an achievement in answering the question dealing with the generic concept, a synonym, explicit information, and implicit information, based on this meeting. It could sum up that in the reading comprehension level, there were no students who dominance. Various the students belonged to the prime level while almost half of them were at a good standard. The outcome of the task produced ordered students who have an improvement in learning from the opening of the meeting until the last meeting. This superior result might be affected by the implementation of Numbered Head Together. It represents that the method not only for group discussion it denotes that the technique also works on several responsibilities, when the students were at workgroup discussion they distributed thought, shared opinion, and helped others. Next, the teacher let the student's positive gestures for each individual. The students could study the subject with the group discussion. At the same time, they got good enough information from the group work. They might break up the task right. Consequently, the students obtained better results start from the opening until the next meeting. 122 | IJET| Volume. 9, Issue 1. July 2020 Copyright 2020 Mas Khasila Imani, Titis Setia Yanti, Ulfa Vadhila, & Ahmad Fauzi are licensed under Creative Commons Atrribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. The description above has followed to a single conclusion that in teaching descriptive text, the NHT technique successfully implemented. This technique is to work very well for both group or individual work. Because they work in a group, it makes the student not be dominant in the discussion section and change to participate actively. The example, there is no dominance in the group; each student will pull together to solve the problem and answer the question. Moreover, the student has to cooperate in a group well because each group member doesn't know whose number will call. The student will get used to being confident in the immediate answer. Meanwhile, everyone can have an equal chance to answer in the asking and answering section. However, the students have to work individually to do the task. Their previous activity from group discussion helped them adequately so. The students could learn the lesson from that. 4. CONCLUSIONS Based on the analysis of the data obtained through the observation, this study has managed to conclude several points, which are: 1) Numbered Heads Together technique could implement in reading class of descriptive text for the tenth-grade students. 2) The quiz administered in the class showed the students’ well-performance in reading learning by working in groups. During the implementation of NHT, the students were cooperative and working deliberately with each other. Besides, they also helped each other, especially the ones who had difficulties in doing the activities. Since every student in the group has a number, there was no dominance in the group as the student with the called number was the one who had to answer. Furthermore, NHT has successfully encouraged the students to participate during the whole process of the activities actively, taught them to be courageous, and built an excellent classroom relationship. The findings can conclude that the implementation of NHT to teach a descriptive text to the tenth-grade students was successful. After analyzing the students’ reading comprehension in the first and second meetings, it found that the students got better results in the second meeting from the first meeting. Since the first meeting, there were no students categorized into the Poor level. Therefore, the use of the Numbered Heads Together technique is suitable for teaching descriptive text. 123 | IJET| Volume. 9, Issue 1. July 2020 Copyright 2020 Mas Khasila Imani, Titis Setia Yanti, Ulfa Vadhila, & Ahmad Fauzi are licensed under Creative Commons Atrribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. REFERENCES Anderson, M., & Kathy Anderson. (1997). Text Types in English. Mac Milon Education Australia Pyd. Ltd. Arikunto, S. (2013). Prosedur Penelitian Suatu Pendekatan Praktik. Indonesia: Rineka Cipta. Bookman, B., Safferstone, M., & Drags, M. (2001). Cooperative Learning-Descriptions of Some Commonly Used Techniques. http://opas.ous.edu/Committees/Resources/Research_papers/15CommonlyUsedTechni ques.pdf. Brown, H. D. (2000). Principles of Language Learning and Teaching (4th ed.). New York: Prentice-Hall Regents. Heaton, J. (1998). Secondary Analysis of Qualitative Data. Social Research Update. http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/sru/SRU22.html Jacobs, G. M., Gan, S., & JessicaBall. (1997). 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