THE EFFECT OF USING NUMBERED HEADS TOGETHER AND THINK-PAIR-SHARE STRATEGIES ON THE STUDENTS’ ABILITY IN READING COMPREHENSION NARRATIVE TEXT AT MAS PA

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

A. Background of Study
One of four skills which should be comprehended by English learners is reading skills. Reading skills is necessary for learners to access information and understand texts r literatures in English. Besides, books and books about teaching reading skills strategies for TESOL (Teacher of English to Speaker of Other Language) are published. It indicates that reading skills is a serious problem which should get more attention from English teachers.
In Junior and Senior High School curriculum, reading is one of the competence standards conducted to the students. In KTSP curriculum, one of reading competences which should be learnt by them is: to comprehend the meaning of short functional texts and essays in the form of narrative, descriptive text, and news item in the context of daily life activities and to access knowledge. This kind of reading competence has even been conducted since they are at junior high school. In addition, the questions in National Examination (Ujian Nasional) in English subject contain those kinds of texts and the students are asked to comprehend them.
As mentioned, one of the kinds of texts is narrative texts. Narrative text is a text about telling a story which tells conflicts among the participants and there is a plot of problem-solving in it. In English handbook at schools, students may find some narrative texts in it. And there is usually a set of reading comprehension referred the text after the teacher read the text for them. Usually, there are five to ten questions related to the text, and the teacher can discuss it together with the class or the students do them (the questions) by themselves. The questions may contain: what is the main idea of paragraph one?, what does the word “he” refer to?, what did the man say to…., etc. Some students find it was easy to answer the questions, but some are not.
Teachers must be creative in their ways to teach the lessons to their students. The strategies of teaching should be easy, enjoyable, motivate, stimulate, and improve students’ ability. In Indonesia, more specific in North Sumatra, most teachers still use the individual method by letting the students followed what the teachers say, and they do the tasks individually. They seldom use the cooperative learning method, where some experts believe that “two heads are better than one”. The cooperative learning method provides several strategies in teaching, which may be applied too in other subjects (not only English, but can be applied in mathematic, geography, etc). The strategies are: The RoundTable, the Round Robin, The Jigsaw, Find-the-Fib, Outside/Inside the Circle, Numbered Heads Together (NHT), Think-Pair-Share, and the other strategies. All of those strategies allow the students to cooperate with their classmates rather than work individually. They may form into groups or in pairs (that is why I say, “two heads are better than one”). All students will get involved, enjoy the study, mobile the class, and enable them “to learn individually in grouping way”.
Two kinds of strategies recommended in cooperative learning to teach reading comprehension are the Numbered Heads Together (NHT) and the Think-Pair-Share strategies.
The NHT is a cooperative learning strategy that holds each student accountable for learning the material. Students are placed in groups and each person is given a number (from one to the maximum number in each group). The teacher poses a question and students “put their heads together” to figure out the answer. The teacher calls a specific number to respond as spokesperson for the group. By having students work together in a group, this strategy ensures that each member knows the answer to problems or questions asked by the teacher. Because no one knows which number will be called, all team members must be prepared.
Think-Pair-Share is a strategy designed to provide students with “food for thought” on a given topics enabling them to formulate individual ideas and share these ideas with another student. It is a learning strategy developed by Lyman and associates to encourage student classroom participation. Rather than using a basic recitation method in which a teacher poses a question and one student offers a response, Think-Pair-Share encourages a high degree of pupil response and can help keep students on task.
For this long, most schools still use the individual learning. They seldom apply the cooperative learning in teaching, while in developing countries; this method has been applied since 1990’s, even to the beginner students. For some students, it could be easy comprehending texts (in this case: narrative test) individually, but some are not. By individual learning, those who are known as “the bright students” will accelerate, but those who are not, will be left behind. Cooperative learning enable each students have the same opportunity to accelerate and improve their ability together as they work cooperatively.
Based on the description above, The Writer is interested in making a research about “THE EFFECT OF USING NUMBERED HEADS TOGETHER AND THINK-PAIR-SHARE STRATEGIES ON THE STUDENTS’ ABILITY IN READING COMPREHENSION NARRATIVE TEXT AT MAS PAB MEDAN”
B. Identification of Study
Based on the background of study, I can identify some problems:
1. The teacher teaches reading narrative text by direct method but most students still have difficulties in comprehending it.
2. The students always do reading comprehension narrative texts individually, but most of them still do not comprehend them.
3. The teacher never uses various strategies in teaching reading, so the students do not enjoy the study.
4. The students never get involved in groups to comprehend the reading texts, so that the acceleration does not equal among them.
C. Scope and Limitation of Study
Based on the identification of study, the scope of study will be the teaching strategies and their effect to students’ ability, and to get focused on the study, I limited the problem into three factors, i.e.: The Numbered Heads Together strategy, the Think-Pair-Share strategy, and students’ ability in reading comprehension narrative text. I limit them into the three factors because it is supposed that teaching reading with the NHT and TPS strategies will improve students’ ability in reading comprehension narrative text.
D. Formulation of Study
Dealing with the background and the research problem above, I will formulate the problems of the research as:
1. What strategies does the teacher use in teaching narrative text at MAS PAB Medan?
2. How is the students’ ability in comprehending narrative text at MAS PAB Medan?
3. Is there any significant difference between using Numbered Heads Together (NHT) and Think-Pair-Share (TPS) strategies to the students’ ability in reading comprehension narrative text?
E. The Objectives of Study
The aims of study are to find out:
1. The teacher’s strategies used in teaching narrative text
2. The students’ achievement in reading comprehension narrative text after using NHT strategy.
3. The students’ achievement in reading comprehension narrative text after using TPS strategy.
4. The significant differences of using NHT and TPS strategies to the students’ ability in reading comprehension narrative text.
F. Significances of Study
1. To the school, especially to the teachers, in order to use various methods/strategies in teaching (English).
2. To the students who study reading comprehension.
3. To other researcher who are interested in studying related research.
CHAPTER II
THEORETICAL REVIEW

A. Theoretical Framework
Reading
Reading is one of the most important skills in learning language besides listening, writing, and speaking. The fundamental goal of any reading activity is knowing enough science concepts and knowing the language (i.e. comprehending/understanding).
Reading in the students’ native language and reading in a second language learned is quite a different matter. Reading in the target language is much more difficult for learners as they are required to have adequate knowledge of the language which has a different system, including vocabulary and structure as well as possible.
1.1. Definition of Reading
Reading is an active cognitive process of interacting with print and monitoring comprehension to establish meaning.
Reading may be defined as the meaningful interpretation of printed or written verbal symbols. As proficiency in reading increases, individuals learn to adapt their reading strategies in accordance with the purpose for reading task, therefore, changes as learners progress to the more mature levels. Reading is not one skill but a large number of highly interrelated skills that develop gradually over the year. (Haris, et. al., 1984: 13)
The definition above explains that reading is the combination of words recognition, intellectual, and emotion related to prior knowledge to access the message communicated.
1.2. Reading Comprehension.
Reading with comprehension means understanding what has been read. It is an active thinking process that depends not only on comprehension skills but also on the students’ experiences and prior knowledge. Comprehension involves understanding the vocabulary seeing the relationships among words and concepts, organizing ideas, recognizing the author’s purpose, making judgments, and evaluating.
Thus, reading comprehension is the process of understanding the message that the author is trying to convey (Farris, et. al., 2004: 321).Very simply, it is making meaning from the text at hand.
According to Kustanyo (1988: 12), specific reading comprehension skill could be divided into three levels of skills:
1. Literal reading
The literal level of comprehension is fundamental to all the reading skills at any level because a reader must first understand what the author said before he can draw an inference or make an evaluation. The literal level is considered to the easiest level of reading comprehension because a reader is not required to go beyond what the author actually said.
2. Inferential
Inferences are ideas which a reader receives when he goes beneath the surface to sense relationships, puts facts and ideas together to draw conclusions and makes generalizations, and detects the mood of the material. Making inferences requires author and more on personal insight.
3. Critical reading
Critical reading requires a higher degree of skill development and perception. Critical reading requires reading with an inquiring mind and with active, creative looking for false statements. It means questioning, comparing, and evaluating.
One of the most important comprehension skills is finding the main ideas. This could be a literal skill if the idea is directly stated, or an inferential skill if it is not directly stated. The main idea is the essence of the paragraph, or what the author is trying to get across to the reader. The following questions help the reader to have a plan after reading a passage.
1. What is the subject of the paragraph?
The subject of the paragraph is what the paragraph about –the topic being discussed.
2. What is the purpose of discussing the subject?
Is the purpose to inform, discuss, define, explain, defend, or criticize the subject?
3. What idea is the author trying to make the reader understand about the subject?

Narrative Text
The 2004 curriculum has been implemented in Indonesia since 2004. It emerges on the basis of the genre-approach that exposes the students to the use of various text types, i.e.: explanation, narrative, information, argumentation, recount, and instructional text. This research will be focused on the narrative text only because it will be conducted in the time of the research, and it is often found in students’ English text book, from the tenth to third grades.
General Concept of Narrative Text
Meyers (2005: 52) states that narrative is one of the most powerful ways of communicating with others. A good written story lets your readers response to some event in your life as if it were own. They do not only understand the event, but they can almost feel it. The action, details, and dialogue put readers in these seem and make it happen for them.
Moreover, Anderson (1997: 8) states that narrative is a piece of text tells a story and in doing so, entertains of informs the reader or listener.
In Curriculum 2004, narrative text is defined as a text which function to amuse, entertain, and to deal with actual or various experience in different ways. Narrative deals with problematic event lead to a crisis or turning point of some kind in turn finds a resolution.
From the definition above, I conclude that narrative text is a text which tells something in purpose to amuse and entertain people, and it contains a plot of conflict and resolution in its ending. So that, in narrative text, we may find:
b. What the characters look like (their appearance)
c. Where the action is taking place (the setting)
d. How things are happening (the action)
For further explanation, the characteristics of narrative texts are:
a. It tells us about a story of event or events.
b. The events are usually arranged in chronological order –that is, in the order I which they occurred in time.
c. The narrative has a purpose in mind in telling the story. There are some points the narrator wishes to make, or some impression he or she wishes, to convey to the reader.
Therefore, the details of the narrative are carefully selected for purpose. Narration is telling a story. And to be interesting, a good story must have interesting content. It should tell us an event as if a movie where the readers watch people in action and hear them speak there. Therefore, it should be detailed, clear, and arranged in order. At last, it must achieve the following goals:
It is unified, with all the action; a developing central idea.
It is interesting, it draws the readers into the action and makes them feel as if they are do serving and listening to the events.
It introduces the four ws of a setting –who, what, where, and when- within the context of the action.
It is coherent, transition indicates changes in time, location, and character.
It begins at the beginning and end at the end. That is, the narrative follows a chronological order –with events happening in a time sequence.
It builds towards a climax. This is the moment of most tension or surprise –a time when the ending is revealed or the importance of events becomes clear.
And the significant lexicogrammatical features of narrative text are:
Focus on specific and usually individualized participants.
Use of material processes, and verbal processes.
Use of relational process and mental process.
Use of temporal conjunctions and temporal circumstances.
Use of past tense. (Soeprapto and Darwis, 2006: 11).

Generic Structure of Narrative Text.
Neo (2005: 2) states –that a narrative has a structure, a shape or a pattern. It can be represented in this way:
a. Orientation/exposition: sets the scene and introduces the participants –both the main and possibly some minor characters. Some indication is generally given of where the action is located and when it is taking place.
b. Complication/rising action: Rising action, it refers to a series of complication leads to the climax.
c. The climax is the critical moment when problem/ conflicts demand something to be done about them.
d. Felling action is the moment away from the highest peak of excitement.
e. The resolution consists of the result or outcome. (Neo, 2005: 2)
While Anderson (1997: 8) stated that the steps for constructing a narrative text are:
a. Orientation/exposition The readers are introduced to the main characters and possibly some minor characters. Some indication is generally given of where the action is located and when it is taking place.
b. Complication/ rising action
The complication is pushed along by a serious of events, during which we usually expect some sort of complication or problem to arise. It just would not be so interesting if something unexpected did not happen. This complication will involve the main characters and oven serves to (temporally) toward them from reaching their goal.
c. Sequence of event/Climax
This is where the narrator tells how the character reacts to the complication. It includes their feeling and what they do. The event can be told in chronological order (the order in which they happen) or with flashback. The audience is given the narrator’s point of view.
d. Resolution/ falling action
In this part, the implication may be resolved for better or worse, but it is rarely left completely unresolved (although this is of course possible in certain types of narrative which leaves us wondering “How did it end”?)
e. Reorientation
It is an optional closure of event.
Types of Narrative Text.
According to Neo (2005: 58-59), types of narrative text are:
2.3.1. Humor A humorous narrative is one of that aims to make audience laugh as a part of telling story. Here is typical structure:
a. Orientation : the narrator tells the funny characters names in unusual setting.
b. Complication : in this part, something crazy happen.
c. Sequence of event : there are many imaginative ideas here funny things said by characters and extraordinary things happening to ordinary people.
d. Resolution : All’s well that end well. (Neo, 2005: 58)
2.3.2. Romance The romance narrative typically tells of two lovers who overcome difficulties to end up together. Here are the usual features:
a. Orientation: it contains hunk male and female who is looking for love, exotic setting, sun set, beaches, and moonlight.
b. Complication: boy meets girl.
c. Sequence of event: it contains the development relationship, jealously, love, hurt, pain, warm, sharing, and overcoming problems.
d. Resolution: boy gets girl, marry and live happily ever after. (Neo, 2005: 59)
2.3.3. Historical Feature Here are the features of a typical historical fiction text:
a. Orientation: a setting in the past and description of a period in history.
b. Complication: good meets evil
c. Sequence of event: action related to a period in history, character’s lives affected by the events of history, description of live at the time.
d. Resolution: characters survive the chaos of the time (for example, the war ends). (Neo, 2005: 59)
2.3.4. The Diary Novel This type of narrative has the text presented like diary entries. Here are the features of a typical diary- novel:
a. Orientation: main character is the narrator. Time setting is given by diary entries.
b. Complication: given one of diary entries. It can be related to romance, adventure, humor, mystery, or other type.
c. Sequence of event: diary entries tell of feelings, hopes, and happening.
d. Reorientation: the narrator tells what happens to solve the complication. (Neo, 2005: 60)
2.3.5. Fantasy Below are the features of a typical fantasy narrative:
a. Orientation: setting may be in another dimension with goals, witches, wizard, and so son. Hero who may has magical power.
b. Complication: evil forces affect the goodies.
c. Sequence of event: use of magic. Action includes elves, dragons and mystical beasts, heroism.
d. Resolution: God defeats evil forces. (Neo, 2005: 60)
2.3.6. Science Fiction Science fiction narrative is the setting involving science and technology. Here are the typical features of the text type:
a. Orientation: a feature setting and a world with technology.
b. Complication: an evil force threatens the world.
c. Sequence of event: imaginative description. Action involves technology, science, and super invention.
d. Resolution: good defeats evil.
e. Coda: take care that science is used for good, not evil.
(Neo, 2005: 61)

3. Reading Narrative Text
Similarly, the number of theories of reading is simply overwhelming: what it is, how it is acquired and taught, how reading in a second language differs from reading in a first language, how reading relates to other cognitive and perceptual abilities, how it interfaces with memory. All these aspects or reading are important, but will probably never be brought together into a coherent and comprehensive account of what it is we do when we read. Added to this are the inevitable complications when we consider the complexities of analyzing texts: since the nature of what we read must have some relation to how we read, then text analysis must be relevant to theories of reading. (Alderson, 2001: 1)
Like writing, reading is an act of composition. When we write, we compose thoughts on paper: when we read, we compose meaning in our minds. Thoughtful, active readers use the text to stimulate their own thinking and engage with the mind of the writer. (Farris, et. al., 2004: 476)
Reading narrative text is often referred to as aesthetic reading because one reads it for enjoyment and pleasure.

4. The Cooperative Learning Method: The Numbered-Heads-Together (NHT) and The Think-Pair-Share (TPS) Strategies.
4.1. The Definition of The Cooperative Learning Method.
The cooperative (language) learning (some literatures abbreviate it into CLL) is a method developed by Kagan. This method of organization may require team-building activities for home-groups and topic groups, long-term group involvement and rehearsal of presentation method. This method is very useful in the multi-level class, allowing for both homogeneous and heterogeneous grouping in terms of English proficiency. (Richards, et. al., 1998: 198)
4.2. The Advantages and Disadvantages of Cooperative Learning Method.
As the Cooperative Learning requires grouping, it has some advantages and disadvantages in the same time (Harmer, 2004: 116)
a. The Advantages
- It reinforces a sense of belonging among the group members, something which we as teacher need to foster. If everyone is involved in the same activity, then we are all ‘in it together’. Such experience gives us points of common reference to talk about and can be used as reason to bond with each other. It is much easier for student to share an emotion such as happiness or amusement in a whole class setting.
- It is suitable for activities where the teacher is acting as a controller. It is especially good for giving explanation and instruction, where smaller group would mean having to do this thing more than once. It is an ideal way of showing material whether in pictures texts or on audio or video tape. It is also more cost-efficient, both in terms of material production and organization, than other groupings can be.
- It allows teacher to ‘gouge the mood’ of the class in general it is a good way for us to get understanding of student progress.
- It is preferred class style in many educational setting where students and teachers feel secure when the whole class is working in lockstep, and under the direct authority of the teacher.
b. The Disadvantages
- It favors the group rather than the individual. Everyone is forced to do the same thing at the same time and the same pace.
- Individual student do not have much of a chance to say anything and on their own.
- Many students are disinclined to participate in front of the whole class since to do bring with it the risk of public failure.
- It may not encourage students to take responsibility for their own learning. Whole class teaching favors the transmission of knowledge from teacher to the students rather than having students discover things or research thing for them.
- It is not the best way to organize communicative language teaching or specially task based sequences communication between individuals is more difficult in group of twenty or thirty than it is in groups of four or five in the smaller groups. It is easier to share material, speak quietly and less formally, and make good eye contact all of these contribute to successful task resolution.
Nevertheless, applying grouping (cooperative) methods in teaching really depends on the material will be given and the situation or condition of the class. So, a teacher must be able to select either direct or cooperative method in her/his teaching.
4.3.Reading Comprehension Skills in The Perspective of Cooperative Learning Method
Palincsar and Brown (1984) found that comprehension could be improved by teaching students summarizing, questioning, clarifying, questioning, classifying, and predicting skills. Here, in Cooperative Learning, a major objective of Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC –a comprehensive program for teaching reading, writing, and language arts in the upper elementary grades, see Slavin, 1995: 104-105) is to use cooperative teams to help students learn broadly applicable reading comprehension skills. So, it is possible to integrate those comprehension skills in teams. Several components of CIRC are directed toward this end. The components are:
- Follow-up: Students work within cooperative teams on these activities, which are coordinated with reading-group instruction, in order to meet objectives in such areas as reading comprehension, vocabulary, decoding, and spelling. Students are motivated to work with one another on these activities by the use of a cooperative reward structure in which they may earn certificates or other recognition based on the learning of all team members.
- Oral Reading: One objective of the CIRC program is to greatly increase students’ opportunities to read aloud and receive feedback on their reading by having students read to teammates and by training them in how to respond to one another’s reading.
- Reading Groups: If reading groups are used, students are assigned to two or three reading groups according to their reading level, as determined by their teachers. Otherwise, instruction is given to the whole class.
- Teams: Students are assigned to pairs (or triads) within their reading groups, and then the pairs are assigned to teams composed of partnerships from two reading groups or levels.
- Story-Related Activities: Students use either novels or basal readers. Stories are introduced and discussed in teacher-led reading groups that meet for approximately twenty minutes each day. In these groups, teachers set a purpose for reading, introduce new vocabulary, review old vocabulary, discuss the story after students have read it, and so on. Story discussion are structured to emphasize such skills as making and supporting predictions and identifying the problem in a narrative.
- Partner Reading: students read the story silently and then take turns reading the story aloud with their partner, alternating each paragraph. The listener corrects any errors the reader may make. The teacher assesses student performance by circulating and listening in as students read to each other.
- Story Grammar and Story-Related Writing: Students are given questions (“Treasure Hunts”) related to each story that emphasize the story grammar –the structure that underlies all narratives. Halfway through the story, they are instructed to stop reading and to identify the characters, the setting, and the problem in the story, and to predict how the problem will be resolved. At the end of the story students respond to the story as a whole and write a few paragraphs on a topic related to it (e.g.: they might be asked to write a different ending to the story).
- Tests: At the end of three class periods, students are given a comprehension test on the story, asked to write meaningful sentences for each vocabulary word, and asked to read the word list aloud to the teacher. Students are not permitted to help one another on these tests. The rest scores an evaluations of the story-related writing are major components of students’ weekly team scores.
- Direct Instruction in Reading Comprehension: One day each week, students receive direct instruction in specific reading comprehension skills, such as identifying main ideas, understanding casual relations, and making inferences. A step-by-step curriculum was designed for this purpose. After each lesson, students work on reading comprehension activities as a team, first gaining consensus on one set of worksheet items and then assessing one another and discussing any remaining problems on a second set of items.

4.4. The Numbered Heads Together(NHT) and The Think-Pair-Share (TPS) Strategies.
Olsen and Kagan (1992: 88) describes the following examples of Cooperative Learning activities:
- Three-step interview: (1) Students are in pairs; one is interviewer and the other is interviewee. (2) Students reverse roles. (3) Each shares with team member what was learned during the two interviews.
- Roundtable: There is one piece of paper and one pen for each team. (1) One student makes a contribution and (2) passes the paper and pen to the student of his or her left. (3) Each student makes contributions in turn. If done orally, the structure is called Round Robin.
- Think-Pair-Share: (1) Teacher poses a question (usually a low-consesus question). (2) Students think of a response. (3) Students discuss their responses with a partner. (4) Students share their partner’s response with the class.
- Solve-Pair-Share: (1) Teacher poses a problem (a low-consensus or high-consensus item that may be resolved with different strategies). (2) Students work out solutions individually. (3) Students explain how they solved the problem in Interview or Round Robin structures.
- Numbered-Heads: (1) Students number off in teams. (2) Teacher asks a question (usually high-consensus). (3) Heads Together –students literally put their heads together and make sure everyone knows and can explain the answer. (4) Teacher calls a number and students with that number raise their hands to be called on, as in traditional classroom.
Stone (2000:72) recommended TPS and NHT to be implemented in teaching reading. That is why I will study about the implementation of the two strategies on teaching reading, in this research, narrative text.
4.4.1. The Numbered-Heads-Together (NHT) Strategy
Numbered Heads Together is a cooperative learning strategy that holds each student accountable for learning the material. Students are placed in groups and each person is given a number (from one to the maximum number in each group). The teacher poses a question and students "put their heads together" to figure out the answer. The teacher calls a specific number to respond as spokesperson for the group. By having students work together in a group, this strategy ensures that each member knows the answer to problems or questions asked by the teacher. Because no one knows which number will be called, all team members must be prepared.
This cooperative learning strategy promotes discussion and both individual and group accountability. This strategy is beneficial for reviewing and integrating subject matter. Students with special needs often benefit when this strategy is used. After direct instruction of the material, the group supports each member and provides opportunities for practice, rehearsal, and discussion of content material. Group learning methods encourage students to take greater responsibility for their own learning and to learn from one another, as well as from the instructor (Terenzini & Pascarella, 1994).
How Makes It Happen
1. Divide the students into groups of four and give each one a number from one to four.
2. Pose a question or a problem to the class.
3. Have students gather to think about the question and to make sure everyone in their group understands and can give an answer.
4. Ask the question and call out a number randomly.
5. The students with that number raise their hands, and when called on, the student answers for his or her team.
(http://www.teachervision.fen.com/group-work/cooperative-learning/48538.html)
Stone said that, NHT is a simple four-step structure which strengths are in building mastering and in reviewing previously learned information. In step one, the students on each team number off from 1 to 4. In step two, on a team of only 3, team member #3 answers when number 3 and 4 are called. On a team of 5, team members #4 and #5 both answer when number 4 is called. The teacher then asks a high consensus question. Rather than asking a simple knowledge or comprehension question, ask a question with multiple responses. In step three, the students put their head together, discuss the correct answers and make sure that everyone knows the answer. In step four, the teacher calls a number and those students raise their hands to respond. (Stone, 2000: 72)
Stone also suggested what he called as Heads Back Together, i.e.: when a teacher asks a question and only a couple of the group respond, the teacher should have all the groups put their heads back together. The teacher might say, “Not enough #2’s have their hands up, put your heads together and make sure all #2’s can answer the question.” Teacher may also vary the order of numbers called to respond by using a spinner, dice, or pulling numbers from a hat.
4.4.2. The Think-Pair-Share (TPS) Strategy
Think-Pair-Share is a strategy designed to provide students with "food for thought" on a given topics enabling them to formulate individual ideas and share these ideas with another student. It is a learning strategy developed by Lyman and associates to encourage student classroom participation. (Slavin, 1995: 132) Rather than using a basic recitation method in which a teacher poses a question and one student offers a response, Think-Pair-Share encourages a high degree of pupil response and can help keep students on task.
The Purpose of the TPS Strategy
Providing "think time" increases quality of student responses.
Students become actively involved in thinking about the concepts presented in the lesson.
Research tells us that we need time to mentally "chew over" new ideas in order to store them in memory. When teachers present too much information all at once, much of that information is lost. If we give students time to "think-pair-share" throughout the lesson, more of the critical information is retained.
When students talk over new ideas, they are forced to make sense of those new ideas in terms of their prior knowledge. Their misunderstandings about the topic are often revealed (and resolved) during this discussion stage.
Students are more willing to participate since they do not feel the peer pressure involved in responding in front of the whole class.
Think-Pair-Share is easy to use on the spur of the moment.
Easy to use in large classes.
(http://olc.spsd.sk.ca/DE/PD/instr/strats/think/index.html)
Stone (2000: 172) stated that TPS offers all students an opportunity to express their response to a question or discussion topic. In a traditional classroom, the teacher asks a question and only one or two students have the opportunity to respond. Using TPS, the teacher asks a question and gives the students think time. (The length of the think time varies as to the complexity of the question or problem). At he teacher’s signal, the students share their answers with partners, allowing all students to respond. Students are then invited to share their responses with their responses with the whole class.
The flexibility and power of TPS makes it easy to implement and use in the classroom. Students can be seated anywhere in the classroom: at a class meeting, in desks, in their teams, or in line. Every time the teacher stops to ask a question or invite a response, the students are actively involved with the lesson. To encourage individual accountability, the teacher can vary the way the responses are shared within the classroom.
How Makes it Happens
With students seated in teams of 4, have them number them from 1 to 4.
Announce a discussion topic or problem to solve. (Example: Which room in our school is larger, the cafeteria or the gymnasium? How could we find out the answer?)
Give students at least 10 seconds of think time to THINK of their own answer. (Research shows that the quality of student responses goes up significantly when you allow "think time.")
Using student numbers, announce discussion partners. (Example: For this discussion, Student #1 and #2 will be partners. At the same time, Student #3 and #4 will talk over their ideas.)
Ask students to PAIR with their partner to discuss the topic or solution.
Finally, randomly call on a few students to SHARE their ideas with the class.
Teachers may also ask students to write or diagram their responses while doing the Think-Pair-Share activity. Think, Pair, Share helps students develop conceptual understanding of a topic, develop the ability to filter information and draw conclusions, and develop the ability to consider other points of view.
One activity of TPS strategies which is reliable to be implemented in teaching reading narrative text is what Stone called as Fantasy vs. Reality. Here, students sort out the fantasy and reality in any story that intermingles them. This activity uses story book (e.g.: Jumanji, by Chris Van Allsburg, The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster, The Polar Express, by Chris Van Allsburg, Wrinkle In Time, by Madeline L. Engle, etc.), any book that combines the use of reality and fantasy may be substituted. (Stone, 2000: 174-175)
The steps of Fantasy vs. Reality are:
· Ask students to Think about what their feelings were during the reading. How did the illustrations make them feel? What feelings did they have for the children and what they did? Students Pair and discuss. Students Square and discuss. Ask for anyone who wishes to share their teams ideas with the class.
· Distribute one Fantasy vs. Reality handout to each student. Reread the first four pages (or paragraphs, if you do not want to spend a long time) of the text to the students and share the pictures with them. Ask them to Think about the appearance of the participant. Students write on their note sheet the believable events (reality) and the unreal events (fantasy). Students Pair and share with partner. Encourage students to Share ideas on a class chart.
· Some sample questions might be: What impact does the fantasy have on the story? Does the use of fantasy and reality in the story hold the reader’s interest or is it distracting? Is reality or fantasy the main thread woven throughout the story>
· Optional: Ask students to Think-Write-Pair as to what they think might be the next event in the story. Students work in pairs to create the next episode of the story, using both reality and fantasy. Stories can be shared within teams and then across teams.
4.4.3. Some Variation in Using NHT and TPS
4.4.3.1. Variation in NHT
- Thumbs up: after a student responds, the teacher can have the others who are standing agree or disagree with a thumbs up or thumbs down.
- Shared Responses: in a multiple part answer, the teacher can have students from different teams each give a part of the response.
- Simultaneous response: All students responding can simultaneously give the answer on the count of three.
- Blackboard response: All students responding can write the answer on the chalkboard or on a team slate.
4.4.3.2. Variation in TPS
- Showing Character: When talking about character development, students listen and think of the ways the author not just described, but “showed”, who the character was. Students Pair and Share.
- What Would You Do: Stop at a decision-making point in a book (or a passage, Writer), and have the students Think about what they would do if they were the character. Students Pair and Share.
- What’s My Line: Cut out large pictures of different, well-known people and events. Show students a picture and have them Think of the significance of the picture. Students Pair and Share.
- Storytelling with Drawings: Pick a story with a cumulative story line (e.g.: Millions of Cats by Wanda Gag, The Little House by Virginia Burton, And to Think I saw it on Mulberry Street by Dr. Seuss). Ask students to Think of one of the objects in the story, to Draw it on an overhead transparency, and to Share it with the class. As the story is retold, stack the transparencies on the overhead to illustrate the story.
- Spelling Review: Say a spelling word. Ask the students to Think about how it is spelled, to Write it on a Think pad, to Square with their team members (for correction) and to Pair with a partner to use it in a sentence.
- Predictions: Students Think about the story they have heard so far. They Pair and Share what their predictions are for the next part of the story. Students Square to share with their team.

B. Related Studies
1. Zuhriyatus Sa’adah, Metode Think-Pair-Share dan Numbered Heads Together dalam Pembelajaran Bahasa Jerman di SMA Negeri Gondanglegi (2009). This research is a quantitative research using the research design of experiment quotient. The findings in this research show that the students’ response to TPS and NHT strategies are positive enough and she concluded that students who were taught using NHT strategy got better results than those who were taught using TPS.
2. Ratri Harida, A Study on the Teaching of Narrative Text Based on the 2004 Curriculum at SMA Negeri 8 Malang (2006). She used descriptive qualitative method in her research. She found that the teaching of narrative text based on the 2004 curriculum in SMAN 8 Malang was not ideal. The students had difficulties in understanding the teacher’s talks, using the right grammatical structures and diction to express their ideas and arranging them into good narrative text. The teacher’s pre-test only measured the students’ grammar and vocabulary and taught lexicogrammatical features during the modeling stage.

C. Conceptual Framework
Numbered Heads Together is a strategy where students are placed in groups and each person is given number (from one to the maximum number in each group). The teacher can apply this strategy to improve students’ skills in reading comprehension where the teacher will ask a spokesperson to answer the questions or solve a problem. As the number assigned randomly, each student must prepare himself.
Think-Pair-Share is a strategy where students are given “time to think” and share their ideas with another students (his pair). It will help them to cooperate and solve their problems in reading.
Students’ ability in reading comprehension narrative text means that the students are able to identify main ideas, understand casual relations, and make inferences from a text (passage) which genre is narrative.
Students’ ability in reading comprehension narrative textFor this research, the conceptual thinking is: Is there any significant influence between using NHT and TPS strategies on the students’ ability in reading comprehension narrative text? Where the schema will be like this:
Using NHT Strategy

Using TPS Strategy
Students’ ability in reading comprehension narrative text

D. Hypothesis
Ha : There is significance differences of using Numbered Heads Together and Think-Pair-Share Strategies to the students’ ability in reading comprehension narrative text.
Ho : There is significance differences of using Numbered Heads Together and
Think-Pair-Share Strategies to the students’ ability in reading comprehension narrative text.
CHAPTER III
METHODOLOGY OF RESEARCH
A. Location of the Research
This research will be conducted at MAS PAB 2 Medan on Jl. Veteran, Helvetia, Medan. This location is chosen because:
The writer found the problem of the research there.
There is no same research in this location.
To make the time and cost efficient, as the location of the research is near to my house.
B. Population and Sample
a. Population
Population is a number of persons or things to observe in a research.
The population in this research will be all of the first year students of MAS PAB 2 Medan where it has two classes (X1 and X2) and each class consists of 35 students. So the total population is 70 students. This data is very possible to change because the research may be conducted in August, and the population of the first year student may vary from this number.
b. Sample
According to Ibnu Hajar (1996: 133), sample is a small unit of individual that exactly include in a research.
From the calculation above, it is known that the number of population is 70 students. To take the sample, according to Suharsimi Arikunto, if the population is less than 100 persons, than all of the population may become the sample. So I will take 70 students as the sample.
C. Operational Definition
Independent Variable (X1): Numbered Heads Together strategy is a cooperative learning strategy that lets students get cooperated in their groups but still enables them to learn by themselves, as each students will be numbered (from one to the maximum number in each group). The teacher will poses a question (some questions), students will think the answer along with their groups, and the teacher will call out one spokesperson from each group, so that everyone must prepare their answer.
Independent Variable (X2): Think-Pair-Share is a strategy that will give students time to think their answer individually, and lets them share the answer with partner. Then the teacher will call out anyone to represent their pairs. This strategy enables the students to think the question and answer it, and allow them to share their thoughts with another student.
Dependent Variable (Y): The students’ ability in reading comprehension narrative text. The indicators are:
- The students are able to identify the subject of the narrative text.
- The students are able to identify the characters of the participants in the narrative text.
- The students are able to identify the setting in the narrative text.
- The students are able to explain the problems, conflicts, happening, and resolution of the narrative text.
- The students are able to identify the main idea(s) in the narrative text.
Besides the scoring based on the content as mentioned above, it is also indicated that the students use the right vocabulary and grammar when they identify/explain the content of the passage.
The indicator of using the right vocabulary: using good, appropriate, and various vocabularies.
The indicators of using the right grammar:
- Using the right tense (in narrative text, it usually uses The Simple Past Tense)
- Mastering the sentence construction.
D. Research Instruments
Observation guide.
I will use observation guide to find out the scopes of observation, they are: the location, facilities, and condition of class at the location of research.
Test
The tests given are essay tests containing 10 questions to comprehend students’ understanding after reading narrative text with the procedures given.
E. Technique of Collecting Data
Observation.
I will observe the location of the research to check the condition of the school, the teaching-learning activities, and the students.
Test.
After teaching with the NHT and/or the TPS strategies, the teacher will distribute some tests to test students’ comprehending in reading narrative text. The procedures are:
- distributing the test material to the students
- giving instruction that the test should be done directly
- specifying the time
- reading the test direction
- collecting the test when the time is up
- evaluating the score

F. Technique of Data Analysis
After getting the data from the location of study, I will analyze it by using “t test” formula. I use this formula because I want to know is there any significant difference between using the NHT and the TPS strategies on the students’ ability in reading comprehension narrative text, and the formula is:
Where:
M1 = Mean of the first group
M2 = Mean of the second group
=





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Websites:
- http://www.teachervision.fen.com/group-work/cooperative-learning/48538.html
- http://olc.spsd.sk.ca/DE/PD/instr/strats/think/index.html