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THE USE OF READING SHORT STORIES METHOD TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ VOCABULARY MASTERY FOR THE SECOND GRADE
STUDENTS OF SMP NEGERI 6 KALUKKU
Adreis1, Rina Asrini Bakri2, Andi Haeriati Alimuddin3
1STKIP YPUP Makassar, Email: [email protected]
2STKIP YPUP Makassar, Email: [email protected]
3STKIP YPUP Makassar, Email: [email protected]
ABSTRACT
This researcher aims to determine whether the use of Reading Short Stories can improve the English vocabulary mastery of second grade students at SMP Negeri 6 Kalukku. This research used pre- experimental method with one class or pre-test and post-test designs. The sample used was purposive sampling technique with 22 students from second grade students. From the results of the analysis shows that there is significant difference in the increase in students’ vocabulary can be seen from the T-test is greater than the T-table (16,25 > 2,080). Based on the results of the analysis, it can be conducted that the use of the reading short stories method can increase the vocabulary mastery of the students of SMP Negeri 6 Kalukku.
Keywords: Reading Short Stories, Vocabulary Mastery.
INTRODUCTION
English is one of the first foreign languages in Indonesia. There are many schools and courses that provide and teach English as one of the most important lesson. English have four main skills to learn such as speaking, reading, listening, writing and also vocabulary as component that could be a tool to increase all the skills of the English.
Vocabulary is the very basic lesson that commonly used to understand and master English in foreign countries which don’t use English as it’s mother tongue. Vocabulary is the main component to increase all English skills. Indeed mastering vocabulary is a difficult thing, was not as easy as turning back hand sideways and it needs a long process to mastering it. There are many factors that affecting students and make them difficult in mastering vocabulary like the difficulties of students to understand and remember vocabulary, difficult pronounciation when they spoke because restrictiveness of their vocabulary and even sometimes the way of teaching by their English teacher is way too stilted or too serious that made students depressed or afraid to develop their ability in vocabulary and make them easy to forget vocabulary that has been taught or learned because the pressures they had during class.
One of the main problems faced by students in mastering and learning English is lack of vocabularies. In order to master all the skills in English like skills of speaking, listening, reading, and writing, vocabulary is the basic lesson to mastering all English skills. Vocabulary was a unity of letters that compound words which conformed by a set of user communities.
433 Meanwhile, according to Julita (2011:67), vocabulary could be defined as words that taught in a foreign language. In brief, vocabulary is a unity of letters that became words that taught in a foreign language.
Yuliana (2016) in research entitle “Improving Students Reading Skills through the Short Story at the Eleventh Year of SMA PMDS Putra Palopo”, found that this research shows that there was a significant improvement in students‟ reading skills through the short story at the eleventh year of SMA PMDS Putra Palopo. It indicated that a short story was effective to improved students ‟ reading skills in the eleventh year of SMA PMDS Putra Palopo.
Milasari (2016), “Developing Students’ Vocabulary through Reading Short Story at the Eight Grade of SMP PMDS Putra”, found that using reading short stories was effective in developing students’ vocabulary at the Eight-grade of SMP PMDS Putra Palopo. It was proven by there was a significant difference between the students’ mean score of pretest and post test. The students’ answers in the text that reading short stories improved students’ vocabulary made students easy to memorized in learning and also were making students got fun and enjoyed.
Pratama Alamsyah (2011) “Improving Students Writing Skills through the Short Story at the Third-Year Students of English Department of STAIN Palopo”, found that the result of the researcher hypothesis was acceptable because test bigger than table. The research showed that there was a significant improvement of students’ writing skills through the short story in English and by using questionnaires the researcher found that most of the students gave a positive response to the method applied by the researcher.
The Concept of Vocabulary
Vocabulary is very important to have because it supports speakers to express their feelings in communication, opinions, and ideas. Vocabulary is a collection of words in a language. That is, in each language will have a vocabulary with its own meaning. Vocabulary is also the most important language root because it affects four language skills like listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
Vocabulary is knowledge about the meaning of words. According to Oxford Dictionary (2021), vocabulary is all the words in a language. In the other hand in Rohmatillah (2014:1) state that vocabulary can be defined, roughly, as the words we teach in the foreign language.
According to Nation (2000:403), Vocabulary knowledge on reading comprehension (which is the main focus on this paper) on the effect of reading comprehension on vocabulary knowledge or growth, one cannot communicate effectively or express ideas. If learners don't know how to expand their vocabulary, they gradually lose interest in learning.
Teng (2016:14) said that the importance of vocabulary in language learning was recognized by English as a foreign language teacher (EFL). The foundation for learning a language is vocabulary. It is quite possible to claim fluency in a foreign language without a si gnificant vocabulary.
434 Types of Vocabulary
1). Listening vocabulary
Listening is a nearly language skill that is owned by humans. This skill form the basic of the three other language skills like speaking, reading, and writing. In the early stages of life, children first learn to understand spoken language by listen and listen continuously from the closest environment, like from their father, mother, or brother at home. By listening, children learn the language of spoken language that is heard over and over again. The proof is that new born babies are always tried to talked to people around them and mimicking words that coming out of people’s mouth around them. As time goes by, through listening skills the baby will be able to speak with imitating simple words will gradually increase, and other language skills are increasing.
2). Speaking Vocabulary
Speaking is an oral language skill that is functionalized everyday in human life. It is so vital in almost every kind of interaction that human does because by speaking we can obtain and convey information. Speak can not be separated from listening. Because when someone speak any kind of information around us, hearing is the way we accept the information that delivered by the speaker. In communication, we can find speakers, listeners and messages.
3). Reading Vocabulary
Tarigan (2008: 9) main goal of reading is seeking and obtaining information, includes content, and understands the meaning. Read is a basic component for a person to be able to have an understanding of something or even more knowledge, because with reading, one will become more rich in knowledge. Reading is an activity carried out by someone to obtain information or previous knowledge known.
4). Writing Vocabulary
Writing is a language activity that are active and productive where activities that demand the existence of encoding activities, namely activities to produce or convey language to other parties through language. Writing activity is one of the manifestations of skills the last language mastered by language learners after listening, reading and speaking (Nurgiyantoro). Writing is also an activity transform thought so ride as into symbols that can be read and understood by others.
Vocabulary Mastery 1) The meaning of the word 2) The written form of the word 3) The spoken form of the word
4) The grammatical behavior of the word
435 5) The collocations of the word
6) The register of the word 7) The associations of the word 8) The frequency of the word The Concept of Reading Short Stories
a. Definition of Reading
Nurhadi (2000:13) argues that reading is a processes of thinking and reasoning. It means when a reader reading the text, he uses his brain to think and reason.
b. Definition of Short Stories
A short story is a story that can be read in one sitting. Roughly between half to two hours, something that would not be maybe done in a novel (Burhan, 2012:10).
Short story, true to its name is a short story. The length of the short story itself varies.
There are short stories, there are long ones sufficient (middle short story), and there is a long story. Short stories are short fictions that are read in "once" sit". Short stories have only one meaning, one crisis and one effect for the reader. The author of the short story just wants to put something in perspective sharp (Jacob, 2001: 184).
c. The Advantages of Reading Short Story
Soedarso (2010: 120) stated that the Advantages of Reading Short Stories:
1). Students can understand what the reading means.
2). Improve students' general knowledge.
3). Students are able to understand the meaning of short stories.
4). Students are able to solve existing problems.
5). Increase students' vocabulary d. Procedure of Reading Short Stories
According Burhan (2012:10), there were some Reading Short Stories procedures that the teacher can be demonstrated:
1). The teacher gave examples of short stories for students’ to read.
2). The teacher gave time for students’ to read the short story.
3). The teacher gave some example of words contained in the short stories along with the classification of the word.
4). The teacher finished gave example of words contained in the short stories, after that the teacher asks the students to write the word that is noun, adjective, and verb then looks for its meaning.
5). The teacher gave the students 10 minutes to memorize the words they have written, then the students’ will take turns to say the words that were written earlier have big meanings
436 without looking at the book. After the students’ finish memorizing the words written with great meaning, then the learning is complete.
METHOD
The method used in this research was apre-experimental method with a pre-test and post-test design. This research was conducted using a three step process: pre-test, treatment and post-test which used to investigated the use of Reading Short Stories to improve students' vocabulary. Before the treatment, a pre-test was conducted in order to determine the extent ofthe students' vocabulary skills. After being given treatment, a post-test was conducted to determined the success of students' achievement in mastering vocabulary.
The population of this research was the eighth grade students SMP Negeri 6 Kalukku. The total number of classes were three classes. They are VIII.1, VIIl.2, and VIIl.3.
Each class consisted of 22 students. The total population were 66 students. This research applied purposive sampling technique, where the researcher chose one class as the sample. In this study, the researcher chose class VIII.1 as the sample, because the class was most of the students had different levels of learning ability. The total number of samples were 22 students.
Instrument of the Research
The research instrument was vocabulary test that used in pre-test and a post-test.
Vocabulary tests was used to assess students' vocabulary mastery. The pre-test was provided in it all knowledge of students' vocabulary mastery and post-test used to determined whether an increased in students' vocabulary mastery after being given treatment. The pre-test and post-test would gave 20 numbers vocabulary test with the types of questions were multiple choices.
Procedure of Collecting Data
In collected the data, the researcher was applied three steps, namely: pre-test, treatment and post-test.
1. Pre-test
Before gave treatment, the researcher would conducted a pre-test to determine the students' prior knowledge.
2. Treatment
After giving pre-test, the researcher applied short story method. The treatment was given for four meetings and each meeting will last for 90 minutes, presented the following activities:
a). The researcher gave examples of short stories for students’ to read.
b). The researcher gave time for students’ to read the short story.
c). The researcher gave some example of words contained in the short stories along with the classification of the word.
437 d). The researcher finished gave example of words contained in the short stories, after that the teacher asks the students to write the word thatis noun, adjective, and verbthen looks for its meaning.
e). The researcher gave the students 10 minutes to memorize the words they have written, then the students’ will take turns to say the words that were written earlier have big meanings without looking at the book. After the students’ finish memorizing the words written with great meaning, then the learning is complete.
3. Post-test
The researcher was given post-test to the students after giving the treatment to found out whether here is an increase in students' vocabulary or not and to find out the results of the treatment.
Technique of Data Analysis
The data was collected through test and was analyzed quantitatively. The research used the following formula to determined each student’s score:
1. Scoring the student’s answer of the pre-test and post-test
The raw score is converted to determine a maximum score of 100 using the following simple formula:
Student′ score =𝑇𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑠𝑤𝑒𝑟 𝑇𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑛𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑚 X 100 2. Classify the student’s raw score as follows:
Table 1. The Comparison of Rate Percentage between Pre-test and Post-test
No Classification Score Rate percentage
Pre-test Post-test
1 Excellent 96-100 0 0
2 Very Good 86-95 0 0
3 Good 76-85 0 36.0
4 Fairly Good 66-75 0 41.0
5 Fair 56-65 0 23.0
6 Fairly Poor 36-55 23.0 6.0
7 Poor 0-35 77.0 0
Total 100.0 100.0
Based on the data above, it can be concluded that by applying reading short stories, students' vocabulary increases.
438 Graphic 1. The Comparison of Rate Percentage between Pre-test and Post-test
The Difference Mean Score in Pre-test and Post-test
Test Mean Score
Pre-test 27.95
Post-test 73.86
Paired test 45.91
Hypothesis testing
Calculating the degrees of freedom (df), the researcher used the following formula:
df = N-1 df = 22-1
df = 21
The t-test value is 16.52 at a significant level (a) 0.05 and the t-table value is 2.080 with degrees of freedom (df) 21 compared after the t-test is calculated. This indicated that the t-test outperforms the t-table values of t-test and t-table by 16.52 and 2.080, respectively.
This indicated that the use of the reading short stories method in the learning process of second grade students at SMPN 6 Kalukku has a major effect on increasing students' vocabulary between the pre-test and post-test. Because there were a big difference between pre-test and post-test after teaching vocabulary using Reading Short Stories in the learning process, it can be stated that zero (HO) is rejected and the alternative hypothesis (H1) is accepted.
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18
Poor Fairly Poor
Fair Fairly Good
Good Very
Good
Excellent
Pre-test Post-test
439 Test of Significant
Df Level significant t-test value t-table
21 0.05 16.52 2.080
Conclusion
Based on the results of the pre-test and post-test, there was an increase in the knowledge of grade II students of SMPN 6 Kalukku on vocabulary mastery after using Reading Short Stories in the learning process. There is a big difference in increasing students' English vocabulary before and after being taught using the reading short stories method. Analysis of the data from the pre-test and post- test showed that the second grade students of SMPN 6 Kalukku had poor vocabulary before receiving the treatment.
Due to the higher presentation of data and post-test results, it can be assumed that teaching vocabulary using reading short stories can be used and applied in classroom activities, especially in teaching vocabulary. Next, the alternative hypothesis (H1), which implies that the mean scores of the pre-test and post-test are significantly different. This indicates that this research was completed satisfactorily.
As a result, it can be concluded that the use of reading short stories increases the vocabulary of students at SMPN 6 Kalukku.
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