Improving Reading Comprehension of the EighthGrade Students of SMP N 5 Mengwi in Academic Year 2023/2024 Through Small Group Discussion

Reading is an essential process by which people gain information and ideas from books, newspapers, manuals, letters, contracts, advertisements, and a host of other materials. But the students have difficulties in finding the main idea or the textual information of the text. This research conducted in order to know whether or not the reading comprehension of the students be improved through the implementation of small group discussion. Therefore, to achieve the objective of the present study, the researcher conducted a classroom action research. The subjects were the eighth grade-students of SMP N 5 Mengwi in the academic year 2023/2024 especially VIII E class. There were 33 subjects which consist of 18 males and 15 females. The research was done in two cycles. Furthermore, the research instruments that consist of tests and questionnaire were made in order to collect the data needed. Then the data were analyzed by comparing the results of the pre-test and post-tests. The results of the post-test in each cycle clearly showed that there were significant improvements on the subjects’ reading comprehension. Besides, the subjects also gave positive responses on the implementation of small group discussion in the teaching reading comprehension. To sum up, the present study concluded that reading comprehension of the eighth grade-students of SMP N 5 Mengwi in the academic year 2023/2024 could be improved through small group discussion.