IMPROVING VOCABULARY USING ILLUSTRATION FOR
FIFTH YEAR STUDENTS OF SD N GENDINGAN 4 NGAWI
IN 2011/2012 ACADEMIC YEAR
PUBLICATION PAPER
by
ANINDITA PUSPA WIDAYANTI A 320 070 033
SCHOOL OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION
MUHAMMADIYAH UNIVERSITY OF SURAKARTA
IMPROVING VOCABULARY USING ILLUSTRATION FOR FIFTH YEAR STUDENTS OF SD N GENDINGAN 4 NGAWI
IN 2011/2012 ACADEMIC YEAR
Anindita Puspa Widayanti Anam Sutopo
Nur Hidayat
English School of Teacher Training and Education Muhammadiyah University of Surakarta
ant_dhit@yahoo.co.id
SUMMARY
A. Introduction
Human being living in the society needs language. It is an important tool that helps people make communication among individuals or even nation. As an international language, English is studied for science, politics, and as a school subject. In Indonesia, English is learned formally by students in Junior High School for the first time.
Teaching English in elementary school is useful. Young students especially students in elementary school have big memory to memorize everything they learn. Thus, in elementary school, English is taught as an additional subject besides gardening, painting, region singing and handicraft. As elementary school is the place for students to learn English for the first time, the students just learn the basic vocabulary and grammar.
To master vocabulary the student should have ability in understanding and using vocabulary. Vocabulary mastery itself deals with words and meaning. The students are not only expected to select whether words are suitable to be taught to them but also to be able to use the words for communicating and expressing their idea both in oral and written forms. There are several criteria that learners can fully master a word; the learners are able to recognize the vocabulary in its spoken and written forms, spell and pronounce it correctly, relate it to appropriate objects or concepts, use the vocabulary in the grammatical form, recall it correctly, know in what ways it can combine with others words, also aware of its connotations and associations, and use it in appropriate situations.
To know the problems faced by the students in mastering vocabulary, the writer conducted observations, interviews, and pre-test. The following is the problems observed during the teaching-learning process of English in SDN Gendingan 4:
1. The students had difficulty to memorize the meaning of words.
2. They had bad pronunciation. They tended to pronounce the letters of the word in mother tongue.
3. They were not interested in English class. They thought that English is a difficult lesson, because the ways to pronounce and write are very different.
The observation also reveals the possible causes of the problem above, they are: 1. The technique of teaching vocabulary based on the book presentation. The
students were passive. The teacher focused on the book and the students did the exercise from the book during the teaching-learning process. The teacher never uses games, song, story, and realia.
2. The time to practice is limited. The English class was only once a week. 3. The material to teaching vocabulary only from a book. The students study
brings other teaching aids such as bigger picture or the teacher give body movement to get their interest.
Before implementing the technique, the researcher gave a pre-test to the students to know the students’ knowledge first. The result of pre-test showed that the students had low ability in mastering vocabulary. Most of the students had the difficulty to pronounce and spell the words. They also had difficulty in memorizing the meaning of words. When they did the test, they were worried and always cheating. They looked difficult in doing the pre-test. In the pre-test, the highest score was 86 and the lowest score was 30. It could be seen that the mean score of the students’ pre-test was 64.07. From the result of the students’ vocabulary mastery and the mean score of the students’ pre-test, it could be concluded that the result of pre-test was fair.
From the discussion above, the writer is interested in carrying out a research dealing with vocabulary teaching experiment using illustration. Illustration is one of teaching vocabulary methods, it looks like guessing word but it is more general than guessing word. Illustration not only uses sentences in giving clues but also uses pictures. The students must guess the word by those pictures. This method is useful for the students in memorizing word and grammar. From the teacher’s sentence question they can learn the sentence pattern. So, they learn grammar indirectly.
By this technique, it is expected that the teacher will be able to motivate the learners to learn and pay attention to the English materials, which the teacher presents, so they will not get bored. Brown (1973: 1) emphasizes that using various media will increase the English ability since students will earn the language skill they are expected to develop. Because of that, the writer writes a research paper entitled “IMPROVING VOCABULARY USING ILLUSTRATION FOR THE FIFTH YEAR STUDENTS OF SD N GENDINGAN 4 NGAWI IN 2011/2012 ACADEMIC YEAR”
.
Based on the background of the research, the problems are formulated as follows:
1. Can illustration improve students’ vocabulary in SD N Gendingan 4? 2. How is the implementation of teaching vocabulary using illustration at SD
N Gendingan 4 Ngawi?
3. What is the result of teaching vocabulary using illustration at SD N Gendingan 4 Ngawi?
4. What are the strengths and weaknesses of teaching vocabulary using illustration at SD N Gendungan 4 Ngawi?
KARANGANYAR”. The problem of her research that students were not interested in English class. They thought that English is a difficult lesson. She concludes that the games using English puzzle is good for student to improve their vocabulary mastery.
The second researcher is Adelia Lutfia Sari (2004) conducted a research entitled “The Use of Visual Aids To Improve Vocabulary Mastery The Fourth Year Students (An Action Research at SDN Gumpang 2 Kartasura). The problem of her research is the material to teaching vocabulary only from a book, the students study only seeing small picture from the book. The result of the study shows that the use visual aids in mastering vocabulary can overcome the students’ problem effectively. Their achievements of vocabulary improved as well as their motivation and attention in learning English. The students seem to be active in asking and answering the writer commend. They like to have interaction with the writer to ask the English term of something relating to the topic discussed.
The research above is not the same with the research done by the writer. The difference is, that the writer focused on the illustration of daily activity, either home and school to enrich vocabulary in SDN Gendingan 4 Ngawi.
The objectives of the study are:
1. To know whether or not illustration can improve vocabulary in SD N Gendingan 4.
2. To describe the procedures of teaching vocabulary by using illustration in SD N Gendingan 4 Ngawi.
3. To find out the result of teaching vocabulary using illustration.
4. To describe the strengths and weaknesses of teaching vocabulary using illustration.
B. Research method
In this chapter, the writer discusses the research method. In this chapter the writer elaborates (a) the type of research, (b) subject of the study, (c) object of the study, (d) data and data source, (e) method of collecting data, (f) technique for analyzing data, (g) teaching action, (h) teaching material, (i) testing technique.
In this research the writer used qualitative method. Qualitative method often involves no statistical analysis, it is associated with hypothesis generating and developing an understanding. Qualitative method collects the data through observation and then come up with a theory account for the data. It looks for hypotheses or theories that can explain the data collected or the facts that are observed. Thus, qualitative method is concerned more with the process.
The subject of this research is the fifth year students of SD N Gendingan 4 in the 2011/2012 academic year. The writer takes the fifth year that has 28 students. Consist 12 male and 16 female.
The form of data is the result of teaching action and the result of interview and also the test notes accumulated at the first and the last meeting. The data sources are: (1) Event, (2) Informant, (3) Document, (4) Test.
In this classroom action research, the researcher used test, observation, and interview to collect the data.
1. Test
Test consists of vocabulary items. It is given before meeting and after the action to know whether the students’ vocabulary increases or not. There are two kinds of test. Written test is done to measure the ability of the students to know the meaning of the words while oral test is done to know 19the students ability in pronouncing the words. But in this research the writer only uses written test.
2. Observation
The researcher observes all of the students’ activities during the teaching learning process.
3. Interview
Interview took from the students and teacher about English teaching learning process. Master and Alton (1971: 271) describe interview as a conversation between interviewer and respondent with the purpose of eliciting certain information from the respondent.
The data taken from two kinds of tests: pre-test and post-test. Pre-test is held before the teacher teaches new materials by using illustration. Teacher gives a test to the students by taking the previous materials. Post-test is given in order to know the ability of the students after getting the material. Finally, the score obtained from the post-test are analyzed. There are three steps of activities that occur in this research, they are:
1. Analyzing the data (pre-test and post-test)
After the writer gives pre-test and post-test to the students, she analyzes the pre-test and the post-test. She analyzes in how the students answer the question that the writer gives to them. The writer analyzes in each answer, which answer that have a lot of mistake and which answer that have a lot of correctly answer.
2. Grouping and interpreting the answer of interview.
3. Concluding the data by comparing the pre-test and post-test after the writer gets the result of pre-test and post-test, she is comparing the result of them. If the result of post-test is better than pre-test, it means that the writer’s explanation is successful.
The writer takes the material from English Book for Elementary School at fifth year students published by PT. INDAHJAYA Adipratama and “Kamus bergambar Tiga Bahasa” by Farida.
After giving the material, the writer gives a test (post-test) to the students. The writer gives an hour for the students to do the test. In this study, the objectives of the test are:
1. To measure the students achievement in understanding vocabulary using illustration
2. To compare the students achievement in understanding words.
C. Findings and discussion
C.1. Findings
In this chapter, the writer is going to discuss the objective teaching vocabulary, the instructional design, procedures in conducting vocabulary learning in the classroom, teacher’s and students’ roles, the implementation of action research, the result of teaching vocabulary using illustration, the strength and weakness of using illustration in teaching vocabulary.
1. The Description of SD N Gendingan 4
SD N Gendingan 4 is a one of the elementary school in gendingan village, Widodaren subdistrict, Ngawi regency. It has ± 3750 m2, consist of 1 office, 6 classroom, 1 clinic, 1 library, 1 canteen, 1 mosque, and school yard for ceremony and sport. SD N Gendingan 4 has 12 staff, consist of headmaster, 8 teachers, 3 staffs administration. SD N Gendingan 4 has 170 students, consist of grade 1 has 27 students, grade 2 has 24 students, grade 3 has 24 students, grade 4 has 43 students, grade 5 has 28 students, and grade 6 has 24 students. 2. Pre-cycle
Before implementing the technique, the researcher gave a pre-test to the students to know the students’ knowledge first. This was aimed to measure students’ knowledge of the topic before the treatment, make a comparison with the post-test and know whether or not the student vocabulary improved. The topics of pre-test were about transportations, occupations, and daily activity. The pre-test consisted of 10 items of oral test (pronunciation) and 20 items of questions test. After doing pre-test the researcher calculates the mean score of the students’ pre-test as follow:
It could be seen that the mean score of the students’ pre-test was 64.07. From the result of the students’ vocabulary mastery and the mean score of the students’ test, it could be concluded that the result of pre-test was fair.
3. While- cycles
The teacher and researcher analyzed the result of the research which was collected in several sources of data such as lesson plan, classroom material, observational report, score of pre-test and post-test of each cycle. Researcher findings also included improvement of students’ vocabulary mastery and teaching-learning process of improving vocabulary mastery. Students’ vocabulary mastery was improved by using illustration in teaching-learning process. Students could pronounce, spell, and understand the meaning of the word correctly. They could practice to write the English word and had courage to speak up in English. The class became more attractive and fun. The students also more familiar with group activity. The improvement of the result of the action can also be identified from the comparison between the mean score of the pre-test and post-test. The mean result for pre-test was 64.07 while the post-test was 83.89.
Based on the result of the cycle, illustration could improve the students’ ability in understanding and mastering vocabulary such as pronunciation, spelling, writing, and translating the words correctly.
The general achievement of improving vocabulary mastery using illustration could be seen from the mean score of the students. To know the summary of each cycle, it could be seen from the table 1 below:
Table 1: The result of students’ score.
17
N: the total (amount of the students). M: the average of the students’ score.
4. The Strengths and the Weaknesses of Improving Vocabulary Using Illustration
Based on the teaching action in SD Negeri Gendingan 4 Ngawi, the writer found the strengths and weakness of teaching vocabulary using illustration as follows:
1. The strengths of teaching vocabulary using illustration
a. The students have high interest in following the teaching learning process. Most of the vocabulary materials are concrete vocabulary. The teacher demonstrated the illustration in teaching the concrete vocabulary. Most of children are more interested in guessing word than listening to the teacher’s long explanation.
b. The vocabulary taught daily vocabulary, such as train, pilot, bus, etc. it is easy to be understood, memorized, and also remembered by the students.
c. The teacher focuses on the speaking and writing vocabulary.
It means that the teacher and the students pronounce and write the words correctly. In writing, the teacher used the way of dictating the words studied before.
d. The students are motivated to be active in the class.
Students can be motivated to be active in the class when the teacher explains about the guessing word to the class and asks the students to give a response.
2. The weakness of teaching vocabulary using illustration
a. The teacher must spend her spare time at home to prepare material and design the classroom activity. It includes the kind of sentence and pictures that will be used.
b. Difficult to control the class. Students always chats their self to discuss the material and little pay attention of teacher’s explanation.
c. The students use mother tongue because when they speak they do not know the words in English. When the students use mother tongue, the teacher tells the words in English.
C.1. Discussion
The process of improving vocabulary mastery using illustration was conducted by using classroom action research (CAR). It involved four steps such as planning, implementing, observing, and reflecting. This research was implemented into two cycles. Each cycle consists of four meetings and each meeting took 80 minutes. The procedures are opening in teaching-learning process, Building Knowledge of Field (BKOF), Modeling of Text (MOT), Joint construction of Text (JCOT), Independent Construction of Text (ICOT) and closing.
The implementing in cycle 1 was generally well organized although the researcher found some weaknesses. Some students were not repeated the teacher’s pronunciation. Some students’ spelling was still poor although their vocabulary mastery in generally increased. Situation of the class was very noisy when they made their group free. Some students looked ashamed when teacher asked them. They were unfamiliar to work in a group because they never worked in group before. But in general, they paid more attention to the lesson.
The implementing in cycle 2 made great improvement result, it was better than cycle 1. Students more paid attention to the lesson, answer teacher’s questions, and took part in learning activities. The class became more attractive and fun. The poorest component of vocabulary in the result of post-test 1 was about spelling because sometimes students still made incorrectness for spelling some words. Teacher gave more spelling activities. As the result, students could practice to write the English word and had encouraged to speak up in English.
Based on the result of each cycle, illustrations improve students’ ability in understanding the vocabulary such as pronunciations, spelling, writing, and translating the words correctly. The strengths of improving vocabulary using illustration are; students have high interest in following the teaching learning process. The vocabulary taught daily vocabulary, it is easy to be understood, memorized, and also remembered by the students. The teacher focuses on the speaking and writing vocabulary. It means that the teacher and the students pronounce and write the words correctly. The weaknesses of improving vocabulary using illustration are; teacher must spend her spare time at home to prepare material and design the classroom activity. It includes the kind of sentence and pictures that will be used. Difficult to control the class. Students always chats their self to discuss the material and little pay attention of teacher’s explanation. The students use mother tongue because when they speak they do not know the words in English. When the students use mother tongue, the teacher tells the words in English.
D. Conclusion
Based on the teaching action of teaching vocabulary using illustration in the SD Negeri Gendingan 4 Ngawi, the writer can summarize several points.
1. The implementation of teaching vocabulary using illustration in SD N Gendingan 4 Ngawi are as follows:
a. Opening
Starting from the teacher came to the class then greeting to the student.
b. The teacher asking some questions about the topic to the students. c. The teacher explaining the illustration to the students
d. The students imitating the teacher’s pronunciation
e. The students pronouncing the name of word that teacher has been explaining.
f. The teacher wrote the spelling of the words on the blackboard and the students pay attention to the teacher.
g. After that the teacher dictating the words that students studied before h. Closing
The teacher closed the teaching-learning process by give greeting to the students and saying good bye to them.
2. The result of teaching vocabulary using illustration at fifth year students of SD N Gendingan 4 in the academic year 2011/2012.
We could see that improving vocabulary using illustration was able to achieve a god result. It means that the teaching-learning process was effective and successful. In pre-test the mean score was 64. 07, in post-test 1 the mean score was 80.46, and in post-test 2 the mean score was 83,89. It could be seen from the increasing result of students’ achievement of the
post-test 2 and was better than post-test 1. Post-test1 was better than pre-test.
3. The strength and the weakness of teaching vocabulary using illustration. a. Strengths
1) The students have high interest in following the teaching learning process.
2) The vocabulary taught daily vocabulary, such as train, pilot, bus, etc. it is easy to be understood, memorized, and also remembered by the students.
3) The teacher focuses on the speaking and writing vocabulary. 4) The students are motivated to be active in the class.
5) The students are interested in learning English. They memorize the word more quickly by illustration because it likes a game.
b. Weaknesses
1) The teacher must spend her spare time at home to prepare material and design the classroom activity. It includes the kind of sentence and pictures that will be used.
2) Difficult to control the class. Students always chats their self to discuss the material and little pay attention of teacher’s explanation.
3) The students use mother tongue because when they speak they do not know the words in English. When the students use mother tongue, the teacher tells the words in English.
E. Suggestion
At the end of this chapter, the writer proposes some suggestions, which will be useful for the researcher and readers:
1. To the other researcher
It is expected that the other researcher can develop this research based on their own views and their different objects. In other words, they can use this research as the reference to get information and find the books, which are related to their research paper.
2. To the readers
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