Utilizing Microsoft Powerpoint in Promoting Multimodal
Vocabulary Learning
* Ahmad Cepi, Giri Ginanjar Harsyah & ** Dian Toar Y. G. Sumakul
*
SMP Negeri 4 Leuwiliang Ds. Angsana, Kec. Leuwiliang, Kab. Bogor, Jawa Barat
**
Satya Wacana Christian University (e-SisTeM)
Abstract
Vocabulary knowledge is one important element for students learning English as a foreign language. It could be more important than grammar as the foundation of the language (Ghadessy, 1998). However, vocabulary learning is considered difficult for some learners. For teachers, teaching vocabulary has also been found problematic. To cope with this problem, one solution is the use of multimodal representations to smooth the progress of understanding (Moreno, 2002). Multimodal materials could activate multiple sensory systems which would influence learner's actions to understand unknown words (Massaro, 2012). The development of technology provides a wide range of options for teachers to facilitate learners' with multimodal learning. Incorporating texts, pictures, and sounds in Microsoft Powerpoint slides, this classroom action research attempted to see the effectiveness of multimodal materials to students' vocabulary learning. A class of 38 SMP students participated in this research. A pre-test was given in the beginning of the class and a post-test was given at the end of the class to measure the students' vocabulary acquisition. Furthermore, one week after the class, a delayed test was given to measure students' vocabulary retention. These activities were conducted again to the same class but with a different topic. Comparing the results of the pre-test, post-test, and the delayed tests this study found that incorporating texts, pictures, and sounds in teaching materials using Microsoft Powerpoint slides could help the students' in their vocabulary learning.
INTRODUCTION
In fact, many EFL learners are poor in vocabulary knowledge. This has also been observed in SMP Negeri 4 Leuwiliang, Kabupaten Bogor. The students are difficult to understand various texts in reading and listening activities. Similarly, they are also difficult to express their ideas in speaking and writing activities. One possible reason for this could be their vocabulary deficiency.
The problem with learners' vocabulary above could be solved by the methods and approaches the teachers use in their teaching. As one of the roles of teachers is to facilitate their students' learning, teachers could try different activities to help students with their vocabulary learning. In this digital age, for example, teachers could incorporate the use of technology in their classrooms. For the case in SMP Negeri 4 Leuwilian, Kabupaten Bogor, the teachers tried the use of Microsoft Powerpoint in vocabulary lessons. By utilizing Microsoft Powerpoint, the teachers could include pictures and sounds in their lessons, which were presented with the written forms of the words. Here, the students were exposed to textual, visual, and aural representations of the words. These are the multimodal elements of the learning (Sankey, Birch & Gardiner, 2010). Kozma (1991) suggests that multimedia can facilitate learning because the different advantages of each multimodal element are being put together in one instructional environment.
As a classroom action research, the study wanted to find out the effectiveness of the utilization of Microsoft Powerpoint in EFL learners vocabulary learning. There were a pretest and a post test to measure vocabulary acquisition, and a 1-week delayed test to measure vocabulary retention. For this purpose, two research questions were provided to direct this study: “Do multimodal lessons help students' vocabulary acquisition?” and “Do multimodal lesson help students' vocabulary retention?” It was expected the results of this study could provide alternative pedagogy for EFL teachers to help their students' vocabulary learning. This could help EFL teachers in delivering the learning materials and the students could have richer vocabulary knowledge to develop their language skills.
The importance of vocabulary
In learning English, one of the basic skills required for having a good command of the language is vocabulary. Wilkins (1992, p. 111-112) says that "… while without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed". Similarly, Schmitt (2010) supports this by stating that learners should carry around dictionaries, not grammar books. In brief, the importance of vocabulary contributes students to learn it as the aspect of language learning.
Multimodal learning
Some media offer instructional elements which are presented in more than one sensory mode, which may be in the form of visual, aural, and written – hence, “multimodal elements” (Sankey, Birch & Gardiner, 2010). The use of multiple representations has as a very strong method to smooth the progress of understanding (Moreno, 2002). The use of these multi-sensory modes in learning is called 'multimodal learning'.
Multimodality is a learning technique for teaching English that use multimedia as an educational technology. Birch and Sankey (2008) and Moreno and Mayor (2007) explain that Multimedia can multimedia can be used to represent the content knowledge in ways that mesh with different modal preferences. Through this multimodality technique, the teacher can make use of multimedia as the teaching aid. In this digital technology age now, multimodality could help teachers to use multimedia as a suitable technique in teaching learning process. Fadel (2008, p. 12) states that, “significant increases in learning can be accomplished through the use of visual and verbal multimodal learning.
Multimodality learning takes place when multimedia, i.e. text, audio, and visual content, is used as learning elements that are presented in more than one sensory mode. These are known as visual, aural, textual modes. The use of these multimodal elements has been recognized as effective to deliver learning material to the students and the students are easy to comprehend the lessons. This could improve the students' attention, thus leading to improve learning performance, particularly for lower students.
Multimodality in Vocabulary Learning
English teachers have the duty to help the students to learn English vocabulary through their teaching practices. Pranowo (2006, p. 12) observed, “most Indonesian learners lack strategies in dealing with new words so that, teachers need to work on a number of aspects that contribute to more fruitful English language learning”. Therefore, teachers need to teach vocabulary in various ways or techniques so that students can deal with their vocabulary problems. This is in line with what Intansari (2013, p. 231) explains that:
Teachers who use multimodal learning technique in vocabulary lessons want their students to be able to use the target language communicatively. They believe that the students need to overlearn that target language to learn to use it automatically without stopping to think. To achieve the goal, the teacher should provide teaching aids, a teaching technique with an accurate method, teacher's competence, and selected material. These could help students' motivation and engaging learning environment that teaching learning activity will be successful. There are some teaching aids incorporating with multimodality learning technique in vocabulary learning which could be used by the EFL teachers.
Mayer (2003) explains that combining words and pictures could develop more profound learning. This is known as the 'multimedia effect'. When students cannot understand the text as the input, the visual representation might aid them to understand the meaning (Ainsworth & Van Labeke, 2002). Therefore, the incorporation of multimodal elements through the use of technology, could help learn the English words better.
THE STUDY
Context of the study
The study was conducted in SMP Negeri 4 Leuwiliang, Kabupaten Bogor, West Java from April to June 2015. The study was planned to be conducted in 2 classroom meetings, focusing on vocabulary lessons. However, due to technical reasons, it could only be done in 1 classroom meeting. To cope with the purpose of the research, in presenting the vocabulary the teachers used Microsoft Powerpoint slides incorporating texts with examples of how to use the vocabulary in context, sounds, and pictures.
Participants
There were 36 students of Class VII.1 of SMP Negeri 4 Leuwiliang participated in this research. The background of the students intakes especially in socioeconomic life were low. Moreover, since they lived in villages neighboring the school, they did not have a good access to technology-related resources, such as online materials. Therefore, the school was probably the only place where they could be exposed to rich-data, multimodal learning resources.
Instrumentation
Data collection procedure
Before the classroom meeting, a pre-test was given to the students. The pre-test consisted of the words in the lesson. In the lesson, the words were presented using textual, aural, and visual modes by incorporating Microsoft Powerpoint. After the lesson, the post-test was given to measure students' vocabulary acquisition. It was the same as the pre-post-test. After one week, the same test was given again to the students to measure their vocabulary retention.
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
This section will elaborate the classroom activities in the teaching learning-process, and the results of the pre-test and post-test, and the results of the post-test and the delayed test.
Classroom activities
Below is the description of the teaching and learning processes where multimodal learning was promoted. It is categorized into pre-teaching, whilst-teaching, and post teaching activities
Pre-Teaching
In this stage the teacher prepared the equipments needed, such as laptop, speakers, projector, and pieces of paper consisting of selected learning materials. The teacher then distributed the selected material and displayed Microsf Powerpoint slides to students and asked them to guess the picture shown. The selected words were about parts of the body and parts of the human face, which were nose, tooth, tonge, hair, chin, lips, ear, moustache, eye, and eyebrow.
Whilst-Teaching
This activty was divided into three stages, they are;
?Observing. The teacher showed the pictures in Microsoft Powerpoint slides and
played the sounds. The teacher stopped at every picture and ask the students these questions, “What is it?” or “What are they? “
?Questioning.The students worked in groups of four. Each group was given one pile of
cards consisting of the pictures of parts of the face. The card was positioned in the middle of the group.Alternately, the student took one card from the pile and asked the other members of the group with the question, “what is it? “ or “what are they?“. This was done until all the cards in the pile finished or pinned out.
?Trying. The teacher asked the students practice a short dialogue in pairs. They redo the
Ruben : Do you know Ucok? Hetti : Yes I do
Ruben : What is he like? Hetti : He has curly hair Ruben : What does he do? Hetti : He is a student
Post-Teaching
In this stage, the teacher asked the students to pronounce the parts of human face together to review what they had learned that dat. The students were also given chances to reflect their learning experience in that lesson.
Pre-test vs Post Test (Acquisition)
Between pre and post tests the students were given vocabulary lessons using Microsoft Powerpoint slides by the teacher. They paid attention and tried to read the examples of vocabulary which were completed with pictures and sounds. In this study, this activity was shown as able to improve the students' scores in those tests. 36 students participated in this study, and comparing the means and standard deviation between the pre-test and the post-test, there was a significant increase of these values.
Means
Standard Deviation
Pre-Test 75.28
25.80
Post-Test 91.94
14.51
Table 1. Scores between pre-test and post-test
From the table above, it can be seen that the average scores of the 36 students was significantly increased from the pre-test to the post-test. As for the average scores (means), 72.28 to 91.94 is a large increase. Despite the fact that the utilization of Microsoft Powerpoint in the students learning was only conducted one time, this could be evidence of the effectiveness of multimodal elements in promoting the students' vocabulary acquisition.
In short, the above numbers show that the incorporation of textual, visual and aural modes into the vocabulary lesson could help students' vocabulary acquisition. In other words, it could mean that Microsoft Powerpoint could help the students and could be more effective than traditional teaching methods to increase the students' vocabulary learning.
Post Test vs Delayed Test (Retention)
Comparing the results of the post-test and the delayed-test was intended to measure the students' vocabulary retention. In other words, this study wanted to investigate whether the utilization of Microsoft Powerpoint could help the words being taught stayed longer in the students' memory. The table below presents the average scores and the standard deviation between the results of the post-test and the delayed-test.
Means
Standard Deviation
Pre-Test 91.94
14.51
Post-Test 93.71
11.40
Table 2. Scores between post-test and delayed-test
The table above shows that there is a slight increase between the means of the post-test and the delayed-test. The numbers are 91.94 to 93.71. Although the increase is not as much as the one in pre-test and post-test, this is enough to state that the student's vocabulary knowledge did not change much. It means that there is retention in their vocabulary knowledge.
The same explanation could be used by looking at the values of the standard deviation. There is only slight change in the standard deviation value compared to the one in the pre-test and post-pre-test comparison. Again, this could show that in average the students' vocabulary knowledge did not get lower after a week, even got a little better.
Comparing the results of the post-test and the delayed-test also could also resemble the impact of the utilization of Microsoft Powerpoint in the students' learning. This could be evidence of the effectiveness of the multimodal elements in promoting vocabulary retention, at least in this study. By activating students' textual, visual, and aural sensory modes, the words being taught could stay longer in the students' memory.
Discussion
multimodal elements embedded in sounds and pictures could provide great opportunity for the students' vocabulary learning.
With Microsoft Powerpoint, teachers could include pictures and sounds in their teaching materials. This would help teachers to expose students not only to textual, but also visual and aural elements of their learning. These would activate different sensory modes (Sankey, Birch & Gardiner, 2010) of the students, which could promote better learning experience.
CONCLUSION
This research was conducted in SMP Negeri 4 Leuwiliang, Kabupaten Bogor West Java. This study was aimed at investigating the utilization of Microsoft Powerpoint in helping students' learning. There were 36 students participated in this research. Focusing on the students' vocabulary learning, this study incorporated a pre-test, a post-test, and a delayed test. The results of the pre-test and the post-test were used to measure the students' vocabulary acquisition, while the results of the post-test and the delayed-test was compared to measure vocabulary acquisition.
Comparing the means of the scores and the standard deviation of the 3 tests, it could be concluded that there is evidence of vocabulary acquisition and vocabulary retention. This provides indication that the multimodal elements embedded in the Microsoft Powerpoint slides could help the students' vocabulary learning. These multimodal elements could promote multimodal learning. Particularly for vocabulary learning, the textual, visual, and aural modes could expose the students to multiple sensory modes that could enhance their learning process.
This study, however, was only a small scale study, conducted once, initially intended as classroom action research. Conducting the same approach more than once would provided more reliable data. Moreover, involving more students and applying it to more subjects, not limited only to vocabulary lessons, could offer richer data.
REFERENCES
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The researchers would like to offer their gratitude to the following parties for assisting them with the research and supporting their attendance to this conference.
1. Dinas Pendidikan Kab. Bogor;
2. SMP Negeri 4 Leuwiliang Kabupaten Bogor;
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Ahmad Cepi and Giri Ginanjar Harsyah are English teachers at SMP Negeri 4 Leuwiliang, Kabupaten Bogor. The school is situated in a rural, remote area of Kabupaten Bogor, Jawa Barat and despite the lack of modern facilities in the school; their passion in teaching has always been their main fuel in helping their students learn. They always want to continue to learn so their students could also learn better.
