Improving Reading Comprehension through STAD of the Eighth Grade Students of SMP Kalam Kudus Bali I Gusti Made Mas Sika Antari 1 , I Wayan Pastika 2 , I Gusti Ayu Gde Sosiowati 3 Program Magister (S-2) Ilmu Linguistik, Fakultas Ilmu Budaya, Universitas Udayana e-mail: gekantari03@gmail.com 1 , wayanpastika@unud.ac.id 2 , sosiowati@yahoo.com 3 Abstract This study aimed to find out whether or not reading comprehension of the eighth grade students of SMP Kalam Kudus Bali in academic year 2019/2020 can be improved through STAD. The subject of this study was the students of the eighth grade especially VII B class. This research focused on figuring out the efficacy of STAD in improving reading comprehension, changing learning habit and to find out the factors which influenced the improvement of reading comprehension. The data was collected from the tests and questionnaire. The present study made use Classroom Action Research (CAR) with qualitative and quantitative data. The result of the pretest showed that the ability of the subjects still low and need to be improved. After the implementation of STAD in teaching learning process, the mean score of the subjects was increased and it meant that this technique was successful to improve not only their ability but also it could change their learning habit. It could be seen from the mean score of the pre-test, post-test 1 and post-test 2 was 69.67, 77.29 and 89.19. Keywords: teaching reading comprehension; STAD; learning habit; factors in reading comprehension. 1. Introduction Reading is one of the important skills in learning English that should be mastered by the students. It is a process of acquiring information which is delivered by the writer in the form of written text. The students’ comprehension can be improved through reading and also their critical thinking. Linse and Nunan (2005:71) state reading comprehension refers to reading for meaning, understanding and entertainment. In reading the readers not only read the text but they also should try to comprehend the meaning of the text to get the information that they want. In teaching learning process, it is very important to implement appropriate technique. STAD is one of the cooperative learning which can be implement to solve this problem because the students can work together in group with different levels and ability. These research questions are constructed to give a scientific direction and find scientific answers; the research questions are as follows: 1) How effective is STAD in improving reading comprehension of the subjects under study? 2) How effective is STAD in changing the learning habit of the subjects under study? 3) What are the factors which influence in reading comprehension of the subjects under study? 2. Theoretical Framework There are three kinds of theoretical framework were chosen such as: theory of cooperative learning, theory of teaching reading comprehension, theory of STAD and theory of learning habit in reading 71 www.ijrp.org IJRP 2020, 64(1), 71-75; doi:.10.47119/IJRP1006411120201545