Yulistin Waeo. 2025. The Use of Small Group Discussion in Improving Reading
Comprehension at the Tenth Grade of SMAN 2 Palopo (Supervised by Sri
Damayanti & Andi Mangnguntungi S).
The objective of this research is to examine whether or not the use of small
group discussion is effective in improving students' reading comprehension at
SMAN 2 Palopo. This research applied a quantitative method with a quasi
experimental design to investigate whether the use of small group discussion has a
significant effect on students' reading comprehension, focusing on narrative text.
The sample was obtained using purposive sampling technique, resulting in two
classes with 35 students in each group. The findings of this research showed that
both the experimental group and the control group experienced improvement in
reading comprehension after the treatment. The mean score of the experimental
group increased from 56.00 in the pre-test to 76.00 in the post-test, while the
control group‘s mean score increased from 57.00 to 68.00. The results of the
paired sample t-test indicated that there was a significant difference between the
pre-test and post-test scores in each group. However, the result of the independent
samples t-test showed that the significance value was higher than 0.05, indicating
that there was no statistically significant difference between the reading
comprehension scores of the experimental group and the control group after the
treatment. Therefore, the null hypothesis (H₀) was accepted and the research
hypothesis (Hₐ) was rejected. It can be concluded that the use of Small Group
Discussion did not show a statistically significant advantage over the conventional
teaching method in improving students‘ reading comprehension at the tenth grade
of SMAN 2 Palopo. Nevertheless, Small Group Discussion can still be used as a
supportive teaching strategy to encourage students‘ interaction and collaboration
in the learning process.