ABSTRACT
IMPROVING THE STUDENTS’ VOCABULARY MASTERY THROUGH STORYTELLING AT BUNGA MAYANG ISLAMIC KINDERGARTEN
SCHOOL BANDAR LAMPUNG
Fikri Kurniawan
This research was aimed at: 1) analyzing the improvement of students’ vocabulary mastery through storytelling, 2) finding out the problems the students face in learning vocabulary through storytelling. This research was quantitative with one – pretest posttest design.
The data were obtained from the pre-test and post-test to find the improvement of the students’ vocabulary mastery, and also from the interview to find out the problems the students face in learning vocabulary.
The results showed that the students’ mean score of the pre-test was 40.62 and the mean score of the post-test was 55.62, in which their gain score was 15. The result of the hypothesis test showed that the hypothesis of this research was accepted (p<0.05, p=0.000). Specifically, storytelling technique improved the students’ vocabulary mastery in all aspects of vocabulary, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Moreover, storytelling technique mostly improved students’ mastery in nouns reaching to 21 %. Besides that, the problems the students faced in learning vocabulary through storytelling could be divided into: a) Problems from the student which covers in understanding adverbs, memorizing the number of vocabularies, understanding what words the teacher said, and pronunciation; b) Problem from materials in which the teaching material contains too many difficult words.
CURRICULUM VITAE
The researcher’s name is Fikri Kurniawan. He was born on June 15th, 1987 in Metro. He is the son of Sawina and Bustami.
He began his formal educational institution for the first time at TK Al- Kautsar in 1993 and graduated in 1994. He continued his study at SD N 4 Mulyojati, Metro and graduated in 2000. Then he continued his study at SMP N 3 Metro and graduated in 2003. After that he continued his study at SMAN 3 Metro and graduated in 2006. In the same year, in 2006 he was registered as a student of D3 of English Program, in Language and Arts Education Department of Teacher Training and Education Faculty Lampung University. And then he transferred to S1 degree in 2010 in the same department.
MOTTO
“Being happy doesn‟t mean that everything is perfect. It means that you‟ve decided to look beyond the imperfections.”
DEDICATION
By offering my praise and gratitude to Allah SWT for the abundant blessing to me, I’d proudly dedicate this piece of work to:
My beloved parent, Sawina.
My beloved younger brother and sister, M. Prayogo Maulana and Octavia Permata Sari.
My beloved foster family, Siti Suwarni and family. My motivator, Mr. Satria Bangsawan and family. My fabulous friends.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Alhamdulillahirabbil’alamin, praise to Allah SWT, the Almighty and Merciful God, for blessing the writer with faith, health, and opportunity to finish this research. This research entitled “Improving the Students‟ Vocabulary Mastery through Storytelling at Bunga Mayang Islamic Kindergarten School Bandar Lampung” This research is submitted as a compulsory fulfillment of the requirements for S-1 Degree of English Education Study Program in Language and Art Education Department of Teacher Training and Education Faculty at Lampung University.
Gratitude and honor are addressed to all persons who have helped and supported the writer for the completion of this research. Since, it is necessary to be known that this research will never have come into its existence without any supports, encouragements and assistances by several outstanding people and institutions. Therefore, the writer would like to acknowledge his respect and sincere gratitude to:
1. Prof. Ag. Bambang Setiyadi, M.A., Ph.D., as the first advisor, for his criticism, motivation, and encouragement in encouraging the writer to think more scientifically and critically.
2. Dr. Muhammad Sukirlan, S.Pd., M.A., as the second advisor, for his assistance, ideas, guidance and carefulness in correcting the grammatical structure of the writer‟s research, paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, and even word by word.
3. Prof. Dr. Patuan Raja, M.Pd., as the examiner, for his support, encouragement, ideas, suggestions, and great motivation in supporting the writer to finish his study as soon as possible.
4. Prof. Dr. Cucu Sutarsyah, M.A., as the Chief of English Education Study Program and all lecturers of English Education Study Program who have contributed their guidance during the completion process until accomplishing this research.
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9. The writer‟s beloved parents, Sawina, who has always prayed and motivated the writer.
10.The writer‟s siblings, M. Prayogo Maulana and Octavia Permata Sari, who have supported the writer.
11.The writer‟s foster family, Siti Suwarni and family, who always pray, motivate and inspire the writer.
12.The writer‟s motivator, Mr. Satria Bangsawan and family, who teaches many things about life.
13.All the writer‟s friends who always suggest, support, motivate and guide the writer in revising his research
Finally, similar to other novice research, the writer believes that his writing is still far from perfection. There may be drawbacks and weaknesses in the research. Thus, comments, critiques, and suggestions are always welcome for the purpose of better research. Somehow, the writer hopes that research would give a positive contribution to the educational development, the reader, and to those who want to accomplish further research.
Bandar Lampung, The writer,
3.4.4. Conducting the Treatments ... 31
4.1.4. The Improvement of the Students’ Vocabulary Achievement ... 48
4.1.5. Result of the Interview ... 50
4.2. Discussion and Findings ... 51
4.2.1. The Finding of Teaching Vocabulary through Storytelling… 51
4.2.2 The Finding of the Significant Improvement of Students’ Vocabulary Mastery through Storytelling………... 54
LIST OF TABLES
Table Page
1. Table of Specification of Try Out Test ... 35
2. Distribution Frequency Table of the Students’ Pre-test Score ... 46
3. Distribution Frequency Table of the Students’ Post-test Score ... 47
4. The Result Verbs Achievement………... 48
5. The Result Adjectives Achievement ... 48
6. The Result Adverbs Achievement ... 49
7. The Result Adjectives Achievement ... 49
8. The Students’ Result of Aspect of Vocabulary... 50
9. The Students’ Mean Score of Pre-test and Post-test ... 51
10. The Students’ Vocabulary Mastery Improvement ... 52
LIST OF APPENDICES
I.
INTRODUCTION
This chapter describes the background of the problem which includes the reasons for conducting the research, the problems in teaching vocabulary, and the suitable activity which is needed to improve the students‟ vocabulary achievement. This chapter also describes the formulation of the problem, objective of the research, uses of the research, scope of the research, and definition of terms.
1.1 Background of the Problem
Language is an important part of communication. To which people are able to communicate with other people from other countries. They are expected to master more than one language, especially English as the international language. To be able to communicate well, people will need selection of English words known as vocabulary. According to Huyen and Nga (cited in Kaosar, 2012), vocabulary plays an important role in the four skills in learning language. Therefore, it is important for the students to learn vocabulary as the basic competence to learn those four skills in English as Cameron (2001:72) states that vocabulary is a base to the learning of a language at initial level.
kindergarten. Different techniques are also used by teachers for young learners, such as teaching vocabulary through lists, translation, synonyms, antonyms, contexts, and so on. Unfortunately, some conventional techniques above are not interesting for young learners. Those techniques are too traditional to teach young learners in this globalization era.
Based on the writer‟s pre-observation in Bunga Mayang Islamic Kindergarten school, it was found that the students got problems in learning English especially vocabulary. First, the students got difficulties to understand the vocabulary that was learned and the class was not fun and enjoyable since the teacher use conventional technique like translation and memorization of vocabulary lists. Second, to teach vocabulary, teacher‟s creativities, appropriate methods, and the variation of the activities are required especially for young learners. Harmer (2007) states that teachers of young learners need to spend time understanding how their students think and operate. They need to be able to pick up on their students‟ current interests so that they can use them to motivate the children.
Therefore, it is a challenge for teachers of young learners to think creatively in teaching vocabulary to find activities which provide a fun and enjoyable situation. It is agreed that if students are learning in a fun and enjoyable situation, it will be easier for them to understand and catch the material.
learning situation. In such an enjoyable and fun situation, students may learn better because they will be highly motivated to be involved in teaching learning process.
In line with that, Slatterly and Willis (2001) state “Young learners acquire language unconsciously. The activities you do in class should help this kind of acquisition. Stories are the most valuable resource you have. They offer children a world of supported meaning that they can relate to. Later on you can use stories to help children practice listening, speaking, reading, and writing.”
The reason for selecting kindergarten students as the subject of this research is because of their beginning position which still needs much attention. Besides that, because they are in the very early beginning period in learning English, their vocabulary achievement should be more concern.
Therefore, based on the explanation above, this research was conducted in the level of kindergarten students in order not only to teach vocabulary in different technique start from very early school, but also to find out students‟ problem toward the use of storytelling in the teaching of English vocabulary.
1.2 Identification of the Problems
1. Students‟ lack of interest when they are learning vocabulary.
2. Students have some difficulties in understanding the vocabulary learned. 3. The improvement of student‟s vocabulary achievement is still
4. Students, especially young learners, need to have fun and enjoy the learning process.
5. In teaching vocabulary, teachers usually use conventional technique so that the students are not eager to learn.
1.3 Limitation of the Problems
Based on the identification of the problems above, the focus of the research are the students‟ problems and students‟ improvement in vocabulary so that
the writer wants to offer storytelling technique to teach vocabulary and the writer also wants to find whether the students face any problems or not in learning vocabulary through storytelling technique.
1.4 Formulation of the Problems
Based on the background of the problem mentioned previously, the formulation of the problem is as follow:
1. How is the improvement of students‟ vocabulary achievement through storytelling?
2. What problems do the students face in learning vocabulary through storytelling?
1.5 Objective of the Research
1. To analyze the improvement of the students‟ vocabulary achievement through storytelling.
2. To find out the problems the students face in learning vocabulary through storytelling.
1.6 Uses of the Research
The uses of this research are:
1. Theoretically, the result of this research is expected to give contribution to the theory of teaching as a reference for the next researcher who will concentrate in improving the students‟ vocabulary achievement through storytelling. In addition, the conclusion of this research can be used as a reflection to improve the students‟ vocabulary achievement through storytelling.
2. Practically, to inform the readers, English teachers, language researchers, and other practitioners of how to improve students‟ vocabulary achievement through storytelling.
1.7 Scope of the Research
was selected by using simple random sampling and the research focused on vocabulary of content words (noun, verb, adjective and adverb) and the students are just expected to understand the vocabulary without focusing on the pronunciation and written aspect and the story used was narrative story taken from “Roddy meets his friends” story, “Kev gets ready for school” story and “The snake meets his friends” story. The increase of students‟ vocabulary achievement will be measured by a set of pre test and post test in form of multiple choice tests.
1.8 Definition of Terms
Definition of terms aims at avoiding misunderstanding about the terms in the research. The definitions of terms are:
Conventional Technique
Conventional technique in this study refers to old teaching methods, such as translating and vocabulary memorization.
Storytelling
Storytelling in this study refers to the activity of telling stories through voice and gestures to students by using some story aids, such as realia, pictures and puppets.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary a list of words usually arranged alphabetically and defined, explained,
or translated into the range of language, the stock of word a person‟s command
Young Learners
II. FRAME OF THEORIES
This chapter describes the concepts which are related to the research, such as concept of vocabulary, concept of teaching vocabulary, concept of storytelling. This chapter also describes procedures of teaching vocabulary through storytelling, theoretical assumption, and hypothesis.
2.1 Review of Previous Research
There have been several studies dealing with teaching vocabulary. First, Ariestawati (2011) has done a research about The use of storytelling in teaching vocabulary to young learners. She used storytelling to see the students‟ achievement of vocabulary. The finding showed that the use of storytelling was effective in improving students‟
vocabulary mastery.
Second, Ari (2007) conducted her research about teaching vocabulary. The results showed that the students‟ difficulties in learning vocabulary were in understanding the difficult words and in memorizing the new vocabularies.
teaching vocabulary to young learners. When the teacher needed flexibility to give knowledge of cultures, the teachers could use song and storytelling.
Based on the previous studies above, it can be inferred that storytelling was able to improve students‟ achievement of vocabulary. Therefore, the researcher was
interested in using storytelling to investigate whether there was an improvement of students‟ vocabulary achievement. Furthermore, the researcher also added some
qualitative data to analyze how far the technique can improve students‟ vocabulary achievement and to analyze the problems students‟ face/undergo during teaching learning process.
2.2 Vocabulary
Vocabulary is a component in language that cannot be separated when learning the language. According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, vocabulary is the total number of words in the language. Brown (2001: 377) states, “vocabulary is the basic building blocks of a language”. It can be said that
vocabulary is a basic element of language that enables people to understand and to use the language.
Moreover, vocabulary is total number of words in a language that has meaning. In more specific, Fries (1974:4) classifies the vocabulary into four types as follow:
a. Nouns
Nouns are the name of subject or things which have a part of speech inflected for case signifying a concrete or abstract entity. Nouns also change form to show number and possession (boy, boy's, boys, boys) such as:
The boy sitting on the chair is my brother
The boy's a handsome student
The boys are visiting the zoo
Those are the boys ' car
According to Frank (1972: 6) noun can be classified into five types:
1) Concrete noun is a noun that names anything (or anyone) that can be perceived through physical sense. Concrete noun (flower, girl) such as in: 1) He gives me a fragrant flowers, 2) She is my brother's girl friend. Abstract noun (beauty, justice) such as in: 1) My mother is a manager of beauty salon. Countable (chairs, tables) such as in: 1) The chair is
broken of my false, 2) He pushes the table to the in front of the class.
2) Abstract noun is usually the name of a quality, state or action.
Quality, for examples: goodness, kindness, whitener.,. darkness,
brightness, honesty, wisdom, bravery, cowardice, etc.
Action, such as: laughter, theft, movement, judgment, hatred struggle, fight, flight, treatment, etc
3) Proper noun is the name of some particular person, place, or thing. A proper noun always begins with a capital letter, for examples: Mr. John Smith, Paris, Dutchman, Thanksgiving Day. as in: 1) Mr. Smith is . an English lecture in my collage, 2) Paris is the - capital city of
French, 3) My parents celebrate Thanksgiving day of my younger
sister).
4) Countable noun (count noun) is noun with both a singular and a plural form, and it names anything (or anyone) that can count. Non countable noun is a noun which does not have a plural form and which refers to something that could not usually. A non-countable noun always takes a singular verb in a sentence. The examples of Non countable noun (sugar, sand) such as in: 1) I need some sugar for a cup of tea, 2) My
brother makes a sand palace in a beach.
5) Collective noun is the name of a group of person, things, or animals taken together and spoken of as one whole. The examples of Collective noun (committee, class, crew) such as in: 1) The school committee held a meeting today, 2) This class is so dirty of plastic
b. Verbs
Verbs is action done by those things which have a part of speech without case inflection, but inflected for tense, person and number, signifying an activity or process performed or undergone. Verbs typically have four or five forms (walk, walks, walked, walking, etc) such as in:
1) They walk to the cafeteria on the corner of the street
2) She walks out from the market
3) The man walked into the bank
4) The girl is walking in a cat walk
The function of which are too complicated for a brief description. They are used primarily to make statement about nouns and pronouns. Frank (1972: 47) mentions that verbs can be classified into five types.
Finite and non-finite verb.
A finite verb (sometimes called main verbs) is a verb that has a subject; this means that it can be the main verb in a sentence. It shows tense (past / present etc) or number (singular / plural). For example: I live in Germany. (I is the subject - live describes what the subject does - live is a finite verb).
participle. For example: I travelled to Germany to improve my German. (To improve is in the infinitive form).
Auxiliary verb
A sentence or phrase can have two interlocked verbs. The main verb gives the primary action, whilst the auxiliary verb adds subtle detail. Common auxiliary verbs include the verbs to be, to have, to do. Auxiliary verbs, which are sometimes called helping verbs, act as helpers to other verbs. They appear in front of action verbs and linking verbs. Let's view some examples: The Girl Scouts are meeting after school today. I had fun. You will be happy
Reflexive verb
A reflexive verb is a verb whose agent performs an action that is directed at it. It characteristically takes a reflexive pronoun as its object. Examples: He perjured himself He shaved
Transitive verb and intransitive verb.
Linking Verb.
Linking verbs do not express action. Instead, they connect the subject of the verb to additional information about the subject. For example: Keila is a shopaholic. The predicating or linking verbs (be, seem, look) as in sentences: 1) The want to be a nurse, 2) He seems like my partner in my office, 3) She look like an artist. Transitive verbs (give, write) such as in: 1) My teacher gives the students some advises for facing the final examination, 2) The lecturer writes a research book.
Intransitive verbs (go, come) such as in: 1) They go to the movie theater to watch Harry Potter film. Reflexive verbs (express oneself, wash oneself), auxiliary verbs (be, have, do), and finite or non-finite verbs, e.g.: 1) He washes his car himself 2) He are very happy.
c. Adjective.
Qualities of the things, that is: adjectives. Most short adjective has three forms to show degree (pretty, prettier, and prettiest) for example:
1) Dona is a pretty student
2) Hery is prettier than Dona
3) Artha is prettiest than all the students in my class
visit the museum today, 2) He buys a gold ring for his mother, 3) He gave
me an expensive bracelet.
Demonstrative is an adjective that points out which item, object, person or concept. Demonstrative adjectives always come before the nouns they refer to. For examples (this, that) in sentences: 1)1 bought this book yesterday, 2) 1 like that cake very much.
Possessive adjective is a part of speech that modifies a noun by attributing possession (or other sense of belonging) to someone or something. For examples (my, your, the girl's): 1) My laptop is broken, 2) Your hair is so beautiful, 3) The girl's bag is so cute.
Numeral adjective is the adjective that describes the amount of something, for examples (four, twenty, fourth, twentieth): I have thirty six students in a class.
Adjective of indefinite quantity is the adjective that describe indefined amount of something for examples (some, few), such as in sentence: I buy some beautiful flowers. Relative and interrogative adjective (whose, which) for example: He is a man whose the car repaired.
Proper adjective is an adjective that takes an initial capital letter, for examples (a French dish, a Catholic church) such as in sentence: Obama built a wonderful Catholic church in a central town.
Compounds adjcetive is an adjective that comprises more than one word for examples: (a good-looking girl, absent-minded, a wall-towall carpet, a never-to-be-forgotten plot) such as in the sentence: Sarah is a good-looking girl.
d. Adverb.
How the action done, that is: adverbs Adverb has a part of speech without inflection, in modification of or in addition to a verb. Adverb also does not change form, but has characteristic forms of its own. It is used to modify anything but nouns and pronouns. Frank (1972: 148) summarizes the category of adverbs into five, adverbs of manner (slowly, silently), adverbs of place (inside, there), adverbs of time (yesterday, tomorrow), adverbs of frequency (sometimes, often) and adverbs of degree (completely, very), e.g.: 1) She walks slowly, 2) He put the present inside the box, 3) We will
visit an orphanage tomorrow, 4) We sometimes go swimming.
e. Pronoun
The pronouns are I, he, she, it, we, you, they, and who with their compounds. Pronoun. Pronoun has a part of speech substitutable for a noun and marked for person. It is also used as substantives, and they might be considered sub-class of noun, but their inflections are quite different, and their use does not exactly parallel those of nouns.
relation of grammar structure, such as conjunction (and, but, because) article (a, an, the), auxiliaries (do, does, did)
The example of sentences:
1) Conjunction:
Anton and Tino go to school together everyday
I fall in love with him but he does not.
She did not buy that short because it was so expansive
2) Articles:
My neighborhood bought a beautiful bicycle yesterday
My mother fries an egg for me
The building was built by a famous architecture
3) Auxiliaries:
Barry do not see the traffic lamp so he gets the accident today
Peter does not bring his laptop today
Paul did his homework well
3. Substitute words, those which represent the individual things or specific action as substitutes for whole form classes of words, that is identifies (anybody, anyone).
The example of sentences:
Anybody would think he is crazy
4. Distributed words, those are distributed in use according to grammatical matter as the presence or absence of a negative, such as: some, any, other, etc. The example of sentences:
They will find some other solution as soon as possible
You can come any day you like
Turn it over on the other side!
Burton (1982:98) explains that the large number of vocabularies help us to express our ideas precisely and vividly. He also states that the larger our vocabulary is, the better vocabulary we can perform in the language. Viewing this idea, we can say that the more vocabulary they gain, the more skillful the language they can perform.
In line with that, according to Lehr, Osborn and Hiebert (2005), vocabulary is divided into oral vocabulary and print vocabulary. Oral vocabulary includes words that we use in listening and speaking, while print vocabulary includes words that we use in reading and writing.
2.3 Teaching Vocabulary to Young Learners
Basically, the children like pictures and sounds and they tend to imitate them because they will enjoy the teaching material where they seem to be involved in it. According to Harmer (2007), the children learn something not only from the explanation but also from the interaction and from what they see, hear, and touch and they have the enthusiasm and the curiosity about everything around them. Moreover, Cameron (2001) states that when the teachers teach vocabulary to young learners, the young learners need concrete vocabulary that is related to objects they can see and handle. It implies that the children will only retain the words that are close to their environment such as things that they can see, play, interact with and touch.
Madylusa (2004, cited in Maolanie, 2008) gives several steps on how to present new vocabulary to the children: (1) “present concrete words”. It shows that the teachers
should give the clear meaning of the new words. The teachers should avoid the use of mother tongue in English classroom; (2) “implement pronunciation/ drilling”. The teachers should give the correct model of pronunciation to the students. The students also have to get a lot of chances to say the words in order to get used to pronouncing the words correctly; (3) “practice”. The students should
practice to use of the words in their activities so they will get accustomed to using the words correctly in their life.
“essential steps” in teaching vocabulary to the children: (1) “having sources for encountering new words”; (2) “getting a clear image”. The image consists
of audio, visual or both of them in the form of the new words; (3) making a strong connection memory between the form of the words with the meaning of the words; (4) using the words in the children‟s life.
From the explanation above, it can be concluded that the basic principle of teaching vocabulary are applying activities that are enjoyable but still full of educational contents, presenting clear images that contain audio, visual or both of them, interacting with the children using the object in the learning process, giving the correct model of pronunciation, and practicing the words in their activities in order to make them get accustomed to using them correctly.
2.4 Storytelling
Storytelling is one of the activities commonly used in language learning. It offers good atmosphere of interacting each other. According to Cameron (2001: 160), “Storytelling is an oral activity, and stories have the shape they do because they are designed to be listened to and, in many situations, participated in”.
for a longer time.
From the definitions above, it can be concluded that storytelling is the use of language in oral activity to deliver events in words and sometimes by some improvisations.
In this research, the story of teaching English vocabulary was taken from “Roddy meets his friends” story, “Kev gets ready for school” storyand “The snake meets his friends” story.
2.5Storytelling as Teaching Technique
Storytelling has many advantages to be used in teaching-learning process. As stated by Mazinanian (2009), cited in Ariestawati (2011), storytelling is an excellent teaching strategy because stories ignite students‟ interest, help students
create vivid mental images and activate the thinking process. In addition, storytelling also provides an enjoyable learning situation, motivates learners and grows learners‟ language awareness.
First, storytelling provides an enjoyable learning situation. As stated by Cameron (2001), stories offer a full imaginary world, which are created by the language, which allows learners to enter and enjoy as they learning language. In the enjoyable learning situation, learners will be highly motivated and high self confidence. In such condition, learners‟ affective filter is low and it enables them
Second, storytelling can increase learners‟ attention and retention to the teaching material. Brown (2001) says that the use of storylines, familiar situations and characters and meaningful purposes in using the language will make attention and retention of the young learners improve. Reaching the learners‟ attention is the first step which is considered to be important in teaching learning process. In addition, it is believed that learners‟ retention will improve
when they deal with attractive things.
Third, stories are useful tools for growing learners‟ language awareness. Wright (1995: 5) says “Stories help children become aware of the general „feel‟ and sound of the foreign language”.
Based on the explanations above, it can be concluded that storytelling is helpful in teaching learning process because it provides an enjoyable learning situation, motivates learners, increases learners‟ attention and retention to the teaching material and grows learners‟ language awareness.
2.6Teaching Vocabulary through Storytelling
Storytelling is a unique way for students to develop an understanding, respect and appreciation. Based on Scott and Ytreberg (1990: 33) stories play an important role to play in the child‟s development and language development. It
storytelling can make the learners‟ curiosity of words‟ meaning increase. They
will try to find meaning of words in stories willingly, so that they will not feel under pressure. In line with this, Wright (1995) says that children want to find meaning in stories, so they listed words with their own purpose. If learners can find the meaning of new words, they are rewarded by understanding the story. Therefore, they will be highly motivated to improve their ability to more understand the stories. In addition, Cameron (2001: 163) says, “Children will pick up words that they enjoy and, in this way, stories offer space for growth in vocabulary”. In other words, storytelling can stimulate learners to enrich their vocabulary. Once the learners feel interested in the stories they will automatically want to understand them.
In line with that, as stated by Elley (1989); cited in Cameron (2001). He says that word learning correlated significantly with the frequency of words‟ occurrences in the story. The more frequent learners find the words, the easier learners will be in memorizing those words. There are more words repetition in stories, so it can be said that storytelling is helpful in learning vocabulary. In accordance with this, Cameron (2001) states that words and phrases repetition is one of the story‟s features, which is most helpful for language learning.
vocabulary learning.
2.7 Procedures of Teaching Vocabulary through Storytelling
Based on expert ideas, there are some procedures of using storytelling in teaching vocabulary. The steps of how to use storytelling proposed by the researcher according to Nichang (2008) as follows:
1. Pre-activity
a. Warm up the children by doing some activities, for example, singing or chatting. etc.
b. Introduce children to the topic by asking them questions or hiding something from the story. Try to link to children‟s experience. c. Create a situation by aids or by questions.
d. Introduce the main characters by puppets, masks and pictures to attract and keep children‟s attention.
e. Set a purpose for children, give them a reason to listen to the story. 2. Whilst-activity
Teacher tells the story.
While telling the story, we need to have some skills. The use of language and aids can help to support children‟s understanding.
1. We can make the most to use visual aids such as masks, big pictures, puppets, real objects, cut figures, etc.
a. Voice
Appropriate intonation and stress, different voices of characters, different paces, and exaggeration can give children a deeper
impression of the language in the story. This can help them pick up chunks.
b. Body language
To use enough body language can help to bring out the meaning of the story. The teacher‟s actions, gestures, facial expressions can create
clear situations. Andrew (1995), cited in Nichang (2008), suggested that while telling a story, we should make our movements simple and slow, a little bit exaggerated.
c. Pausing
It creates time for children to think and work out what happens at the point of the story.
d. Predicting
It can help to involve children in the story. They would try to work out meaning while they want to know the result.
3. Post-activity
2.8 Theoretical Assumption
Since vocabulary can be considered as the basic building blocks of a language; therefore, vocabulary is an important part of language and it should be introduced as early as possible in order to help the language learners to use the language well. Language learners, especially children, they have different characteristics. They have an enormous capacity for finding and making fun and they also delight in imagination and fantasy. Thus, by telling a story, young learners will be able to remember the things in the story well.
2.9 Hypothesis
Based on the theories and explanation presented, the researcher proposed hypothesis as follows:
1. There is an improvement of students‟ vocabulary achievement after being taught through Storytelling.
III. RESEARCH METHOD
This chapter describes the design of the research, how to collect the data from the subject of the research and how to analyze the data. This chapter also describes research procedure, schedule of the research, validity and reliability of the test instrument, data treatment, and hypothesis testing.
3.1. Research Design
This research is a quantitative study which uses one group pretest-posttest design. There is one class as the subject of the research which will be chosen purposively. The research design is as follows:
T1 X T2 T1: Pre-test.
X: Treatment. T2: Post-test.
(Setiyadi, 2006:133).
story telling was implemented. The post-test was administrated afterward, to analyze the improvement of the students’ vocabulary achievement through storytelling.
The interview was conducted in this research. The interview was conducted in the form of open questions and formal types. It was conducted toward some representatives of the students as the interviewees, which were chosen from low and high scores based on the mean score of the post-test, to find out the problems the students face in learning vocabulary through storytelling, in which their answers were classified and generalized as the resource.
3.2. Subject of the Research
This research was conducted purposively in Bunga Mayang Islamic Kindergarten School as the subject of the research.
3.3. Data Collecting Technique
In collecting the data, the research procedure uses these following steps:
3.3.1. Administering the Try-Out
3.3.2. Administering the Pre-test
The pre-test was administered in the B2 class of Bunga Mayang Islamic Kindergarten School as the observation class before giving the treatment of teaching vocabulary through Storytelling to see the students’ basic vocabulary mastery.
3.3.3. Administering the Post-test
The post-test was administered in the B2 class of Bunga Mayang Islamic Kindergarten School after the treatment of teaching vocabulary through storytelling was implemented. The result of the post-test was compared with the result of the pre-test to analyze the improvement of the students’ vocabulary achievement through storytelling.
3.3.4. Conducting the Interview
The interview was conducted in the B2 class of Bunga Mayang Islamic Kindergarten School, in which the students’ answers were classified and generalized as the resource. The interview was conducted to find out the problems the students face in learning vocabulary through storytelling.
3.4. Research Procedure
In conducting the research, the research procedure uses these following steps:
3.4.1 Determining the population and chose the sample.
3.4.2. Conducting the Try-out Test
was chosen purposively out of experimental class, to know the quality of the test as the instrument of the research. The numbers of the tests items were 30 items which contained three options of answer for each (A, B and C). The time allocated was 30 minutes. This test was administered to the students in order to have a good test quality, which has not only good reliability and good validity, but also it was not too easy and too difficult.
3.4.3. Administering the Pre-test
The pre-test was administered in the B2 class of Bunga Mayang Islamic Kindergarten School in the first meeting before the treatment of teaching vocabulary through storytelling was implemented, to see the students’ basic vocabulary mastery.
3.4.4. Conducting the Treatment
After having the pre-test, the treatment of teaching vocabulary through storytelling was implemented in the B2 class of Bunga Mayang Islamic Kindergarten School.
The steps of how to use storytelling proposed by the researcher according to Nichang (2008) as follows:
1. Pre-activity
b. Introduce children to the topic by asking them questions or hiding
something from the story. Try to link to children’s experience. c. Create a situation by aids or by questions.
d. Introduce the main characters by puppets, masks and pictures to attract
and keep children’s attention.
e. Set a purpose for children, give them a reason to listen to the story. 2. Whilst-activity
Teacher tells the story.
While telling the story, we need to have some skills. The use of language and aids can help to support children’s understanding.
1. We can make the most to use visual aids such as masks, big pictures, puppets, real objects, cut figures, etc.
2. The use of language also supports children’s understanding. a. Voice
Appropriate intonation and stress, different voices of characters, different paces, and exaggeration can give children a deeper
impression of the language in the story. This can help them pick up chunks.
b. Body language
To use enough body language can help to bring out the meaning
of the story. The teacher’s actions, gestures, facial expressions can
c. Pausing
It creates time for children to think and work out what happens at the point of the story.
d. Predicting
It can help to involve children in the story. They would try to work out meaning while they want to know the result.
3. Post-activity
Choose some suitable follow-up activities, related to the story, to check
children’s understanding, to give chance for children to try out or to
practice the introduced language.
The vocabulary which was given in the pre-test was given again to the students, then telling them through a story that the students took part in some activities in the story. The students had the cards of the pictures related to the vocabulary that was learned. During telling the story, the students were asked to see the picture once it was mentioned.
3.4.4. Administering the Post-test
3.4.5. Analyzing the result of pre test and post test
The researcher gave score for the students’ answer in pre test and post test. In this step the researcher used inter-rater to check the students’ result in order to avoid the subjectivity in giving correction.
3.4.6. Comparing the result of pre test and post test
After analyzing the result of pretest and post test, the researcher compared those results to answer whether there is significant improvement made by the students after being taught through classic songs.
3.4.7. Conducting the Interview
The interview was conducted in the B2 class of Bunga Mayang Islamic Kindergarten School, in which the students’ answers were classified and generalized as the resource. Some representatives of the students as the interviewees were chosen from low and high scores based on the mean score of the post-test. The interview was in the form of open and informal questions in informal situation (the questions must be in the form of
related to the advantages of using storytelling and problems that students
might face in learning vocabulary based on students’ perception.
3.5. Validity and Reliability
3.5.1. Validity
The validity of the test is the extent to which it measures what it is supposed to measure and nothing else (Heaton, 1991:159). In order to measure whether the test has a good validity, the researcher analyze the test from content and construct validity.
Content validity is concerned with whether test is sufficiently representative and comprehensive for the test. In the content validity, the materials given were suitable with the school curriculum. To fulfill this validity, the researcher saw all the indicators of the instrument and analyze them whether the measuring instrument represent the material that was measured or not. While all indicators were based on the material, it meant that the instrument was fulfilled the criteria of content validity. In this case, the researcher used the vocabulary from the book learned by the students. The book that was used was “Paket Super Lengkap Kurikulum
TK B”.
test was more relevant to our particular situation and was also necessary to check whether test items had good content validity.
Table 1. Table of Specification of Try Out Test
Content Aspect Items Percent
Vocabulary Verbs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 23.33%
Moreover, construct validity is concerned with whether the test is actually in line with the theory of what it means to know the language (Shohamy, 1985: 74). Construct validity focuses on the kind of test that is used to measure the ability. It means that the test items should really test the students whether they have mastered the material that has been taught or not. According to Setiyadi (2006:26), if the instrument just measure one aspect, for example vocabulary, the construct validity can be measured by evaluating all items in the test. If all items have measured vocabulary mastery of the students, this instrument has fulfilled construct validity.
3.5.2 Reliability
Reliability of the test can be defined as the extent to which a test produces consistent result when administrated under similar conditions (Hatch and Farhady, 1982:243). Split-half technique was used to estimate the
reliability of the test and to measure the coefficient of the reliability between odd and even group, Pearson Product Moment formula is used is as follows:
rl: Coefficient of reliability between odd and even numbers items. x: Odd number.
y: Even number.
To know the coefficient correlation of whole items, Spearmen Brown`s prophecy formula is used. The formula is as follows:
rk =
r1: The reliability of the half test. (Hatch and Farhady, 1982:246).
3.6. Data Treatment
3.6.1. Normality Test
Normality test is used to measure whether the data in the subject of the research is normally distributed or not (Setiyadi, 2006:168-169). The
students’ scores of the pre-test and post-test in Bunga Mayang Islamic Kindergarten School class were analyzed by One-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov formula through SPSS 17 to gain the normality test. The hypotheses for the normality test are as follow:
H0 : The data is not distributed normally. H1 : The data is distributed normally.
In this research, H1 will be accepted if p > α, and the researcher used level of significance 0.05.
3.6.2. Level of Difficulty
the following formula that is used is:
LD = N R
LD: Level of difficulty.
R: The number of the students who answered correctly.
N: The total number of the students who are following the test.
The criteria are: differentiates between high and low level students on the test. A good item according to the criteria is one which good students will do well and bad students will fail. To know the discrimination power of the test, the
N: Total number of the students.
The criteria of discrimination power are:
1. If the value is positive discrimination, it means that a large number of more knowledgeable students than the poor students answer the item incorrectly. If the value is zero, there will be no discrimination.
2. If the value is negative, it means that more low-students than high-level students answer the item correctly.
3. Generally, the higher the discrimination index, it will be better, in which in the classroom situation, most items should be higher than 0.20 indexes. (Shohamy, 1985:81).
3.6.4. Scoring System
In scoring the students result of the test, Arikunto`s formula was used. The ideal higher score is 100. The scores of the pre-test and post-test are calculated by using formula as follows:
S = 100
N R
S: The score of the test.
R: The total of the right answers. N: The total items.
3.7. Data Analysis
Analysis means categorizing, ordering, manipulating, and summarizing of data obtained to answer the research questions (Kerlinger, 1988:125). The purpose of analysis is to reduce data to be intelligible and interpretable so that the relation of the research problem can be studied. Therefore, the data from the interview was collected and interpreted to find out the problems the students face in learning vocabulary through storytelling.
In order to analyze the improvement of the students’ vocabulary achievement through storytelling, the data was analyzed by these following procedures:
1) Scoring the pre-test and post-test.
2) Tabulating the result of the test and calculating the mean of the pre-test and post-test.
3) Drawing a conclusion from the tabulated results of the pre-test and post-test, then analyzing by using Repeated Measure T-test of SPSS 17 for windows, i.e = X1 – X2 to test how significant the difference between the
score of pre-test and post-test, in which the significance is determined by p<0.05. (Hatch & Farhady, 1982:114).
The researcher also used qualitative data to support this research in order to see whether or not there were some problems or difficulties faced by the students during teaching learning process through Storytelling. The researcher knew whether there were some differences between the previous technique taught by the
teacher and the technique which was used by the researcher through Storytelling. The researcher also intended to know whether or not the students enjoy in learning through storytelling.
The instrument used was interview. The interview was conducted in experimental class in the form of open and informal questions (the questions must be in the
form of explanation or description rather than “yes” or “no” answers, to avoid the
students from being reluctant to answer the questions given). The interview was used to know the students’ opinions and respond toward the Storytelling technique that was used by the researcher. This interview was held after conducting the treatment and post test. The researcher asked the students’ opinion about effectiveness of using Storytelling in teaching listening. To analyze its qualitative data, matrix analysis, in this case description analysis was used, since the researcher used his own idea, including his own interpretation toward the data (Setiyadi, 2006:262).
3.8. Hypothesis Testing
In testing the hypothesis that the teaching learning through storytelling would
improve the students’ vocabulary achievement significantly, Repeated Measure T-Test was used. The hypothesis was also statistically tested by using statistical
computerization (SPSS 17), in which the significance was determined by p<0.05. Therefore, the hypothesis which could be cited was as follows:
V. CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
This chapter describes the conclusion of the result of the research and also the suggestions from the researcher to the other researchers and English teachers who want to try to apply storytelling in teaching vocabulary.
5.1. Conclusions
After conducting the research in the B2 Class of Bunga Mayang Islamic Kindergarten School Bandar Lampung and analyzing the data, the conclusions are drawn as follows:
1. There was significant improvement of the students’ vocabulary mastery after being taught through storytelling. It was proved by the increase of the students’ mean score in the post-test which was higher than in the pre-test. Their post-test score increased from 40.62 to 55.62 in which the gain was 15 specifically.
2. There were several factors contributing to the effectiveness of the storytelling: the stories’ selection, the use of story aids and the words’
repetition in the stories
a. Problems from students:
Understanding the story
Memorizing the number of vocabularies Understanding what words the teacher said Pronunciation
b. Problem from materials: too many difficult words.
5.2. Suggestions
Based on the result, it can be concluded that storytelling was effective in improving students’ vocabulary mastery, so it can be used as an alternative
teaching method in teaching vocabulary. There are some suggestions regarding the use storytelling in teaching vocabulary to young learners.
- For teachers
There are some suggestions for the teachers who want to apply the storytelling in the classroom as an alternative teaching method.
Relating to the selection of the story, the selected story must be suitable with the teaching materials, students’ level and age. The story must
With regard to the story aids used in storytelling, such as pictures and gestures, the pictures used must be clear and attractive, so that those pictures will be very helpful for the students’ understanding to both the words’ meaning and the story itself. Then, if the storyteller uses
gestures, the gestures must be understandable and cover the meaning of words intended.
- For the next researchers
The following are some suggestions for the next researchers who are interested in doing research on the use of storytelling in English teaching.
Regarding the subject of the study, the next researchers may involve two classes, a class as an experimental group and the other as a control group so that the result can be compared between the two classes.
