“Improving students’ vocabulary by using word wall (A Classroom Action Research to the Fifth Year Students of SD Negeri 5 Kuta Blang)

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1  Background of the Research

            For many years, language teaching has been seen as a means helping learners develop languishing competence. That is helping students master the sounds, words and grammar patterns of English. The idea was that by studying the bits and the pieces of language, students could eventually put them all together and communicate.

There are several important models of communicative competence. All of which include some form of sociolinguistic competence or the ability to use language appropriately in various contexts. Sociolinguistic competence involves degree of formality and informality, appropriate word choice, style shifting and politeness strategies.

It was realized that English is learned by almost all of the educated people throughout the world. It seems to be very important medium to use as means of communication. Those who have a will to improve their English, of course, they have to learn skill that is required. Without mastering the English language, it seems difficult to communicate to other people around the world.

There are four language skills in English. They are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. These skills should be taught to the learners in every level. From basic up to the advanced level, in other that the learners could improve their English competence. In Indonesia, is still regarded as a foreign language, English deals with two important aspects namely: what to teach and how to teach. The first deals with the material the teachers are going to teach and the second concerns on the techniques approach, and method of teaching in accordance with the materials chosen.

Some linguists also express the importance of learning vocabulary. Smith, (1996:42) for example, states that vocabulary is one of the major problems in confronting EFL learners. Because of their anemic vocabulary they cannot communicate their ideas as clear they would like to and read the columns of a newspaper or popular magazines or even understand news cast on the radio or television. Their listening-comprehension, writing and reading abilities care hampered by their limited vocabulary.

In teaching vocabulary, an important part that should be insisted to students is to increase their mastery of this part. By having no mastering of the vocabulary, students are not easy to understand the language processed. Students require a large amount of vocabulary acquisition, without mastering more vocabulary; they always face serious problems to understand the meaning of unfamiliar difficult words. Furthermore, it can make them lazy to be involved in learning process.

Consequently, this class atmosphere will bring the worse impact to the learning process. That’s why; teachers should work hard to find the easiest way of teaching vocabulary to their students, since it has become the most important aspect for mastering the English language skill.

In short, it is evident that students always get problem and difficulties in learning English especially in learning vocabulary. It is therefore in the effort to find out ways to solve the problems, and to make the students more interested in studying English, the researcher would like to propose a new set of media that can be used in teaching vocabulary, namely, teaching vocabulary through word wall.

A word wall is a strategy to reinforce the core vocabulary of a specific subject. Teachers select new words, technical terms, and words that frequently recur and print these words in bold block letters on cards. Teachers post these cards on a highly visible wall or bulletin board as students confront them in reading or discussions. The word wall is built one word at a time as students encounter new terminology (Cunningham & Allington, 1999:56).

Students review terms on the word wall as a "warm up" activity before lessons. Every time one of the words appears in the lesson, the teacher reinforces it by pointing it out on the word wall. Repetition is the key to the word wall's success. Teachers often incorporate word wall terms into learning games.

Based on the explanation above the researcher thinks that it is reasonable enough to be the reason why the researcher is interested to do a collaborative classroom action research under the title “Improving students’ vocabulary by using word wall (A Classroom Action Research to the Fifth Year Students of SD Negeri 5 Kuta Blang). This research is an effort to evaluate and improve the students’ vocabulary acquisition. It focused on two kind of vocabulary, namely noun and verb.

1.2  Problem of the Research

Based on description above, the researcher would like to formulate some problems. The problems of this research are as follows:

1.      Can the students increase their vocabulary through word wall strategy?

2.      What are the advantages of using word wall strategy in teaching vocabulary?

1.3  Purpose of the Research

Based on the problem above, the purposes of this research are:

1. To know whether the students can increase students’ vocabulary through word wall strategy.
2. To find out the advantages of using word wall strategy in teaching and learning English vocabulary.

1.4  Significance of the Research

This research is hoped to give meaningful knowledge both for theoretically and practically concerns. Theoretically, the research will give logical advantage in describing the students’ achievement of English vocabulary through word wall strategy, especially to the fifth year students of SD N 5 Kuta Blang. Practically, the finding of the research is expected to give a priority measures in teaching English vocabulary for teacher. Meanwhile for the students, it is hoped to be able to enrich their vocabulary acquisition so that they can master all the language skill in English and the students also can obtain new knowledge if they can improve their vocabulary achievement.

1.5  Scope of the Research

            The researcher gives the scope of research for limiting the focus of the research. The focus of this research concerns on teaching English vocabulary, especially noun and verb, through word wall strategy to the fifth year students of SD N 5 Kuta Blang.

1.6. Definition of the Key Terms

1. Vocabulary is a list of words and sometime phrase usually arranged in alphabetical other and define, etc (Noah Webster, 1997:2046). 

According to Oxford Learner’s Pocket Dictionary (2003:482), vocabulary is all the words that a person knows or uses; all the words in language; and all the words with their meanings, especial in a book for learning a foreign language. In this case, vocabulary means a list of words taught by teacher through word wall.

2.      A word wall is a strategy to reinforce the core vocabulary of a specific subject. Teachers select new words, technical terms, and words that frequently recur and print these words in bold block letters on cards. Teachers post these cards on a highly visible wall or bulletin board as students confront them in reading or discussions. The word wall is built one word at a time as students encounter new terminology (Cunningham & Allington, 1999:56).