THE EFFECT OF NUMBERED HEADS TOGETHER TECHNIQUE ON STUDENTS’ ACHIEVEMENT IN READING DESCRIPTIVE TEXT BY THE TENTH GRADE STUDENTS AT SMAN 1PERCUT SEI TUAN

This study deals with the effect of Numbered Heads Together (NHT) Technique on
students’ achievement in reading descriptive text. The problem of the study is to find
out whether Numbered Head Together Technique significantly affects students’
achievement in reading descriptive text or not. This study was conducted by using
experimental design. The population of the study was the students of tenth grade of
SMAN 1 Percut Sei Tuan in the academic year 2014/2015, there were 4 parallel
classes of grade X. There were two classes selected to be sample. The Experimental
group (X-2) was taught by applying NHT Technique, while the Control group (X-3)
was taught by applying conventional technique. The data of the study was obtained
from the students’ scores of reading test. There were two kinds of test used in this
study. They were pre-test and post-test. The data were analyzed by applying t-test
formula. After analyzing the data, the result of the study showed that t-observed
(3.57) was higher than t-table (1.999) (t-observed > t-table) at the level of
significance of p=0.05 and the degree of freedom (df) = 58. It can be concluded that
applying NHT Technique significantly affects students’ achievement in reading
descriptive text, or in other words, the null hypothesis is rejected , therefore the
alternative hypothesis is accepted