This research was aimed to improve students’ reading comprehension through CIRC (Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition) technique. It used a Classroom Action Research (CAR), which was conducted at VIII C grade students’ of SMP Negeri 2 Adipala in the Academic Year 2012 / 2013 consisting of 35 students.
The CAR was based on Kemmis and McTaggart design. The researcher took two cycles, in which each cycle consisted of planning, acting, observing, and reflecting. There were two kinds of data collection: qualitative data and quantitative data. The qualitative data were taken from observation, interview, questionnaire and documentation. The quantitative data were taken from test to measure the students’ result of reading comprehension in pre test and post test by calculating the percentage of indicators to measure whether there was an improvement of students’ reading comprehension through CIRC technique in CAR or not.
After the data were analyzed, it can be concluded that CIRC could improve students’ reading comprehension. It was proved by the result students’ reading comprehension in post test 1 was 12.64% and post test 2 was 27.53%. It reached the criterion of the success indicator which was 20%. The improvement of the students’ observation improved significantly. Cycle 1 improved from 29.99% to 37.85%, or the improvement was 7.86%. The improvement of the students’ observation result in Cycle 2 improved from 45.71% to 56.42%, or the improvement was 10.71%. The result of students’ questionnaire also showed good responses, which was 85.71%.