ABSTRACT Detty Varita, 2016. The Application of Literature Circles To Improve Reading Comprehension at the Third Grade Students of MAN Cot Gue Aceh Besar. Thesis. Graduate Program in English Language Education, Syiah Kuala University, Darussalam, Banda Aceh. Advisors : (I) Dr. Sofyan A. Gani, M.A., (II) Dr. T. Zulfikar, M. Ed. Key Words : Reading Comprehension, Literature Circles This research is intended to investigate the effect of Literature Circles application in improving reading comprehension to the third grade students of MAN Cot Gue, Aceh Besar. The objective of this study was to figure out whether or not the application of Literature Circles increases students’ score in learning reading comprehension. Then, This study employed two classes selected to be the samples classified into the experimental and control group which consist of 20 students for each group. The experimental group was taught by using Literature Circles, while the control group was taught by using teacher-centered (reading aloud). The data of this research were collected by means of pre-test and post-test. The test given was multiple choice questions in order to see the students’ understanding in reading narrative text. The collected data were then analyzed by using t-test formula. The research findings show that the mean of the post test of the experimental group was 58.5, while the mean of the control group was 40.7. Comparing to the t-test score, the result of t-test reveals that the score of t-test was 4.69 while the result of t-table at a level significance with α = 0.05 was 1.697. it means that t-test was higher than that of the t-table score. The data indicates that the students who were taught by using Literature Circles significantly achieved a better score in reading comprehension than those who were not. It means that the alternative hypothesis is accepted and the null hypothesis is rejected. In addition, Literature Circles can be one of the alternative ways to be applied in teaching reading comprehension for the third grade students of senior high school.