IMPROVING THE STUDENTS’ VOCABULARY ACHIEVEMENT BY APPLAYING TIC-TAC-TOE GAME.

IMPROVING THE STUDENTS’ VOCABULARY

ACHIEVEMENT BY APPLAYING TIC-TAC-TOE GAME

A THESIS

Submitted to Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of Sarjana Pendidikan

By:

RINI SUSANTI

Registration Number 209121037

ENGLISH AND LITERATURE DEPARTMENT

FACULTY OF LANGUAGES AND ARTS

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This thesis is aimed at fulfilling one of the requirements for the degree of Sarjana Pendidikan at the English Department, Faculty of Languages and Arts, State University of Medan (UNIMED).

All praise and gratitude unto Allah Swt, the Almighty and Merciful who has given the great affection and guidance in finishing her thesis “Improving the Students’ Vocabulary Achievement by Applying Tic-tac-toe Game.” His mercy and peace are for the prophet Muhammad S.A.W who has brought us from the darkness to the lightness that is Islamic values of the Holy Qur’an to people all over the world.

The writer also would like to say thanks for many special people around her who supported within the process of working on this thesis. They are:

 Prof. Dr. Ibnu Hajar Damanik, M.Si., the rector of State University of Medan.

 Dr. Isda Pramuniati, M.Hum., the dean of languages and arts faculty State University of Medan.

 Prof. Dr. Hj. Sumarsih, M.Pd., the head of English Department, Rika, S.Pd. M. Hum., the secretary of English Department and

Dra. Masitowarni, M.Ed., the head of English Education Department, thank you for the wise and assistance in managing all the administrative process requirements.

 Dr. Zainuddin, DIPL.TEFL,.M. Hum., her thesis advisor and Drs. Johan

Sinulingga, M.Pd., her academic advisor who has consciously guided her in the entire process of the thesis writing with all of the constructive comments, which helped her makes this thesis more perfect.

 Her family especially Her parents (S. Purba and B. Br Bangun), her sister and her brother ( Rina Astuti Br Purba and Dedi Arianto Purba), thank you very much for every prayer, financial support, sacrifice, moral support, and far apart contribution.

 Her classmate, especially Tian, Winda, Defri, Dayfreeri, Ellis, Orli, Ika, Eryca, Henny, Dini, Nila, Puspita, Ida and Bernard and all Education Department class B, thank you for encouragement and motivation.

 Her boarding home Family (Kak Fitri, Malem, Rona, Mamay, Elis, Erwin, Doni and Andri) thank you for the motivation and advice.

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Finally, the writer admits that this thesis is still far from being perfect. Any constructive comments from the readers will make this writing can provide a valuable contribution and the writer invites all of the readers to give more suggestions.

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ABSTRACT

Susanti, Rini. 2013. Improving the Students’ Vocabulary Achievement by applying Tic-tac-toe Game. A Thesis English Department, Faculty of Languages and Arts, State University of Medan.

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CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION

1

A The Background of the Study 1

B. The Problem of the Study 4

C. The Objective of the Study 4

D. The Scope of the Study 4

E. The Significance of the Study 5

CHAPTER II: REVIEW OF LITERATURE

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A. Theoretical Framework 6

1. The Nature of the Vocabulary 6

2. The Acquisitions of Vocabulary 7

3. The Types of Vocabulary 8

a. Traditional Perspective on Types of Vocabulary 8 b. Contemporary Perspective on Types of Vocabulary 9

c. Kinds of Vocabulary Meaning 12

4. The Assessment of Vocabulary 14

5. Board Games 15

6. Kinds of Board Games 16

7. The Nature of Tic-tac-Toe Game 18

8. The Advantages of Tic-tac-toe Game 20

9. The Disadvantages of Tic-tac-toe Game 22 10. Teaching Vocabulary using Tic-tac-toe Game 22

B. Conceptual Framework 23

CHAPTER III: RESEARCH METHOD

27

A. Research Design 27

B. The Subject of the Study 28

C. The Instruments of Collecting Data 29

D. The Procedure of Collecting Data 30

1. The First Cycle 31

2. The Second Cycle 36

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CHAPTER IV: DATA AND DATA ANALYSIS

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A. Data 45

B. Data Analysis 45

1. The Quantitative Data 45

2. The Qualitative Data 50

3. Research Findings 52

CHAPTER V: CONCLUSSION AND SUGGESTION

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A. Conclusion 53

B. Suggestion 54

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1: Contemporary Perspective on Types of Vocabulary 10

Table 3.1: Steps of Action in First Cycle 36

Table 3.2: Steps of Action Research in Second Cycle 32

Table 3.3: The Criteria of the Students’ Vocabulary Achievement 43

Table 3.4: The Specification of the Vocabulary Test 44

Table 4.1: The Students’ Vocabulary Test Scores 46

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1: The Relation of Vocabulary through Language 9

Figure 3.1: The Method and the Procedure of Collecting Qualitative and

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LIST OF APPENDICES

Observation Sheet

Questionnaire Sheet I

Questionnaire Sheet II

Lesson Plan I

Lesson Plan II

Lesson Plan III

Lesson Plan IV

Orientation Test

Test I

Test II

The Students’ Answer of Questionnaire Sheet I

The Students’ Answer of Questionnaire Sheet II

The Students Answer of Orientation Test

The Students’ Answer of Test I

The Students’ Answer of Test II

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. The Background of the Study

Language plays an important role in human life to communicate, to

express the ideas, feeling and desire even spoken and written individually,

nationally, and universally. The essence of language is human activity- activity on

the part of one individual to make himself understood, and activity on the part of

the other to understand what was in the mind of the first. The fundamental

function of language is a means of communication.

A study of language includes the four skills, namely listening, speaking,

The statement above reveals that the importance of vocabulary affects the

students’ mastery of the fourth language skills. In other words, reading, listening,

writing and speaking skill cannot be separated from vocabulary.

However, based on the researcher’s experience during the Field

Experience Practice (PPL) in SMP 1 Berastagi, the vocabulary achievement of

students particularly was very poor. It was seen that the students had a poor

achievement in vocabulary which result in their poor performance in English

language skills. Poor vocabulary achievement of students could also be seen from

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the number of vocabularies that they mastered, was very low. Moreover, the

junior high school’ students should acquire approximately 2.000-3000 words per

year, or about 6 to 8 new words per day (Anderson & Nagy, 1992). Poor

achievement of English vocabulary caused the students found learning English

was hard and unattractive.

Moreover, vocabulary is one of linguistic features, which influences the

communicative competence. Carter and Nunan (2001: 42) write the English

teachers learn to ignore the significance of vocabulary in their teaching of

speaking or communication performance. In fact the use of suitable vocabulary

can cancel out structural incorrectness. Based on authenticity, recently

methodologist and linguist have increasingly turned their attention to vocabulary,

learning stressing, and their importance in language teaching and reassessing

some of the ways it is thought and learnt. It means that vocabulary plays a very

essential task in language teaching.

Teaching or learning vocabulary is not easy. It constitutes a significant

kept teaching and learning as a monotonous process. The teacher spoke formally

in front of the class, gave some explanations, read some information from the

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It caused the students feel bored. Students did less participation in the

class activity and did not have wide chance to call out what they had learnt. These

fact influenced students’ vocabulary achievement. It can be measured from the

indicators of learning and competency standard that students reached in each

material. The students’ result of reading test in comprehending the text that was

given by teacher was bad. Many students failed in answering the questions

because their vocabulary achievement was very weak.

Therefore, there must be way out of overcoming this problem. There are

many things can be done to solve this problem. One of those things is tic-tac-toe

game. Tic-tac-toe game is one of creative technique to attract the students’ interest

in learning activity. Tic-tac-toe game is one kind of board games. Tic-tac toe is a

game that is played on the board, paper, or slate which has a structure that features

three rows and three columns each. Then, students are asked to discover a

relationship in three lexical items in a diagonal, vertical or horizontal row.

Tic-tac toe game is very useful to attract students’ attention in learning and

can improve students’ vocabulary achievement. Tic-tac-toe game plays an

important role in creating an effective teaching learning process. Tic-tac-toe

makes students’ learning become fun, attractive and enjoyable.

Considering the importance of the above fact, therefore the research is

highly motivated in investigating conduct a research on “Improving students’

Vocabulary Achievement by Applying Tic-tac-toe Game” in SMP N 1 Payung at

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B. The Problem of the Study

In line with the background of the study, the problem of the study is

formulated as follows:

Is the students’ vocabulary achievement significantly improved by the application

of Tic-tac-toe game?

C. The Objective of the Study

In relation to the problem, the objective of the study is to investigate

whether the application of Tic-tac-toe game can significantly improve the

students’ vocabulary achievement.

D. The Scope of the Study

To limit this study the writer only focused on the application of Tic-tac-toe

Game in improving students’ vocabulary achievement in reading text term which

is taken from Junior high School’ textbook.

E. The Significance of the Study

Findings of the research are expected to be useful for theoretically and

practically.

1. Theoretically, the findings are useful to enlarge horizon in the teaching

learning process. In addition, the findings can be references for further study.

2. Practically, the findings are expected to give benefit for the teachers,

researchers, students, and institution.

a) For teachers, this finding will be directly help the teachers to apply

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b) For researchers, this finding is hopefully can be operated in conducting

further research/study for obtaining better result.

c) For students, it is expected to help the students learn vocabulary in a good

and enjoyable way through tic-tac-toe game.

d) For institution, it can useful to develop the teaching learning technique for

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CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

A.Conclusion

Based on the result of the data which had been analyzed qualitatively and

quantitatively, the researcher concluded that there was a crucial problem that

happened in Indonesian junior high school students related to the students’

achievement in learning English especially learning English vocabulary. It wasn’t

a new problem that the vocabulary achievement of most of junior high school

students particularly was very poor. A poor achievement in vocabulary influenced

the result in their poor performance in English language skills. Poor achievement

of English vocabulary caused the students found English learning was hard and

unattractive.

The problem also came up from the English teacher in that school. Most of

English teacher in that school taught English without paying any attention to

vocabulary itself. So the students had no idea on how actually to learn English

vocabulary. The others fact, the teachers kept teaching and learning as a

monotonous process. The teacher spoke formally in front of the class, gave some

explanations, read some information from the books, showed the materials and

asked the student to translate some text.

The implementation of Tic-tac-toe Game is simple and easy for students to

understand and really helped the students to have a good achievement in English

vocabulary. Based on the results of the data analysis, the application of tic-tac-toe

game could improve the students’ vocabulary achievement of the eighth grade

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students in SMP N 1 Payung in the academic year 2012/2013. The improvement

could be seen from the students’ mean score in orientation test, test I, and test II.

Moreover the application of Tic-tac-toe game also could effectively

improve the students’ motivation and improved the students’ interest in learning

English. This improvement had been proven by the result of observation sheet and

the questionnaires sheet.

B. Suggestion

In relation to the conclusion above, there were some suggestions about the

application of Tic-tac-toe game:

1. For teachers, tic-tac-toe game contributed significant improvement to the

students’ vocabulary achievement, and then it is suggested to be applied

in the teaching learning process.

2. For students, it can help the students to learn vocabulary in a good and

enjoyable way.

3. For institution, it can useful to develop the teaching learning technique

for increasing motivation in further.

However, in implementing this Tic-tac-toe game, the teacher may find the

problem in managing the class because in this activity the students compete each

other and it may make the situation in the class becomes crowded. That’s why the

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