THE EFFECT OF COOPERATIVE READING AND COMPOSITION TECHNIQUE ON READING COMPREHENSION AND COMPOSITION WRITING SKILL

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of cooperative reading and composition on reading comprehension and composition writing skill of secondary school students; and to compare this method with traditional reading, writing pedagogical methods. The population of the study is two 8th grade students in Polis Amca Secondary School at 2012 – 2013 academic term. The study used pre- and post-tests with a control group. The experimental and control groups were assigned randomly. There are 28 students in both experimental group and control group. For reading comprehension, achievement tests consisted of cognitive behavior test and pre-post tests were employed whereas for writing skill, as data collection tool, students were required to write compositions, and composition evaluation criteria were used. Moreover, cognitive behavior reading comprehension tests were employed in order to determine background knowledge of students. Additionally, interview, which is a qualitative data collection method, was employed to be able to support the findings obtained from quantitative data. In the results of statistical evaluations, it was observed that there was a significant different in favor of experimental group in terms of reading comprehension and writing skill. Furthermore, it was concluded that cooperative reading and composition method had a significant impact on students’ reading comprehension and writing skill, and the results were supported through qualitative interview findings.