Improving Students‘ Understanding Short Stories Through Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition at the fourth semester of The English Education Department of STAI Miftahul Ulum Tanjungpinang

Based on the researcher‘s observation, most of the students at the fourth semester of the English Education Department of STAI Miftahul‗Ulum Tanjungpinang had low understanding and difficulty in analyzing five aspects of narrative; plot, setting, characters, point of view and theme.The purpose of this study was to find out the extent CIRC improve students‘ understanding short stories and what factors influence the improvement. Therefore, the researcher conducted a research by using CIRC to solve the problem. This research was classroom action research that was done in two cycles with 22 paricipants. The researcher was helped by a collaborator in doing procedures of the research. Test, task, observation, field notes and interview were the instruments in this research. The data of this research were analyzed by using two techniques. The quantitative data was analyzed by using mean score to see the average score gained by the students‘ individual reading comprehension test. Meanwhile, the qualitative data was analyzed through data obtained from observation, field notes and interview. The finding of this researcher found that there was an improvement of students‘ understanding short stories through CIRC. It could be seen from the score of students‘ understanding short stories which had improved by comparing the score between cycle I (51,68%) and II (78,1%). The improvement was influenced by several factors: the material, classroom activity, classroom management, teacher approach, and teacher strategy. Therefore, it can be concluded that the implementation of CIRC can improve students‘ understanding short stories better at the fourth semester of the English Education Department of STAI Miftahul‗Ulum Tanjungpinang.