Improving Students’ Reading Comprehension of Narrative Texts Through Jigsaw Technique at Class VIII A of SMPN I Bangkinang.

This research started from the problem of students’ low reading comprehension of Narrative texts. It can be seen from the students’ average score under the minimum criteria of achievement (KKM) so that their comprehension of Narrative texts has not gone as expected. To increase the students’ reading comprehension of Narrative texts, the researcher conducted a classroom action research by applying Jigsaw technique. The purposes of this research are to identify to extent to which Jigsaw technique can improve students’ reading comprehension of narrative text at grade VIII A of SMPN I Bangkinang and to identify the factors that influence the changes of students reading comprehension of narrative text by using Jigsaw technique at grade VIII A of SMPN I Bangkinang. In collecting the data, the researcher used reading comprehension of narrative text test, observation checklist, field notes which were helped by a collaborator and interview. This classroom action research consisted of three cycles and four meetings of each cycles; three meetings for the teaching reading comprehension of narrative texts and another meeting for the reading comprehension of narrative texts test. Based on the findings, the implementation of Jigsaw technique could better improve students’ reading comprehension of narrative texts at grade VIII A of SMPN I Bangkinang. The improvement was confirmed by the increasing average students’ score from cycle I, cycle II, until cycle II. The average score during cycle I was 66.0, then during cycle II was 72.3 and the average score during cycle II was 77.3. The factors that influenced the increasing of the students’ score were using interesting topic as teaching material, creative teacher, and instructional and motivated strategy to teach reading comprehension of narrative texts are very important for the English teacher because reading is such kinds of activities that often bored the students mostly. The use of Jigsaw technique in teaching reading comprehension of narrative texts is aimed to motivate the students’ to read and set the students’ purpose before reading. Using Jigsaw technique is very good to be applied in teaching narrative reading comprehension. Finally, the classroom action research by applying Jigsaw technique could improve the students’ reading comprehension of narrative text at grade VIII A of SMPN I Bangkinang.