USING VOCABULARY NOTEBOOK TO DEVELOP STUDENTS
’
VOCABULARY IN SMP KANISIUS GIRISONTA
THESIS
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree of
Sarjana Pendidikan
Dewi Susilowati
112007097
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
SATYA WACANA CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY
iii
COPYRIGHT STATEMENT
This thesis contains no such material as has been submitted for examination in any course or accepted for the fulfillment of any degree or diploma in any university. To the best of my knowledge and my belief, this contains no material previously published or written by any other person except where due reference is made in the text.
Copyright@ 2013 Dewi Susilowati and Prof. Dr. Gusti Astika M.A.
All rights reserved. No part of this thesis may be reproduced by any means without the permission of at least one of the copyright owners or the English Department, Faculty of Language and Literature, Satya Wacana University, Salatiga.
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USING VOCABULARY NOTEBOOK TO DEVELOP STUDENTS
VOCABULARY IN SMP KANISIUS GIRISONTA
Abstract
This study attempted to answer the research question “What are the students’ responses
towards using vocabulary as a teaching technique to develop vocabulary?” Prior the data
collection, five students from SMP Kanisius Girisonta Ungaran were taught and asked to make and learn new words/difficult words by means of vocabulary notebook strategy for approximately 3 months. The analysis showed that the students had positive responses about learning vocabulary using notebook. The students reported that they liked the vocabulary strategy by using vocabulary notebook since it helped them to learn new words easily and quickly. Moreover, the students view that the strategy made them to become autonomous learners than before (without using vocabulary notebook).
Keywords : learning strategies, teaching technique, vocabulary, vocabulary notebook
INTRODUCTION
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with the vocabulary teaching is that only few words and small parts of vocabulary are commonly used. Vocabulary is something which must be at the forefront of our minds as an English teacher. The students find problems when they should deal with the vocabulary.
The students also found some obstacles because of the lack of vocabularies. They faced those obstacles when they entered junior high school. They didn‟t know much about
vocabularies. Moreover, they faced some difficulties when they should read, write or speak in English. They didn‟t have enough ability to do activities like writing, reading, speaking and listening because they only have limited vocabularies. Besides, they felt worry when they were in English class because they cannot follow the teaching learning process in English class.
As my experience, the teaching techniques of vocabularies that were used by the English teachers influenced the students‟ development in learning languages. The English teachers in Junior High School should teach the English vocabulary properly because vocabulary is the basic in learning vocabulary. If the students acquire high amount of vocabularies, they could develop their skill in writing, speaking, listening, reading. Students who wanted to write need to acquire many words. Furthermore, the students who wanted to speak need many words to verbalize what they wanted to say. It was prevailed for listening and reading skill too. So, the students would not have any difficulties in understanding the language if they have high amount of vocabularies.
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can be conveyed. The statements from the experts proved that vocabulary played an important role in learning language because vocabulary is the basic knowledge to improve the four skills (writing, listening, reading, and speaking) in learning language as a foreign language. Thus, vocabulary played a vital role in learning foreign language.
Lado (1964) discussed the patterns of difficulty in vocabulary teaching. He highlighted the key issues related to words, the native language factor and the patterns. He stated that while dealing with vocabulary, one should take into account the three important aspects of words: their form, their meaning and their distribution; and one should consider various kinds of classes of words in the function of the language. He says that the forms, meaning distribution and classification of words are different in every language. He revealed that these differences might lead to vocabulary problems. Moreover, Allen (1983) and Nation (2001) listed the different things that learners need to know about a word before we can say that they have learned it. These include: the meanings of the word, spoken and written forms, word part, grammatical behavior, collocations and register.
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to remember and use only the active vocabulary productively. In addition, it is very important to include vocabulary lesson not just as a single words, but also the larger chunks such as collocation, phrases, or expression even the whole sentences as Sokmen (2006,cited McCarteen). As we know three of them are included as a variety of vocabulary. They can have good foundation that helps them to improve their skill.
It is believed that in learning vocabulary at the beginning level, the teacher should concentrate on the function of word and more frequently used vocabulary items which are very crucial (Finocchiaro, 1974). Moreover, the vocabulary should relate to the environment and experience of the students. So, the students can practice how to use and implement it in the daily lives. Mc Carteen (2007) stated that learning vocabulary is largely about remembering the “words” and “meaning”. The students need to see, say, and write newly learned words many
times before they understand them. The teacher should repeat and recycle the words to teach the students. So, the students acquire the word and know how to use it.
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that involve using. According to Smitt (1995), keeping vocabulary notebooks is classified as a „cognitive strategies” in learning language especially to develop vocabulary. He described
cognitive strategies as similar to memory strategies, but are not focused so specially on manipulative mental processing; they are including repetition and using mechanical means to study vocabulary, including the keeping of vocabulary. So, it is believed that in cognitive learning the student learn in “memorization andrepetition” of vocabulary.
Vocabulary notebook provides the students to creatively and practically use the vocabulary in the daily life or activities. Walter and Bazkourt (2009) supports that vocabulary notebook is an effective way to master vocabulary. It is very important to the students who live in non native speaker environment. The students learn by labeling things around them, for example they label the name of the furniture in the classroom or their houses, or try to remember the name of the fruit and vegetable when they go to the market. It is the very effective way to make the students learn vocabulary, not just by studying English at school, but they can study English anytime and do activities to practice and they will like this kind of activities.
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issue, the research question is addressed“What are the students’ responses towards using vocabulary as a teaching technique to develop vocabulary?”
The purpose of this study was to examine vocabulary notebook as a teaching technique in learning vocabulary that is appropriate for the students to develop their vocabulary. This study also provides the information of how to apply vocabulary notebook as a teaching technique. Besides, the result of this study should be useful for students who learn English. They can implement vocabulary notebook to increase their vocabulary. They can create their own vocabulary notebooks as creative as they can. Moreover, they can list the words that they need to be learnt to improve their vocabulary. Vocabulary notebook is one of the self studies about vocabulary. So, everyone can use it as an aid to learn vocabulary, because the fundamental of learning foreign language is vocabulary.
The result of this study hopefully can be used by the students in learning foreign language especially English to develop their vocabulary. Thus, the students can learn many vocabularies by using vocabulary notebook. Vocabulary notebook also can be used as a way to help the teacher as a teaching technique in the classroom.
The Study
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my participants. It was the selection of participants based on the people who were easily accessible.
This research used open-ended questionnaire and interview as the research instrument. I used Bahasa Indonesia in my questionnaire and interview to make the students understand the question easily. An open ended questionnaire required of open ended responses. In the questionnaire, participants were free to write their responses to the question. I also used in-depth interview (1-2 hours) to discover additional information. In this interview, I used semi-structured interview (Patton, 1990) which was similar to structured interview but it allowed for greater flexibility. The flexibility included changing the order of questions to provide opportunity to the participants. The interview was audio recorded.
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vocabulary notebooks regularly to verify the progress. I checked my students to make sure that they recorded the words properly and improved their vocabulary regularly. In the last meeting, I gave them an open ended questionnaire and interviewed them in order to know their responses about keeping vocabulary notebook.
When doing the interview with the students, I recorded and transcribed it using clean transcription that only focused on the content of the interview. It did not provide any extra information as to manner in which the content was communicated. There were 35 transcriptions about keeping vocabulary notebook. Then, I analyzed the answer from the participants. After that, I drew a conclusion about the student‟s responses in using vocabulary notebook.
Finding and Discussion
This section presents the analysis of the data obtained from the interviews with the participants.
Table 1. Response to question 1
This question seeks to find out if the students like using vocabulary notebook or not. The responses can be seen in the table below.
Student Response
A Eh ……aku suka, e udahka elajar
Eh ….. I like it, it is easy to be learnt)
B Saya suka, membantu saya menghafalkan kosakata (I like it, it helps me to remember the vocabulary)
C Ya, saya isa e a a di a a saja….
Yes, I a read it e ery here….
D Ya, saya isa e a a ya ke a a saja……
yes, I a ri g it e ery here……
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The table shows that the students give positive responses in using vocabulary notebook. They said “yes” and “like” in using vocabulary notebook when they learned new vocabulary.
They stated that they could study vocabulary anywhere by using vocabulary notebook.
The first table explains that the students‟ applied the vocabulary notebook as their learning strategy to improve their vocabulary. Learning strategies helped learners became more autonomous (Rebecca, 2001). It is true because the students learn individually by using vocabulary notebook. According to Nunan (2001), learning strategies are ‟operations employed by the learner to aid acquisition, storage, retrieval and use of information, specific actions taken by the learner to make learning easier, faster, more enjoyable, more self –directed, more effective and more transferable to new situations in the language learning process. Schmitt (1997) also states that learning strategies are more important in second language learning with the increasing nature of vocabulary acquisition and its emphasis on large exposure to the language. In order to learn and use English efficiently, learners need to expand proper learning strategies for long-term learning.
A Ya, saat saya belajar, saya dapat mengingat kembali dengan menggunakan vocabulary ote ook…..
(yes, while I am studying, I can memorize (the words) using vocabulary ote ook…..
B saya udah e gi gat kata kata ya g susah….
(I memorize difficult words easily)
C i i e a tuku dala proses elajar ahasa I ggris….
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D saya elajar de ga ara ya g sederha a….teruta a dala mempelajari kosakata I lear E glish i si ple ay…..espe ially i lear i g o a ulary…..
E i i sa gat e ye a gka da asyik……
(it is very interesting and enjoyable)
The table above shows that student A, B, C, D, E have the same experience in using vocabulary notebook. They state that vocabulary notebook helps them in learning vocabulary through a simple and enjoyable way. They are interested because they are able to remember vocabularies by using the notebook. If they forget the meaning of some vocabularies, they can open their vocabulary notebook again.
Table 2 shows that the students‟ response toward vocabulary notebook was a cognitive tool in their cognitive learning strategies. Cognitive deal with mechanical aspect of learning vocabulary and are not related to mental processing (Schmiit, 2000). Repetition is one of the most commonly used cognitive strategies. The students do repetition when they read their notes again and again. Other examples are taking note, highlighting new words, making a list of new words, using flash cards to record new words, putting English labels on physical objects, keeping a vocabulary notebook and writing the words many times. Meanwhile, cognitive tool helped learners make and strengthen association between new and already known information (O‟Malley and Chamot 1990; Oxford 1990, 1996) and facilitate the mental restructuring of
11 Table 3. Response to question 3
The third question asked whether vocabulary notebook help the student better in mastering vocabulary or not. The responses can be seen below.
Students Response
A ya, saya isa e ghafalka de ga e uat atata …..
(yes, I can memorize (the words) by taki g ote…..
B ya , saya dapat belajar dengan mudah dan menghafalkannya (yes, I can learn easily and memorize it)
C ya tentu saja, saya bisa mengingat kosa kata dalam bahasa inggris dengan sangat udah ketika saya e ggu aka ya…
(yes of course, I can remember English vocabularies easily he I use it…..
D ya, saya pikir ini sangat mudah untuk menghafalkan dan tidak rumit untuk menggunakannya
(yes,I think it is easy to remember and it is ot o pli ated to use it…..
E ya, saya le ih udah elajar de ga uku o a ulary ote ook….. (yes, I learn more easily with the o a ulary ote ook….
Table 3 shows the student‟s agreement to the vocabulary notebook. They (the student)
said that vocabulary notebook made them to be a better learner in learning English than before using it. They are easily memorizing words by taking note in a little vocabulary notebook.
The students‟ responses in table 3 indicates that the students enjoyed using vocabulary
12 Table 4. Response to question 4
The fourth question wanted to elicit students‟ opinion about vocabulary notebook. The responses can be seen in the table below.
Students Response
A saya dapat belajar kata-kata yang sulit dengan cara mudah dengan menggunakan o a ulary ote ook
E ini sangat menyenangkan dan asyik (it is very interesting and enjoying)
Table 4 illustrates that the students learned vocabulary with affection. They enjoy the way they are working with their vocabulary notebook (Student E). Student A has the same experience in studying difficult words as student B.
Table 4 shows the students‟ responses toward vocabulary notebook reflect their affection
13 Table 5. Response to question 5
The fifth question asked what aspects of vocabulary notebook that the student like. The response can be seen in the table below.
Students Response
A saya suka gambar yang sesuai de ga ak a kata, saya e gga ar se diri…. (I like the picture which appropriate to the meaning of the word, I draw the picture by
yself……
B ……….. uku ya ke il
……….the ook is s all)
C saya suka menemukan kata baru dalam bahasa Inggris dan mencatatnya dalam o a ulary ote ook….
(I like to find new words in English and write it i y o a ulary ote ook…….
D ini seperti kamus kecil
It is like a i i di tio ary……..
E saya suka menambahkan gambar atau menggambar di vocabulary ote ook ku (I like to add or draw the picture on my vocabulary notebook)
Table 5 shows that the students have variation responses on vocabulary notebook. They have different opinions about what they like best from the vocabulary notebook. Student A and E liked the notebook because they can add pictures in her notebook, while student B liked the notebook because the book was small, the same with student D who said it was like a mini dictionary.
Table 5 explains that the students liked using vocabulary notebook as a media for learning. They thought that vocabulary notebook facilitated them in learning vocabulary. Vocabulary notebook was their media to record and combine new words/ difficult vocabularies (Schmiit‟s, 1997). Thus, vocabulary notebook one of the media/tool for the students to improve
14 Table 6. Response to question 6
The sixth question asked them if the vocabulary notebook facilitated them to learn difficult vocabularies. The response can be een in the table below.
Students Response
A ini membantuku untuk memahami tentang berbagai macam jenis kata seperti kata kerja, kata sifat, kata e da……da lai se agai ya…..
(It helps me to understand about many kinds of words like verb, adjective, noun,et ……..
B aku e pu yai pe getahua ya g le ih e dala dala kosa kata ahasa I ggris…
……I ha e a deep k o ledge a out E glish o a ulary ……
C ini membuat saya menjadi siswa yang rajin belajar dimanapun dan membuat saya e jadi sis a a diri ,…. Ketika saya i gi elajar…
(It makes me become diligent to learn everywhere and I become independent lear er….. he I a t it….
D saya bisa membuka dan membaca kembali ketika saya lupa arti kata ya… I a ope a d read it agai he I forget the ea i g of the ords….
E Aku bisa belajar sendiri tanpa bantuan teman lain dalam belajar vocabulary dengan menggunakan vocabulary notebook
( I can learn independently without friends help in learning vocabulary by using vocabulary notebook
The sixth table presents the students‟ opinions about vocabulary notebook. They knew that vocabulary notebook helped them in learning language, especially English (Student A). On the other hand, student E had different opinion about it. He said that vocabulary notebook made him an autonomous learner. He was able to learn himself without working together with the other friends.
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students C and E said about the vocabulary notebook in the table above. It means that vocabulary notebooks promote the students as independent/autonomy learners. According to David (2007) learner autonomy is the capability to take charge of one‟s own learning. Learner autonomy, in other words, belongs together with the idea that one of the function of education is to equip learners to play an active participatory.
Learner autonomy is implied by the concept of savoir-appendre or “ability to learn, which David (2007) identify as the ability to observe and participate in new experience and to integrate new knowledge into existing knowledge. It means that the learners are able to learn by themselves (self-assessment).The learning of autonomous learners is efficient and effective. Conversely, all learning is likely to succeed to the extent that the learner is autonomous. The efficiency and effectiveness of the autonomous learner means that the knowledge and skill acquired in the classroom can be applied to situation that arises outside the classroom, i.e student C who said that she can learn by herself anywhere.
Conclusion
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Acknowledgement
18 Appendix
The interview guidelines used in colecting data for this thesis accomplishment
Do you like using vocabulary notebooks?
Do you think that vocabulary notebooks are good in helping you remember new/useful
words?
Do you think your vocabulary book makes you a better student?
What do you like best about your vocabulary notebooks?
What don‟t you like about your vocabulary notebook?
19 References
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