Improving Students’ Reading Comprehension of recount texts by Using Reciprocal Teaching strategy at grade VIII SMP N 6 Kabupaten Kampar

Based on the problems found in the classroom, the students at grade VIII of SMP N 6 Kabupaten Kampar had problems in comprehending recount texts. It were dificut for them to understand contents and to identify the generic structure of the recount text. They also had limited vocabulary. Therefore, the researcher decided to solve these problems by applying Reciprocal Teaching strategy. The purposes of this research were to find out whether Reciprocal Teaching strategy could improve the students’ reading comprehension of recount texts and the factors that influence the changes of the students’ reading comprehension of recount texts. This classroom action research was done in two cycles. Each cycle consisted of five meetings; four meetings for teaching reading comprehension of recount texts and one meeting was for the test. Participants of the research are 24 students at grade VIII SMP N 6 Kabupaten Kampar. The instruments used to collect the data were (1) observation sheets; students, teacher, and teaching steps (2) field notes (3) interview, and reading comprehension tests. The research findings showed that Reciprocal Teaching strategy could improve the students’ reading comprehension of recount texts. It could be seen from the improvement of the students’ score in reading comprehension of recount texts test. The average score of students in cycle 1 was 68 and in cycle 2 was 74. Then, the factors that influence the improvement of students’ reading comprehension of recount texts were interesting teaching material, teacher’s role, and students’ willingness to do all procedures of the strategy. In conclusion, the implementation of Reciprocal Teaching strategy could improve the students’ reading comprehension of recount texts at grade VIII of SMP N 6 Kabupaten Kampar. It improved both students’ score in reading tests and their interest in reading activities.