THE USE OF KAHOOT!

APPLICATION ON IMPROVING STUDENTS

READING COMPREHENSION
Siti Kusumadewi
IKIP SILIWANGI BANDUNG

Abstract
The study will describe about the students’ progress on reading
comprehension by using Kahoot! application, the problems may occur on it and how
to overcome those difficulties. It will be a case study, so it will look intensely at one
class of 10 grade high school students in Cimahi. The observation, interview and
game will be conducted in obtaining the data. The test as students’ progress
evaluation will also be conducted. The expected result of this study that it will show
why the difficulties may appear so that the solution about it will be discovered.

Introduction
Reading is one of four skills that must be mastered by students when they learn
english language. Early research conducted by Papastergiou (2009, see Licorish et al,
2017) found that games help increasing students’ knowledge of computer memory
systems to an impressive extent than other computer-mediated learning tools,
especially, educational websites. The problem is there are so many students that still
think reading as something hard and boring. The aim of this study is to see how
students could improve their reading comprehension with the help of game-based
learning application named Kahoot!. This study examined how teacher should use
another fun ways to test students comprehension so they can improve their students
ability.
Reading is a complicated problem-solving process in which the reader makes
sense out of a text not only from the words and sentences on the page but also a
recalling process of ideas, memories, and knowledge by those words and sentences
as well as experience (Torres, 2009). Reading comprehension is an activity to build
our comprehension from the text by combining the information from the text with our
knowledge, so students can retell the text with their own words.
When we talk about reading, it’s always related to texts. The reason students find
reading is difficult is because they didn’t understand what is the information from the
text. Teacher can improve students interest in learning reading by improving their
reading comprehension. One of many ways to teaching reading is by game based
learning.
In teaching english, reading comprehension is needed so students can get engage with
the learning process. In teaching reading comprehension, there are several techniques
that can be applied (Adler, n.p). Some techniques are as in the following:
1. Monitoring comprehension
2. Metacognition
3. Graphic and semantic organizers
4. Answering questions
5. Generating Questions
6. Recognizing story structure
7. Summarizing
As we can see that one of techniques mentioned in teaching reading comprehension
is using answering questions. Teachers can give their students an activity of
answering question with a fun game namely Kahoot! Application.
According to Dellos (2015), Kahoot! is a student response system that engages
students through game-like pre-made or impromptu quizzez, discussions and surveys
also mention by (Byrne, 2013; Cross, 2014; Kahoot!, 2014; Thomas, 2014).
Kahoot! is a game-based student response system (GBSRS), an application that can
change the classroom format into a fun game class. Using a laptop or pc, the teacher
presents questions on the classroom screen and students answer them by means of
their mobile devices (Boden, 2018). Game-based learning is a tool that can improve
learners problem solving skills, improving their critical thinking and make a teaching
and learning process meaningfull (Dellos, 2015).
According to the information explained above, this study focused on following
questions :
1. How teachers change the classroom boring situation into a fun learning
situations using Kahoot! ?
2. How the students improving their reading comprehension through Kahoot! ?
3. What is the solution to overcome the difficulties if the problems appear in
learning reading comprehension using Kahoot! ?
This study is aimed to describe the students’ English reading comprehension
improvement using Kahoot! application in one high school in Cimahi. The subjects
of this study is one class of students in 10 grade that divided into 4 groups of that
consist of 4-5 students.
The instrument that the writer used in this study is the scoring section of
Kahoot! application. It consist of 10 questions. Also, by interviewing and doing direct
observation in order to get information needed.
 As stated before, the aim of this study is to improve students reading
comprehension through a game-based learning application, namely Kahoot!. Hence,
in order to get a good result, the writer will do a case study. It is a form of qualitative
descriptive that is used to look at individuals, a small group of participants and direct
observations, interviews, and test.
The procedure is as follows:
1. The teacher will provide material (text or presentation file) in the form
of descriptive text, in order to gain information on the way students gain
a reading comprehension in teaching learning process.
2. The interview of subjects will be conducted to obtain the specific
information from personal point of view by describing their own
comprehension.
3. The test, Kahoot! game will be conducted to see the students’
comprehension from the text.

The data obtained from observations, interviews and Kahoot! game will be analyzed
simultaneously, so that it will consist of detailed description of teaching reading
comprehension by using Kahoot! application.

References
Rafnis. (2018). Pemanfaatan Platform Kahoot Sebagai Media Pembelajaran
Interaktif. Jurnal Ilmiah Teknologi Pendidikan: Universitas Negeri Padang. Padang
Torres, Gomez. (2009). Improving Reading Comprehension Skills through Reading
Strategies Used by a Group of Foreign Language Learners. HOW Vol 16, NO 1.
Colombia.
Boden, GM & Lindsay Hart. (2018). Kahoot – Game Based Student Response System.
Compass. University of Greenwhich. Inggris.
Seven Strategies to Teach Students Text Comprehension. (n.d). Reading Rockets.
http://www.readingrockets.org/article/seven-strategies-teach-students-text-
comprehension?page=1 ( terakhir diakses 17 Jan. 19)
Licorish, Sherlock & Li George, Jade & Owen, Helen & Daniel, Ben. (2017). “Go
Kahoot!” Enriching Classroom Engagement, Motivation and Learning Experience
with Games.
Dellos, Ryan. (2015). Kahoot! A digital game resource for learning. International
Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning p 49-51. South Korea.