The Influence of Teacher Certification Program Toward English Teacher Performance in Teaching Reading Comprehension (A Qualitative Study at SMA N 3 Takengon)

This study entitled “The Influence of Teacher Certification Program toward English Teacher Performance in Teaching Reading Comprehension”. The purpose of this study is to find out what extent does the program influence English teachers performance in teaching reading comprehension and also to find out the responses of principals or vice principal of curriculum about their perfomance before and after certificated. This research was conducted on SMA N 3 Takengon with three English Teachers who have been certificated as participants, fifteen students at three different classes and a staff curriculum. In collecting the data the researcher interviewed the whole participants, observed the performance of three English Teachers and also analyzed their reading comprehension lesson plan documents. The data from interviewed were analyzed by thematic analysis technique with the result divided into several themes and observation data added with document analysis data. Data analysis showed that the teachers already known about certification means and purpose. They also knew become certificated teachers demand them to perfom more professional in every aspect of teaching learning process. In this case the researcher made it more specific only in their performance while teach reading comprehension. The fact showed that they knew how to make a good lesson plan of it, but in the implementation two of them still teach reading comprehension with same methods and unvaried medias or materials sources, so it gave effect to evaluation step. They used grammar translation method to teach reading comprehension but it made students hard to understand the materials. Therefore, those teachers only got the influence of certification program in term of administration aspect. Probably, base on the interviewed with vice principal of curriculum she gave a good response about the performance of them before and also after certificated, its really contrary with the result of students interviewed and also the observation that have done by the researcher. By considering the influence of certification program that only in administration aspect or completed reading comprehension lesson plan document not on their whole performance while teaching to act as professional Teachers, that matter can be the good output for further research