Name: Susan warahuwena

NIM: 2013-36-088

The Influence of using CIRC Method in Improving Students’ Reading Skill

Reading and writing skills are very important in the context of language teaching and
use. Writing is the most concrete and systematic of the language skills. Writing is also the
most difficult one to master. According to (Richard and Renandya, 2010) that writing is the
most difficult skill for learners to master. Among language skills, reading together with
writing is the first skill to be learnt. It is also known that, in the learning process, there is a
high correlation between reading comprehension and academic achievement (Durukan,
2010). Reading skill is one of basic skills that should to increase by students. But, to make it
true, it needed a works between students and teachers. How the teacher can master the class
room and also how the students are able to participate well in the class room. So, it needs the
strategies or method that can support activity in the class room itself. What the strategy or
method used by a teacher that can make students feel comfort and increase students
understanding? In English language teaching, there are so many methods or strategy that can
use. One of them is CIRC (Cooperative integrated reading and compotation) method.
Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC) is a teaching method used in
cooperative learning intended to develop the students’ Reading comprehension and writing
ability of the texts (Slavin, 1991). By using this method, the students become more active in
the class room, help students to improve their ability in reading and analyzing narrative text
and also students are able to write news item text. In reading and writing class, of course all
teachers want the students more active. It means that, they are able to understand the text and
response what they read of the text itself.
CIRC method helps students become more active in reading group. In all of these
activities, the students work in heterogeneous learning teams. The cycle of these activities
involves teacher presentation, team practice, independent practice, peer pre assessment,
additional practice, and testing. It means that, they can works together with other friends that
using peer-coaching and also, they orchestrating learning task but, before they should do that,
they firstly pass some steps that instructed by the teacher. So firstly, the teacher must
establishing some groups in the class room and giving a text which relate with the learning
topic. Then, students are able to discuss the text in their each group. It means that, they could
to analyze the text include find the main ideas of the text which hoping participate of each
students to critical thinking and answering or guessing the text and also, the students should
to write down the summary of the text. After that, the students should to present the result
from what they discuss together and then, the teacher and students can make a conclusion of
what their presenting. From what they done in the classroom, there are three phases that they
have got which are concept introduction, exploration and application, and the last is
publication. In concept introduction, the teacher commences to introduce a new concept or
new technical term for students for example in the first activity that having done by students.
Whereas in exploration and application phase, the students are able to convey their
background knowledge that makes them should to critical thinking and evolving new
knowledge which will happen cognitive conflict that compel them to discuss together in each
group and the last phase is publication. In here, the students can to present what the result of
their group discussion in front of the class.
CIRC method can improve students in reading narrative text. Narrative text is a text
repetition to inform an event, to entertain, story, incident, his/her own experience may be
fictional or fact. The function of narrative text is to tell a story, a series of events, to entertain.
For initiating improve students’ ability in reading narrative text, the students still there is the
same activity such as in the group discussion. In group, they can identify the story grammar
(the character, the setting, the problem and the solution in the story). And then, the students
can summarize the main point about the story and make draft composition about ideas and
organizational plan and revise of their composition. At the end by individually, the students
can write the word and meaning sentences from the list of vocabularies given them and write
into narrative text. They achieve greater success because they can work and competence in
team as well as individually work and they are a part of the teaching learning process.
CIRC method can help students to improve their writing news item text. Writing news
item text is the most concrete and systematic of the language skills. In here, the activity that
students should do is work on reading comprehension activities as a team and identifying
main ideas, understanding causal relation in the text, and making inferences. Firstly that they
have to do is consulting teammates and the teacher about their ideas and organizational plans,
drafting composition, and the last, revising the content of their composition. So, the teacher
just monitors the progress of students’ writing activities. After them consulting each other,
the students edit one another’s work using peer editing forms emphasizing grammatical. So at
the end, the students are able to answer the questions related to the text, and also they can to
write a meaningful sentence for each vocabulary word.
 Many methods that can applying by the teacher that can help students to improve their
integrated skills (Reading and writing) but, it depends on the teachers’ belief of themselves
how they can master the class. CIRC (Cooperative integrated reading and composition) is one
of method that is able to use. According to (Durukan, 2011) he states that “Cooperative
Integrated Reading and Composition is designed to develop reading, writing and other
language skill in the Upper grades of primary education”. It has three principal elements:
story-related activities, direct instruction in reading comprehension, and integrated language
arts/writing. Daily lessons provide students with an opportunity to practice comprehension
and reading skills in pairs and small groups. Pairs of students read to each other, predict how
stories will end, summarize stories, write responses to questions posed by the teacher, and
practice spelling, decoding, and vocabulary.
 REFERENCES

Reading comprehension and academic achievement (Durukan, 2010), (Richard

and Renandya, 2010), Reading comprehension and writing ability of the texts
(Slavin, 1991),