Jigsaw Technique in Teacing Reading Review

Advantages and Disadvantages of Jigsaw Technique in Teacing Reading

            Jigsaw is a teaching technique which at first makes students work in a group. It was designed by a social psychologist, Elliot Aronson, to help weakening racial cliques in forcibly integrated schools. I think this technique is useful for the teaching-learning process since it has more advantages than disatvantages. In addition, its advantages can be solved by some solutions.

            The first advantage of jigsaw technique is that it promotes students’ self esteem. Self esteem is about how much students value themselves and how important they think they are. It's how they see themselves and how they feel about the things they can do. In jigsaw activities there are two names of the group “home group” and “expert group”. The “expert group” consists of students from different “home group” which will have full responsibility toward the text or material that they have to explain to their “home group” later. By having the responsibility of what they have to do and get, students are valuing theirself. That makes all students do their work seriously in order to have confidence and good value about theirself. So, I think jigsaw technique serves te wide space for every students to make their self esteem and develop it more.  

            After talking about the jigsaw technique’s advantages related to how students interact with themselves by valuing how important they are, the next reason is about how the students interact with other students in the classroom. In other words, jigsaw technique can develop students’ social skill. Social skill is any skill facilitating interaction and communication with others. Social rules and relations are created, communicated, and changed in verbal and nonverbal ways. In jigsaw’s activities, developing social skill happens when students interact and communicate with other students verbally in discussing the material in the text, or when they are trying to explain the material to others. Beside communicating verbally, the students also create social relation to others by understanding and appreciating when their friends whom are from different family, culture or religion are explaining or giving information about material they have learn. So, all the students will improve their communication ability by those activities.

            Beside having self esteem and social skill advantages, jigsaw technique also has another advantage, that is, it helps to develop skill in oral communication of the students. Oral Communication is the ability to talk with others to give and exchange information and ideas, such as, asking questions, explaining and persuading. Some people think that reading activity is a passive learning. They think that reading class can not improve speaking ability of students. On the contrary, by jigsaw technique, reading activities can be a filed for students to improve their oral communication ability. When each student from “home group” is given a task to collect the data of the different material, beside learning independently by reading the text, they will also have a disscusion with the “expert group” to makesure that material they will present to their “home group” is not wrong. In this session, the students will ask and give comment each other orally. The oral communication does not stop at this stage because after they have finished collecting the information from “expert group”, they will use their speaking ability again in presenting the material they have got to other members of “home group”. In conclusion, the jigsaw technique can make students improve their speaking ability.

            Those are three advantages of jigsaw technique. There are two disadvantages of jigsaw technique which can  be solved by some solutions.

            The first disatvantage of jigsaw technique is that it is a bored technique for bright students and it can be solved by encouraging them to develop the mind set of “teacher”. The bright student is the one who has the elevate ability in learning, like easy to memorize, talkactive, or fast to understand something. When the text of reading is too easy to be learned, it can be a bored class for the bright students. Otherwise, boredom can appear when the bright students are not satisfied with the explanation from the slower students. They will not really pay attention about what lower students present. If this problem happens, it is time for the teacher to be a mediator and facilitator for the bright students. Teacher can  encourage the bright students to develop the mind set of “teacher”. It means that the bright students are persuaded to be the source information for other students without burdening them too much. By that way I think the class will be challenging and interesting for all students.

            Another disadvantage is that it is a rather difficult technique for slow students, and it can be handled by giving them more space to ask and depens on the “expert group” and giving more attention. Student is the centre of the class activities, and all of the students must be given the satisfaction of the lesson including the slow students. Slow student is someone who is difficult to catch the material and slow to understand the lesson, in this case is reading text. Sometimes, in jigsaw technique of reading, poor students will feel unconfident because they have no bravery and ability in explaining their thoughts. As the teacher, it is a must to help the slowers students by giving them more space to ask and depens on others, in this case is the “expert group” which will help them to collect the information they need. Beside that, giving more attention for the slow students like asking their problems and trying to stimulate them to be confidence. That is another way to make the class not to be too heavy for the poor students. So, in those activities all students can still enjoy the learning process.

            Thus, two disadvantages of jigsaw technique which can be solved by teacher’s solutions and its three advantages that can improve students’ learning activity. So, I conclude that jigsaw technique is a good way to teach reading as long as it is apllied interestingly by the teacher.