Having good skill in reading is extremely needed to absorb develop knowledge, technology, and to establish relation with other nations. Since English Foreign Language (EFL) Students of first grade of D Class at SMPN 1 Semen, which study in formal institution, didn’t get the vocabulary memorizing training, they just recognize limited vocabulary. As a consequence, they cannot get the informations of the articles, newspaper, even book. This research is intented to improve the students’ reading skill through Mnemonic Device. The aims of his research are to describe the implementation of mnemonic device to improve students’ reading skill in descriptive text of the first grade of SMPN 1 Semen in the academic year of 2015/2016, to find out whether the implementation of mnemonic device improving students“ reading comprehension in descriptive text or not and to find out to what extent of the use mnemonic device in improving students“ reading skill in descriptive text. The
research method that is used in this research is Classroom Action Research . The subjects of the research were 37 students in first grade of SMPN 1 Semen. The researcher uses two cycles; each cycle consists of planning, action, observation and reflection. The result of his research shows that there is an improvement of the students’ reading skill using “mnemonic” device. It can be seen from preliminary study showed that their achievement only reached 21% then increased to be 35% in the first cycle. Then, The achievement increased from 35% from the 1° cycle to 76% from the 2™ cycle. The steps of teaching reading by using mnemonic device to improve students’ reading skill are: (1) distributing the text, (2) showing the students some pictures and video, (3) asking the students to read and find the difficult vocabularies based on the text / video / picture given, (4) answering the students’ difficult vocabularies found by the students and giving example to memorize the difficult vocabularies using mnemonic (the loci method) , (5) asking the students to memorize the difficult vocabularies, (6) doing the test, (7) collecting of the test and, making conclusion. Based on the result of each cycle then compared each other, the researcher takes conclusion that (1) The application of mnemonic technique in learning reading descriptive text can improve the students’ activity in teaching and learning
process. (2) From the observation, the students’ activity shows the better progress than before. (3) The achievement result shows that the students’ achievement increase from 35% (1% cycle) to 76% (2 cycle). (4)Teaching reading can be
increased by using mnemonic technique.

Keywords: Reading, Mnemonic, Vocabulary