The Effect of Small Group Discussion in Teaching Reading at SMAS Imelda

Abstract

This study, entitled “The Effect of Small Group Discussion in Teaching Reading at SMA S IMELDA” aimed to investigate the effect of the use small group discussion in improving students’ reading skill and students’ responses towards the implementation of it. Small group discussion is a group discussion which consists of six or fewer students. The study employed a quasi-experimental design. The study involved the grade XI students as the participants, which were divided into two groups; experimental group and control group. The data of the study were obtained through pre-test, treatment and post-test questionnaire. Then, data obtained from treatment were classified and analyzed in order to find out students’ responses towards the use of small group discussion method in teaching reading. The quantitative finding of the study reveals that significance value is lower than 0.05, (p = 0.000 < 0.05), which indicates that small group discussion method effectively improved students’ reading skill. In addition, data obtained from questionnaire shows that most students agreed that small group discussion can improve their motivation in learning reading, increase their participation in the class, and build up their responsibility to finish the tasks given by teacher. Meanwhile, students stated also that most of them prefer to use their mother language (L1) than English to interact each other. Some of them argued that they prefer work individually in accomplishing the tasks. Furthermore, it is highly recommended for some researchers or teacher to put more attention to their students during discussion.