Learning vocabulary

1. Introduction

Vocabulary is collection of words that knows the meaning and can be used by someone in language . Vocabulary is the set of words within a language that are familiar to that person. A vocabulary usually develops with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge. Acquiring an extensive vocabulary is one of the largest challenges in learning a second language.Vocabulary is commonly defined as all the words known and used by a particular person. Knowing a word, however, is not as simple as simply being able to recognize or use it. There are several aspects of word knowledge which are used to measure word knowledge.

            Learning vocabulary is one of the first steps in learning a second language, but a learner never finishes vocabulary acquisition. Whether in one's native language or a second language, the acquisition of new vocabulary is an ongoing process. Some words cannot be easily linked through association or other methods. When a word in the second language is phonologically or visually similar to a word in the native language, one often assumes they also share similar meanings. They  are many techniques, methods, medias, and especially strategies which help  in  improving the students’ mastery in English vocabulary. But based on my first observation, I found many students at VII class SMP Karya Bunda still have difficulties to improve their mastery of English vocabulary. One of the problems is the students do not understand the meaning of English vocabulary. In the process of teaching and learning vocabulary, it can be seen by the mistakes that they made in the vocabulary task that has given by their teacher. This condition happened as the students still don’t understand about the English vocabulary meanings, on the other hand , the teacher always used the monotone media in teaching. Media is a way that the teacher used in teaching the material. There are many Medias that can be used in teaching .To solve this problem, it’s better  to use a different media such as Color Picture. It’s hoped that by implementing this media the students’ ability in English vocabulary can be increased.

            Ideally, if the teacher used the different media in teaching the material of study, so the students’ ability in English vocabulary will be increased too.

A.    Instructional Educative Media

Teaching and learning basically is communication process. Communication process refers to message exchanged where it happen in the classroom between teachers and students. Through communication process, message or information which delivered by teacher can be absorbed finely by the students. To avoid miss lead during communication process in the classroom it requires media. Media that use for the purpose of pedagogic is called Instructional Educative Media. Instructional Educative Media is term to replace other terminologies such as educative media or teaching media where meaning and purpose is similar.

1.      The Function of Instructional Educative Media

Educative media (Instructional Educative Media) functioned;

a.    To rise learning motivation

b.    To repeat what students have learnt

c.     To provide learning stimulus

d.   To activate students respond

e.    To give immediate feedback

f.     To improve learning practice

There are four functions of Instruktional Educative Media, as follow:

a.    To change formal education (which based on instructional academic) to be education that based on student’s need.

b.    Improving students’ motivation

c.    It gives clarification and

d.   Stimulation.

2.      The Classification of Instructional Teaching Media

Classification of Instructional educative media is divided into five categories according to their character;

a.     Real material and people

b.    Visuals and projection

c.     Audio materials

d.    Printed material

e.     Display material

Classification based on three level of experiences, such as:

a.       Relief experience, for example; train, ball.

b.      Substitute of relief experience, for example picture, film, and model.

c.       Experience trough words only, for example book, magazine, cassette, plate.

Knowing classification educative media is important because it enable us to find the perfect fit and suitable one for our student. For choosing media in the classroom, it needed attention to some considerations. 

3.       Choosing Instructional Educative Media

There are four considerations for choosing instructional educative media, those are;

a.    Production consideration consist of; material availability, cost, physical condition, accessibility to student and emotional impact.

b.    Learner consideration consist of; student characteristic, student relevance and student involvement.

c.    Content consideration, consist of; curricular-relevance, content-soundness and content presentation.

d.   Teacher Consideration consist of; Teacher-utilization, Teacher peace of mind.

All of the media that used can solve problems and not causing problems, in order to do it, observation and review to the media is truly important before bring it to the classroom.

4.       Pictures for Teaching Vocabulary

Picture is one of educative media. Picture is something that we can see, in other word picture is visual. Picture gives stimulation which enables the learner memorizes new vocabulary. Learning foreign language means learning new vocabulary which sometimes totally different than our native. Indonesian student who learn English as foreign language, must know and memorize thousands of English vocabulary. As we know the key for a successful of language learning is by memorizing list of words as many as we could. In fact, children of elementary tend to rely more on memory, but they also have sufficient maturity to meet the rigours of a formal learning environment, where concentration, attention and even the ability to seat still.

            Picture is used by teacher to stimulate student memory and it is one of strategy to attract students’ attention in learning vocabulary. From experts opinion that written previously, the researcher can conclude that picture has fulfill its function as educative media for example; it can improve students’ motivation and it also provide stimulus that may upgrade student’s memory and attention. Picture can be classified into visual aid and picture also is material that easy to find. 

B.     The Advantage of Using Picture for Teaching Vocabulary

For vocational high school students, learning English as foreign language is not easy. English teacher should provide pleasant atmosphere to invite the motivation and interest of the students. It is done to take students’ ease in acquiring the language, not only get the prospect of what they have learnt but also they should get satisfactory from the learning. The advantages of picture for teaching vocabulary mentioned as follow;

1.         The picture motivated the students to learn vocabulary. By seeing picture, it gives stimulation which enable the learner memorize new vocabularies.

2.         Pictures are easy to understand  by all age. The pictures are so simple and easy to use. Pictures can create relaxing atmosphere, so students can enjoy the class.

3.         Pictures kept the students interested and made the students active in answering the questions.

4.         Presenting the pictures to the vocabularies in the beginning of the lesson, it allow students to associate the pictures with meanings rather than meaningless memorization.

5.         Using picture as class aid for teaching vocabulary can create long-term memorization. Instead of learning vocabulary trough word memorization only which may create short-term memory.

C.    Teaching English for Elementary School Students

The young language learners formally learn the language in  the classroom at the level of elementary school. Teaching English in elementary school needs various strategies and techniques to achieve the learning objective of certain materials. A teacher should be able to modify his/her class into an attractive class interaction. Therefore a good teacher should be aware of some terms relate to the language classroom activity.

Young language learner love to lay and learn best when they are enjoying themselves. But they also take them self seriously and like to think that what they are doing in their work. In this stage the language teacher is expected to guide those students in other two things that they are in real situation. Thus the teaching of English language mainly in case of vocabulary need and impression that the word is real and understandable. Therefore in teaching vocabulary, the spoken word must be accompanied by other clause such as movement, facial expression etc. convoy their meanings.

In teaching the young language learners, teachers do not rely on spoken words only. Most activities should include movement and involve the sense. Teacher need plenty of object and picture to work with and make full use of the school and its surrounding as teaching media.

1.      Some Consideration of English to Elementary School Students

In applying English for elementary school or early stage there are some considerations that should be paid attention such as syllabus, material and teachers.there are some considerations of teaching English to elementary school i.e. syllabus teaching material and teacher.

Syllabus consist of content to be taught a course of study, state or items that cannot be neglected  in making syllabus such as ; (a) what are the targets that should be reached in teaching English for elementary school students? (b) What are the appropriate methods, techniques and approaches be applied for elementary school student to reach the wished target? (c) How to manage the classroom effectively and (d) how to know the students achievement is successful or not. Beside syllabus teaching material has a significant role in teaching English for the children. Selecting material is based on three points, e.i. teaching aims, learner needs and local situation.

Meanwhile a teacher is absolutely needed as a facilitator of the teaching and learning process. A good teacher is able to combine the serious study of English with the more entertaining activities that    he/she thing his/her students something need. The idea characteristic of the teacher as the teacher should have deep knowledge in English and always has initiative to improve his /he capability; the teacher should have capability in managing the classroom activities, provides, material and be able to use various media perfectly .

After all organizing syllabus, providing appropriate teaching materials and the capability of teacher are extremely needed in other to get successfulness in teaching and learning process.

2.       Children’s Memory Ability

The memory ability of very young children seems to be unparalleled in that they can absorb a phenomenal amount of data. Many parents tell of the experience of reading a lengthy familiar bedtime story to their young child and, when the parent began nodding off to sleep, being sharply corrected by the child as to exactly which words had been skipped.

Which children at the age of 5 or 6 still display a phenomenal ability at rote memorization, it seems that older children do not, with some decline beginning around 8 years of age and more of a decline from about 12 years age. In this regard, it seems that children’s age can be usefully divided into at least two categories, under 7 years and 7 to 12 years. This is rough categorization which we shall use.

It seems that younger children tend to rely more on memory than older children. investigated students who were in an immersion language education program (the teaching of subject matter trough a second language). Older children began to apply their cognitive abilities in analyzing the syntactic rules of the second language while younger children relied more heavily on their use of rote memory for language learning. One could interpret these data as indicating perhaps that the older children jumped to syntactic analysis sooner because they realized that they had difficulty in remembering all of the sentences which they heard.      

3. Aim of study

The study aimed at knowing the effect of using color pictures to developing the students English vocabulary development. The research was experimental study, where the samples were divided into two group, i.e. experimental group and control group. Both experimental group and control group were tested by using pre-test. Then, the result of study is the teaching English vocabulary for the Elementary School by using color picture products a much greater change in the students’ vocabulary development than by using the traditional techniques.

The problem of the study is “what factor to promote the effectiveness of using color pictures in teaching English vocabulary and is color pictures effective in teaching English vocabulary”. Because the number population of this study was less than 100, the researcher took all members of the population as the samples of the research. Then, the samples were divided into two groups which are consisted of 10 students for control group and 10 students for experimental group. Then instrument of the study was essay type of test. Then, the result of the study is using color pictures a significant effect toward students English vocabulary mastery.

From the above research, the writer assumes that teaching vocabulary using pictures as media make better result. So, the researcher will observe the application of teaching vocabulary by using  pictures as teaching media.

D.    Data Collection Procedure

In obtaining the data, the researcher gave pre-test, treatment and post-test to the sample.

1.     Pre-test

In the beginning the researcher gave the same pre-test to both groups. Pre-test wasaimed to measure the students’ ability in vocabulary mastery before treatment. In this test, the researcher provided 25 items which consisted of 15 item of multiple choices and 10 item of matching pictures. Every correct answer was scored 4 and each wrong answer was scored 0.

2.     Treatment

The treatment refers to treat the sample with pictures. In this step the researchergave different treatment to both groups. The researcher taught English vocabulary to the students in experimental group by using picture, while in the control group the researcher taught English vocabulary without picture or in conventional way.

3.      Post-test

The post-test  given after treatment, it was aimed to know the students’ improvement in mastery English vocabulary after treatment. The same questions as in the pre-test had been given to the student but the question number was put randomly.   

COMPILED

BY :

IMAM SATRIA (34114142)

LECTURER :

Dra. Siti Ismahani, M.Hum

Class   :           Pbi  V  Semester  5

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT TARBIYAH FACULTY

INSTITUT FOR  ISLAMIC  STUDIES

NORTH  SUMATERA 2013