Me and Whatever

1.      Motivating means the reason why somebody does something or to make somebody want to do something. (Oxford; Learner Pocket Dictionary New: 279)

2.      Memorize means learn something well enough to remember it exactly. (Oxford; Learner Pocket Dictionary New: 269)

3.      Vocabulary is all the words that a person knows and uses. Hornby (1989: 959) defines vocabulary as follows :

a.       Total number of words, which make up a language.

b.      Range of words known to or used by a person, in a trade, profession, etc.

4.       Personal Vocabulary Notes is one of strategy that uses to improve vocabulary. This application was introduced by Joshua Kurzweil in Kanzai University Osaka, Japan. The basic activity is very straightforward. Inside and outside of class teacher encourages students to write words in their native language when they do not know the English word.

In this sub chapter the research attaches some related findings for this research as follow;

The table as follows, shows the result of Georgi Lozanov research to 896 students in language training session.

Gunawan (2003: 12)

Gunawan (2003: 12)

This prove that students use accelerated learning graduated with value 90% or more, this was 10 times than conventional way.

1.      Definition

Hornby (1989: 959) defines vocabulary as;

a)      Total number of words, which make up a language.

b)      (Range of) words known to or used by a person, in a trade, profession, etc.

Similarly, in the dictionary of education written by Charter in Mulbar (2002: 7) stated that vocabulary is defined as follows;

a)      Vocabulary is the contents and the function words of the language, which are learned so thoroughly that they become a part of child’s understanding speaking and later reading and writing.

b)      A list of words and sometimes phrase, usually arrange in alphabetical order and defined a dictionary, glossary or lexicon.

c)      All the word of language.

d)      All the word used by a particular person, class, profession, etc, sometimes all the words recognized and understood by particular person although necessary used by him (in full, passive vocabulary).

Good in Mulbar (2007:8) gives some definition as bellow;  

a)      Vocabulary is the content function words of language, which are learned so strongly that they become part of child’s understanding, spelling and the letter reading and writing obviously.

b)      Vocabulary is the words having meaning when heard or seen even though not produced by individual himself to communicate with other.

From the statement above the researcher take conclusion that anything words which has a meaning in communication, not only in speaking communication but also in writing communication that the other person can understand the meaning it could be a vocabulary.

                            

2.      Kinds of Vocabulary

Harmer (1993:159) distinguishes two kinds of vocabulary, namely active vocabulary and passive vocabulary.

a)      Active vocabulary refers to all words the students have learnt and which can be used in communication.

b)      Passive vocabulary refers to all words which students will re cognize them when they see them in communication.

Soundly like Harmer Schail in Sabaruddin (2003:6) classifies vocabulary into three categories; active vocabulary, reserve vocabulary, and passive vocabulary.

a)      Active vocabulary according to Schail is the words we customarily use in speaking.

b)      Reserve vocabulary is the words we know but we rarely use them in speaking but we usually use them in writing.

c)      Passive vocabulary is the words we recognize vaguely but we are not sure of their meanings, we never use them in either speaking or writing; we just know that we have seen them before. 

Generally vocabulary is divided into two parts based on it kinds which is active and passive. Active vocabulary is words which are usually used by people in speaking. While passive vocabulary is words which are rarely used in speaking and writing but we never see them.

3.      The Four Aspects of Vocabulary That The Students Have To Know About

Harmer (1993:156-158) explains four aspects of vocabulary that the students need to know about. The four aspects are word meaning, word use, word formation, and word grammar.

a)      Word Meaning

      One word may have more than one meaning. The meaning of a word depends on the context in which that the word occurs. Therefore in the teaching of vocabulary, words taught to students should be presented in variety of context to show various meaning.

b)      Word Use

      The meaning of a word can be changed, stretched, or limited by how it used, and this is something that students need to know about in relation to word use, Harmer (1993:157) states that students need to recognize such as idiomatic use, metaphorical use, and word collocation.

1)      Idiomatic Use

Word meaning is frequently stretched through the use of idiom (idiomatic expression). Such “Cats and Dogs,” can be put into such a fixed phrase as it’s raining cats and dogs, it means very heavy rain.

2)      Metaphorical Use

Metaphor is the use of word to indicate something, which is different from its literal meaning. Such as the word ‘hiss’ which describes the way people talk as in “Don’t move or teacher are dead,” he hissed.

3)      Word Collocation

Word meaning is also governed by collocation, that is, which words go with each other. For example, such a word ‘wrist’ can collocate with ‘sprain’ as in ‘sprain wrist’, but it cannot collocate with the word ‘head’. So we cannot have such a collocation as ‘sprainhead’. On the country, the word ‘ache’ can collocate wit ‘head’ as in ‘headache’, but it cannot collocate with the word ‘wrist’. So, we cannot have such a collocation as ‘wristache’.

c)      Word Formation

Word formation refers to word forms and how they are formed. Some words are nouns, some words are adjectives, some words are verbs, etc. The students need to know how to form adjectives from nouns, how to form nouns to adjectives, how to form verbs to nouns, or from adjectives and etc. For example, beauty (noun) changed to beautiful (adjective), or beatify (verb). (Chew and Kaur in Mutmainnah (2006:11))

d)      Word Grammar

Word grammar refers to such thing as the way words are used grammatically. In English, for instance, some verbs are used without to (can, may) etc. English verbs have tenses. Such as verbs “want” may change to “wanted“, speak may change to “spoke” or “spoken.” The students need to know they are used properly.

Harmer can summarize knowing a word in the following way;

(Harmer: 1993, 158)

4.      Teaching Vocabulary

In teaching vocabulary there are some requirements for us that are very important to apply in the class. Wallace (1989:27-31) indicates the main principle of teaching and learning vocabulary as follows;

a)      Aims

We have to be clear about our aims of how much vocabulary we will teach.

b)      Quantity

Having decided on what in involved in vocabulary learning we may decide on the quantity of vocabulary to teach to become parts of student’s active vocabulary, and then we put number we will depend on number of factors varying from class to class and learners. When there still students may become confused, discouraged and frustrated.

c)      Need

In most cases to decide what vocabulary is to be taught to the students, a teacher may use course book or syllabus. In any case, the teachers in choosing the vocabulary to be taught we refer to the aims of the course and the objectives of the individual lessons. It also possible for the teachers, in any case, to give the responsibility of choosing vocabulary to be taught to the students which are put in a situation where they need them by using the teacher as an informant.

d)       Frequent Exposure and Repetition

In teaching and learning vocabulary lessons, there is needed certain a moment of the repetition until there is evidence that the students learn the target words.

e)      Meaningful Presentation

In presenting the vocabulary lessons, the students must have a clear and specific understanding of the words denotes.

f)        Situation and presentation

Situation and presentation, the word presented are appropriated to the student’s situation.

g)      Presenting Context

Words seldom occur in isolation, so it is important for the students to know the usual context the words occur in so from beginning as it were among the words.

h)      Learning Vocabulary in the Mother Tongue in the Target Language

Teaching in the target words teachers should use words of the mother tongue as a toot of compare similarities and differences of the words.

i)        Guessing Procedure in Learning Vocabulary

Guessing Procedure in learning vocabulary is a way in learning vocabulary. It leads students to think the meaning of the new words taught.

                       

1.      Definition

Personal Vocabulary Notes (PVN) is a way of developing student vocabulary in a personalized way while encouraging them to become autonomous learners.

2.      The Applying of PVN in the Classroom

a)      Creating the Need

To effectively set up PVN in a class, the students must first feel the need to learn vocabulary.  A basic way to focus students and introduce PVN is to give them a fluency task which will require vocabulary that they do not have.  This activity needs to be adjusted to the student level.  For example, for a lower level class teacher might just have students describe their neighborhoods or what they did over the weekend.  For upper level classes teacher might have them explain a movie or a current event.  Many students have often developed the laudable habit of using only "easy English" to express their ideas, so it is important to encourage them to write PVN while they speak, assuring them that they both can use "easy English" and improve their vocabulary.  Tell students that each lesson they must get at least five PVN per class.  If they do not manage to get five in class, explain that they need to think of words they want to know outside of class.

b)      Establishing a Routine

It is important to make PVN a habit in class which is easy and natural for students to do. Using a daily journal with a section for PVN (along with class notes, homework, etc.) helps in applying the method.  In this way, students are not searching for scraps of paper to write notes but will have an organized system for recording their PVN.  Whenever they are speaking in class I ask them to keep their journals out on the desks and can easily check if they are writing PVN.

It is also important to discourage dictionary use in class or at least during the communication activity as it disrupts the communicative task.  Students will often pull out their dictionaries or ask teacher how to say something in English.  In such situations, teacher just reminds them that they can check later and that teacher does not want them to stop their conversations.  It can also be worth mentioning how many people look up a word, say it, and then promptly forget it.

In addition to having students look words up, you can devote class time in which students ask you and their classmates how to say things in English.  Regardless of whether the teacher speaks the first language or not, this activity can be tremendous in raising student awareness simply in showing how critical the context is in choosing the best vocabulary item.

It is important to clearly model how to look up words using bilingual and learner dictionaries.  You can also encourage students to ask each other for translations.  The important thing is to stress context, as students often just look up words and pick the first translation offered in their bilingual dictionaries.  Teachers should also model how to write example sentences.  Admonish students not to copy dictionary sentences and to make their sentences long enough to show the context.  I usually do this by stressing that they will not receive credit unless they use their PVN to express their own ideas.

c)      Teacher Response/Feedback

The most important point to keep in mind when correcting PVN is to focus on what the students are trying to say.  Often there is a temptation to "teach" them additional information related to the words they have written.  Keep it simple.  Just check that the sentences they have written are grammatically correct and naturally express the student ideas.  For example a student might write the following sentence:

"I went to an alumni association last weekend."

Although it is correct I would have a strong suspicion that what the student wanted to say was that:

"I went to a class reunion last weekend."  or
 "I got together with some friends from high school last weekend."

There is also a great deal of oddities caused by direct translation. For example:

"My hourly wage is 800 an hour."  or "I lacerated my finger."

The goal is to teach students the most natural English for their particular conversational situation (i.e. in class, chatting with friends). It is important in situations like the above to give students feedback on formality and register when offering the following suggestions:

In this way the teacher can bring in more complex aspects of knowing a word in a personal and contextualized way.

d)      Follow up activities in class

1)      Peer lesson

One of the first activities that teacher have to do and one which teacher do again and again is simply having students tell each other about the new words they learned.  I usually put the following standard classroom questions on the board and have them talk to several different partners.

What new words did you learn?
How do you spell that?
What does that mean?
How do you pronounce that?
What part of speech is that?

In this way, the classroom questions are re-enforced and students review their own PVN as they teach them to others.  Students will feel their need to "learn more vocabulary" greatly satisfied by this simple activity.

2)      Peer Quizzing

Another simple activity is to have students exchange PVN and quiz each other.  This can be done by having the tester tell them PVN in students’ first language or by reading their example sentence and blanking out the PVN.  For example,

e)      Circumlocution Lessons

Teach student the circumlocution phrases like "This is a kind of..." and have them explain their PVN, to each other.  The students who are guessing can guess in English or in students’ first language in a monolingual class (Do you mean...?).  In the latter case, have students be insistent about the guesser getting the exact word.  For example, they would need to guess "outgoing" and not "friendly" (That is close, but...).  This forces students to work on conveying the nuances of different words.

Peer presentations on specific topics:  Later, after student have gotten used to doing PVN teacher can actually assign topics for them to research and present to the class or small groups.

f)        Other Vocabulary Games/Training

Once students have a set of words to work with theirs are any number of games and exercises teacher can do with them.  Many such activities are outlined in resource books like Vocabulary (Rinvolucri, OUP), and A Way with Words (Gairns and Redman, CUP).  To offer a couple of examples, teacher can have students organize their words in word stress patterns.  Teacher also can finish speaking activities in which students must make short stories using two or more PVN.  Another speaking activity is to have student slip a PVN item secretly in a conversation without the other person noticing.

g)      Overview

3)      The researcher tries to engage the students in some kind of fluency activity and encourage them to write words in Indonesian that they do not know how to say in English. 

4)      As home work, the researcher will have the students look up their PVN and find English translation. They then should write sentences using their PVN. To make a manageable workload, teachers can ask students to choose just two or three PVN to make into sentences.

5)      The research collects the PVN, checks it, and hands it back the following class.

6)      Students keep a section in their notebook for PVN and do follow up activities with it such as peer teaching and review activities.

7)      Evaluating students’ vocabulary with test and quiz.

The research employed an experimental design, with pre-test and post-test design comparison between the pre-test and post-test and post-test scores depends on the success of the treatment.

To collecting data the researcher also will use the questioner, the other goals to measure the students’ motivation completely.

The design is

            C                         O₁                                                          O₂

E                        : Experiment

C                        : Control Class

O₁                      : Pre-test

O₂                      : Post-test

X                        : Treatment

                          : Experimental and control class are resulted from random

                                                                              (Tuckman, 1990:160)

The variables of the research are dependent variable and independent variable. The dependent variable is the students’ vocabulary ability. While independent variable is the Personal Vocabulary Note (PVN).

1.      Population

The population of this research was the students of the eighth grade of SMPN 1 Mandalle. The total numbers of the students of the eighth grade of SMPN 1 Mandalle are 175 members.

2.      Sample

The total sample in this research was 60 students which divided in two classes that consist of 30 students of experiment class and 30 students of control class, this research applied the purposive sampling technique. 

D.     Instruments of the Research

The test consists of pre-test and post test. The pre-test was administered before the treatment to get data on the students’ prior knowledge, while post-test given after the last treatment to get data on the impact of Personal Vocabulary Note. Objective Test

Collecting the data, the researcher used some procedures such as follows:

1.      Distributing the pre-test to the samples.

This section, the researcher had the students answer the questions with the objective given by the researcher.      

When the treatment section went on, the researcher applied the PVN. The treatment in the research was presented as follows:

c.       The researcher tries to engage the students in some kind of fluency activity and encourage them to write words in Indonesian that they do not know how to say in English. 

d.      As home work, the researcher had the students look up their PVN and find English translation. They then should write sentences using their PVN. To make a manageable workload, teachers can ask students to choose just two or three PVN to make into sentences.

e.       The research collects the PVN, checks it, and hands it back the following class.

f.        Students keep a section in their notebook for PVN and do follow up activities with it such as peer teaching and review activities.

g.       Evaluating students’ vocabulary with test and quiz.

 The data collect through the test by using inferential statistic percentage score is also used to know the students’ ability. The steps under taken in quantitative analysis employing the following formulas:

a.       Scoring the students correct answer of pretest and posttest

                                                                                                     (Sudjana: 2008)

The mean score of the students is classified into seven levels as follows:

                          (Depdikbud in Mutmainnah 2006: 22) 

   

        
N          = the total number of subject

                                                                                  (Gay, 1981: 298)

Notation:

                              T          = Test of significance

                              X_C        = Mean Score of experimental class

                              X_E        = Mean score of control class

                              SS_E      = the sum of square of experimental class

                              n_E         = the subject of experimental class

                              n_C        = the subject of control class

                                                                                                       (Gay, 1981:127)

This chapter discusses about the finding and discussion. The findings describe about the result of the data collected from the test. And discussion explains and interprets the findings. The result of the research will be described in the following description:

The finding of the result deals with the classification of the students’ score on the pre-test and post-test in experimental.

Table 1

The rate percentage of the experimental class

Group students’ pre-test score

  

     

The table 1 shows that from 30 students, there were 7 (23.4 %) students got the very poor score, 21 (70%) students got the poor score, and there were 2 (6.6%) students got fair. It means that the students were lack of vocabulary.

Table 2

The rate percentage of the control class

Group students’ pre-test

      As the experimental Group, the result of pre-test of the control class shows that the students were weak in vocabulary.

Table 3

The rate percentage of the experimental class

Group students’ post-test

       

      The table 3 shows us that there is a differentiation between the pre-test results of the experimental class before. In post-test, there were not students got very poor score, 17 students got poor score, 11 got fair score and 2 students got fairly good score. Even though no one got the good or even the excellent score, we can still see the differentiation there. 

Table 4

The rate percentage of the control class

Group students’ post-test

      Although there were a different between pre-test and post-test of control class but it was not as significant as the result of the experimental class.

      The result of pre-test and post-test calculation is presented in the following mean score table.

Table 5

The mean score of pre-test and post-test analysis

      The data in table 5 indicates that the mean score of the control class of the pre-test was 4.26 while the mean score of the experimental of the students pre-test was 4.22. Meanwhile, the mean score of the control class of the post-test was 4.75 while the mean score of the experimental class of the post-test is 5.18.  From that result, we see that the mean score of the post-test is higher than pre-test mean score.

The pre-test was given to both groups by applying tests (pre-test and pos-test) and the result of the test can be seen as follows:

Table 6

Score obtained through the pre-test

The students got the post-test (experimental and control group) after they got some treatment. The experimental group was treated by using Personal Vocabulary Notes (PVN) to improve the students’ vocabulary. The score obtained the post test are as follows: 

Table 7

Score obtained through the post-test

In order to carry out the statistical analysis of the pre-test and post-test control group, the following table containing the score of this group as presented bellow.

Table 8

Score obtained from control group pre-test and post test

The previous data shows that the mean score of pre-test was found by dividing the total of all (127.8) by the numbered of subject (30) which was equal to 4.26 and the mean score of the post test was also calculated by dividing the total score (135.8) by the number of subject (30) which was equal to 4.52, it can be seen in the following formula.

1.      Pre-test

       

      = 4.26

2.      Post-test

= 4.52

The progress made by the experimental group was indicated the difference of the two means (D) which was subtracting the mean of pre-test (M₁) from the mean of post-test (M₂), thus

D = (M₂) – (M₁)

   = 4.52 – 4.26

   = 0.26

To compare between the mean score of the experimental group and control group, the writer also provides the control groups score which obtained in the pre-test and post-test as follows:

Table 9

Score obtained from experimental group pre-test and post test

In the table, we can look for the mean score of the pre-test and was found by dividing the total all pre-test score (112.5) by the number of subject (30) which was equal to 3.75 and the mean score of the post test was also calculated by dividing the total of its score (165.6) by the number of subjects (30) which was equal to 5.52, it can be seen in the following formula:

1.      Pre-test

       

       = 3.75

2.      Post-test

      = 5.52

The progress made by the experimental group was indicated the difference of the two means (D) which was subtracting the mean of pre-test (M₁) from the mean of post-test (M₂), thus

D = (M₂) – (M₁)

   = 5.52 – 3.75 = 1.77

After the mean difference score between the pre-test and post-test score both two groups (experimental group and control group) had been found, a comparison was made to decide which of two groups had higher progress. It appears that the mean of different score for experimental group (DE = 1.77) is higher than the control group (DC = 0.26).

To know the significance of the mean difference between correlated sample, such as those used in this experimental, the writer used the following formula:

 

 

The value of t-test is 1.07 is higher than t-table 0.683. It means that the t-test value is higher than t-table value. It can be concluded that the Personal Vocabulary Notes was successful in improving the students’ vocabulary.

Based on findings of the students’ score, the mean score of the students’ pre-test in experimental group was 3.75. It shows the achievement of students’ vocabulary before the treatment and the mean score of post-test is 5.52 after treatment.

The mean score of the students’ pre-test in control group was 4.26 and it shows the achievement of control group before treatment. The mean score of post-test is 4.52 which show the students’ achievement after the treatment.

Based on the description in the previous chapter, the writer puts forward conclusions and suggestions as follows:

1. The students’ vocabulary mastery of the eighth grade students of SMPN 01 Mandalle is still low before using the Personal Vocabulary Notes. It is proved by the mean score in pre-test is 3.75.

2. After receiving treatment and having post test, the students’ vocabulary mastery improved until 5.52

3. The significant difference of the t-test value 1.07 is higher than the T-table value which is 0.681.

4. Commonly, the students agree that Personal Vocabulary Notes Method is a good method and make them easy to understand the subject, the data show that there are 12 (40%) students strongly agree, 17 (56.70%) students agree, 1 (3.30%) students disagree, and none of them strongly disagree.

After looking at the result of the research, the writer would like to put forward the following suggestions.

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