Chapter I
Introduction
This chapter presents background of
the study, statement of the problem, purpose of the study, significance of the
study, scope and limitation of the study and definition of key term.
1.1. Background
of the Study
There are many lists of the areas
of knowledge which every first language and second language learner must acquire. One
of them is Lexicon or vocabulary. In foreign language, it
plays an important role. In order to communicate well in a foreign language,
students should acquire an adequate number of words and should
know how to use them accurately Bandura
& Schunk (1981).
If
we say about learning a foreign language, it will be better at the first time
the student should learn the vocabulary of it, because without mastering vocabulary
they will find some problems in listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
According to Hornby (2000:1447), “Vocabulary is a list of words with their
meaning especially important for learning a foreign language”. It means that
vocabulary mastery is important for learning a foreign language.
Vocabulary
is one of the important components of English, so the English teacher has
responsibility in establishing the meaning of vocabularies in the students’
mind. It is not easy to be done. Sometimes, the students have difficulties in
using language. They try to memorize a certain number of words and their
meanings, they will forget it. Finally, they will be bored and they just have
less attention and motivation to learn it.
Students realize in the importance of vocabulary in foreign language
learning, but they tend to learn it passively due to some
factors. The first factor is that the students learn
through the teacher’s explanation for meaning or definition, spelling,
pronunciation and grammatical function which makes the
student bored. The second one is that vocabulary learning
as knowing a primary meaning of new words. The students usually only acquire new vocabulary through new words given by teachers or
textbooks (Postovsky (1981).
The students only transfer second language into
first language and vice versa. When they got an English text, they translate the word, one by one. And the other problem is the students
cannot use the language in real context. Therefore, it
needs strategy to help students learn language, especially
vocabulary to be more interesting and worth doing. The teacher also needs to
create a method or an activity that can stimulate the students
to be active, not passively learn by heart (Brassell, Danny & Leena Furtado 2008).
Vocabulary
is the central of language teaching and learning. It plays an important role in
the four language skills, which gives contribution to the learners to perform
or practice their skills better. It means that by mastering the vocabulary, the
learners will be facilitated to produce so many sentences in spoken or written
one. It is impossible for the learners to perform their English well if their
vocabulary is very poor.
Therefore
vocabulary mastery must be on the first priority in English language teaching
and learning. Without mastering the vocabulary, the learners will be difficult
to master the language skills. Vocabulary is one basic component to be
mastered. It is reasonable, remembering that the four language skills need
knowledge of words because they will get nothing without vocabulary. The large
the students master vocabulary the better they perform their language.
Nowadays,
English has been introduced in Junior High School Curriculum as the School
Local Content Decision. There are many schools which have involved this subject
as one of their local contents. Although it is taught in Junior High School,
the students are expected to acquire language competence including listening,
speaking, reading and writing. Because the general objective of teaching English
in the second grade of Junior High School is to prepare students have
competitive value in this global era and to introduce English (Enhancing
English as a Second Language Students’
Vocabulary Knowledge,
Retrieved on June 26, 2009).
Teaching
English in Junior High School especially vocabulary, the teacher has some
problem there are two difficulties. First, the students have difficulty in
memorizing the vocabulary. For example, when the teacher asked the students to
read the text, the students stopped it, because they are shy and do not know
how to read the word correctly. Second, the students were just silent or
answered the teacher’s questions by using mother tongue instead of using target
language when they answer the question because the students and the teacher
seldom use English in teaching learning process. The student’s vocabulary at the
second grade of MTS PSM TANJUNGANOM
NGANJUK are very limited, they feel bored and less motivated in learning
English.
In
this case, the students have low motivation since they think English is
difficult to learn. They also think that the language is not important for
living in the daily life. It is seen that the people around them do not speak
in English. It also makes them shy to speak in English, and they are afraid of
making mistakes while speaking using the language. Then, English teacher speaks
English rarely in the classroom. It does not motivate the students to imitate
the habit of speaking English at school. The teaching media is not always
suitable with the teaching material and method, so that it makes the students
difficult to master the vocabulary, then they can not make good and meaningful
sentences in written and oral form.
Therefore,
English is a new subject to the students of Elementary School, the teacher
should make English interesting to the students and they can enjoy it. In this
research, the researcher used games
in teaching learning process. According
to Rachmadi (2002:75) pictures are very useful and effective media in English
as a Foreign Language (EFL) teaching. They can be used to teach all language
skills such as listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Pictures can also be
used to teach structure, vocabulary, and cultural content.
They prefer to speak Indonesian or Javanese language to their teacher or friends. For the slow learners it’s
difficult for them to memorize the materials and needs more time in
understanding and accepting the materials. Beside, they needs explanation in
understanding the instruction when the test. The researcher found the students
of second grade at MTS PSM TANJUNGANOM NGANJUK got low score 50 until 55. So,
the researcher want to increase students vocabulary using games.
They
think that English is very difficult to learn. The students are easy to
memorize and accept the materials but they forget them easily. Sometimes they
prefer playing or chatting to doing or paying attention to the materials. One
of the possible causes of this problem is that the teacher still uses the
conventional method in teaching the materials. The teacher just explains the
materials and then gives exercise in written from. There is no variation or other
teaching media used by her. The only teaching media are text book and
blackboard.
This
method makes the students sometimes feel bored and sleepy, especially when it is
taught in the last session. The other cause is that the students never practice
the language whether when they are in the classroom or at home. They are afraid
of making mistakes when they speak English.
One of the activities of teaching and learning vocabulary which is
believed to be the best way of teaching and learning
vocabulary is through game. Games help and encourage many
learners to sustain their interest and work. Games also help the teacher
to create contexts in which the language is useful and
meaningful. The students want to
take part and in order to do so must understand what others are
saying or have written, and they must speak or write in
order to express their own point of view or give information.
There are so many games that can be applied by teacher concerning to
how to improve the students’ vocabulary mastery, such as
the alphabet game, the word guessing game, word search
and so on. These kinds of activities help both teacher and students in the process of teaching learning. Teacher is able to create a
situation in which the language or the vocabulary will be
used. However, in order to achieve the most from vocabulary games, it is
essential that suitable games are chosen. In addition, teacher’s attention,
creativity and ability are needed.
By seeing the advantages of using these games, the researchers try to
apply the game for the researcher observation. The teacher uses “word search”
game as one of the activities to improve the students’ vocabulary
mastery.
In this research, the researcher tries to find out the use of “word
search” game in learning vocabulary. The researcher will
investigate how the teacher implements “word search” game, to figure out the reasons behind the use of the game and to get a
description about teacher’s and student’s perceptions on
the use of the game.
Considering
the reason above, the researcher wants to give a solution especially in to
improve the students’ vocabulary mastery, so that later the students will be
able to speak in English well. The solution is by teaching vocabulary using Word
Search. It gives much opportunity for the students to practice and repeat the
sentence pattern and vocabulary. Beside, the Word Search is a kind of games
that will make the teaching learning process more attractive than before. The
students will feel fun, relaxed and enjoyed, and they will memorize the vocabulary
in different way. Based on the background above, the researcher would conduct a
study to improve the vocabulary mastery of the students using Word Search.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
Based on the background of the study, researcher wants to find out
the use of games in improving vocabulary mastery of English students.
The problem of the study as follows: How can word search games
improve the students’ vocabulary mastery of the second grade students’ at MTS
PSM TANJUNGANOM NGANJUK?
1.3 The Objectives of the Study
The success fulness of the teaching learning
process of the vocabulary mastery in the classroom depends on the process of
the interaction between the teacher and the students. The degrees of the
interaction in the classroom are influence by some factors such as the
materials, the method of the teaching and the environment of the class that
motivates the students to learn. Therefore, the objectives of the study are:
To describe how the games can improve the students
vocabulary mastery of the second grade students at MTS PSM TANJUNGANOM NGANJUK.
1.4 Significance of the Study
The
results of this study are expected to give contributions, to the teacher to use
“word search” game as one of worth doing activity to improve the vocabulary.
The most significant contribution of this study is to provide a
description of “word search” game and the vocabulary
teaching learning, which will show the implementations of
“word search” game in vocabulary learning.
The findings from this study can be used both of teacher and school
board as a consideration to improve the quality of
teaching learning especially in vocabulary teaching.
1.5. Scope and Limitation of the Study
There
are many ways to teach
vocabulary and it is not possible for the researcher to tell all of the
techniques. So, the researcher makes limitation as follows:
a)
The study will apply the games technique especially
cards in increasing vocabulary mastery to the needed students.
b)
This study focuses on the simple vocabulary specially
vocabulary of fruits and vegetables, animals, number, and family. It’s done
actively by the needed students of the second grade MTS PSM TANJUNGANOM NGANJUK.
1.6. Definition of Key Term
To
blowing wrong opinion about the term in this proposal thesis some definitions
are solved as follows:
a)
Improving :
Becoming or making better
(oxford, 1991:209). This research
is focused to improve the students’ vocabulary using games.
b)
Vocabulary Mastery :
Vocabulary mastery is how far students could acquire many words with their
meaning successfully and the
total number of words in language or words known to a person or the list of
words with their meaning or the back of a book for teaching a foreign language
(oxford, 1991:461).
c)
Games : Games are fun and nearly can be made enjoyable, games as tactics to
teaching vocabulary mastery. Games help bring the classroom closer to the real
world, no matter how contrived they may be.
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