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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

One of the goals in English teaching learning in junior high school is to

develop oral and written communication competence in the four language skills

namely listening, reading, speaking and writing. To improve all of those skills

need the understanding of English vocabulary. In the other word, vocabulary is

one of the language elements that support all language skills above.

Some experts convey the importance of vocabularies, Mc Carthy (1990: 1)

states that the biggest component of any language course is vocabulary. Julian

Edge (1993: 27) states knowing a lot of words in a foreign language is very

important, the more the words people know, the better people’s chance of

understanding or making their self understood. Mainly, no matter how well the

students learn grammar and those four language skills above, without words to

express a wide range meaning, communication in second language cannot occur

in any meaningful way. Misunderstanding that often occurs in communication

process also can be avoided and reduced by mastering vocabularies. Almost

similar with Julian Edge, Shoebottom (2011: 1) states that vocabulary is the key to

understand what students hears and reads in school and to communicate

successfully with other people so, it is very essential for students to make up a

large store of words because research studies have shown the strong links between

having an extensive vocabulary and achieving school success.

Harmer (1991: 153) defines that if language structures make up the

skeleton of language, then it is vocabulary that provides the vital organs and the

flesh. In other words, no matter how brilliantly one masters his or her English

grammar, without the knowledge of vocabulary it is useless because words are the

basic that create the speech. It is strengthen by Scrivener (1998: 73) that a student

who says yesterday, go disco, and friends, dancing will almost certainly get much

of his or her message over despite completely avoiding grammar - the meaning is

conveyed by the vocabulary alone.


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However, based on Frost (2004), teaching vocabulary, is quite difficult

because there are thousand hundreds words in English. Teaching vocabulary, like

teaching another subject involves some elements that work together in order to

achieve the goal. Teacher, students, materials, techniques etc. are some elements

that cannot be separated one to another because of their relationship to make

successful teaching learning process.

Based on the preliminary observation and interview with teacher and some

students in the eighth grade students of SMP Negeri 39 Purworejo, the researcher

has a conclusion that the students are poor in vocabulary mastery as the basic in

mastering the four language skills. Students’ scores of the vocabulary test portray

their low achievement in mastering English vocabularies. The ideal condition is

students achieve the passing grade in English lesson, namely 7.50. But the facts

are the students still get low mark 5.88 and low in mastering four language skills.

Some problems found which are related to students’ vocabulary mastery, as

follows: (1) mostly of the students get difficulties in recognizing the words,

memorizing the words, grasping and understanding the meaning of the words; (2)

mostly of the students get difficulties in spelling; (3) mostly of the students get

difficulties in pronouncing the English words correctly; and (4) the students

cannot use English words in appropriate context.

Some indicators that prove mostly of the students get difficulties in

recognizing the words, memorizing the words, grasping and understanding the

meaning of the words are: (a) mostly of the students cannot differ obviously

which one is noun, verb, adjective, adverb etc. They still confused how to differ

the word classification or different parts of speech of a word family and confused

in recognizing new English words. When the students asked to make the

sentences, the matters can be seen clearly; (b) the students get difficulties how to

recall the new words. They are easily forgot the words although they have studied

the word in the previous day lesson; (c) some of the students cannot do the

exercise well, cannot answer test well and cannot understand the teacher’s

questions; (d) based on students’ and teacher’s confession on interview that the

students sometimes get difficulties in recognizing the words, memorizing the


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words, grasping and understanding the meaning of the words; (e) some students

are confused when interpret some idioms; (f) some students are confused to

understand some English words which have more than one meaning such as

“book” as “buku” against “book” as “memesan” or “bat” as “kelelawar” against

“bat” as “alat pemukul”; (g) some students misinterpret some resemble English

words like “paper” and “pepper”, “leaf” and “leave”, “snack” and “snake” etc.


spelling such as: (a) some of the students are mispelling in spelling English

words; (b) some of the students are wrong to write English words; (c) there are a

lot of mistakes and incorrect answers in the test and exercises.


pronouncing the English word correctly, such as: (a) mostly of the students are

mispronounce in pronouncing English words; (b) the students tend to pronounce

the letters of the words. The matter usually is caused by the differences in

pronunciation system between the target language and mother tongue (Indonesian

language) and by the teaching techniques errors. In the other words, the students

still do overgeneralization from Bahasa Indonesia principle. For example, when

reading English word, they read it according to the spelling or they write the

spelling of an English word same with its pronunciation; (c) the students tend to

add the vocal sound when they find consonant cluster which does not appear in

Indonesian language and replace the consonant sound which is difficult to

pronounce with the nearest sound. It happens when the students have to

pronounce the word which ends in consonant sound. Spelling and pronouncing the

word correctly is important part of teaching vocabulary because incorrect spelling

and pronunciation will influence the meaning of the words. Moreover, it can help

the students to remember the word longer and identify it more readily when hear

or see it. In introducing new words, the teacher should spell and pronounce every

new word correctly and carefully and then repeated together. It is better if the

students can spell and pronounce each new word individually so the teacher will

correct it if they make mistake. So for teacher, in introducing the new word, he or

she should tend more to use spoken form first than written; (d) based on students’


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and teacher’s confession on interview that some of the students get difficulties in

spelling and pronouncing the English words correctly.

Some indicators that prove the students cannot use English words in

appropriate context namely: (a) the students use incorrect words to build English

sentences; (b) sometimes the students use Indonesian terms when they cannot find

the words in English. Due to the limitation of vocabularies and the limitation of

sources in learning English they own, when the students sometimes face the

difficult word, they give up and cannot replace the word with other appropriate

word in their list of vocabularies so, the easiest way is use the Indonesian term to

substitute that word. Yet, if they have many vocabularies it is possible for them to

choose another word with the same meaning, substitute the difficult word with it

and when they do it, it means that they can minimize or avoid the use of

Indonesian word; (c) based on students’ confession on interview that the students

are difficult in making the sentences.

The causes of the problems above can be identified as follows: (1)

teacher’s technique of delivering material is unattractive for the students. Teacher,

as we know as the one who handle the teaching and learning process has function

as the primary key in the class should be creative and innovative but some

Indonesian English teachers still use a conservative or traditional method, known

as Grammar Translation Method that mostly focus on reading and translation of

the text, doing written exercise, grammatical rules and the memorization of

vocabulary; (2) limited teaching sources and teaching equipment that the school

and the teacher have. The teaching and learning process that supported by

adequate school’s facilities are better than the lack one; (3) the students do not

fully pay attention and seem uninterested to the lesson. The activity run in the

class is not attracting for the students to participate. Sometimes, they do not

response when the teacher asks them to do some exercises or practices because

the activity that held in the class is not attracting them; (4) limited teaching

sources that the students have. Mostly of the students come from middle-low

economic class so they do not have such an adequate teaching sources like


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dictionary, English book etc. that can be very helpful in learning English

vocabulary.

The condition and situation of the classroom during the teaching process

can be described as follows: (1) some of the students feel bored during the

teaching and less motivated in following the lesson. It can be identified through

their behavior during the teaching like: (a) some of the students frequently lay

their head down on the table during the teaching; (b) some of the students feel

sleepy; (c) mostly of the students are less enthusiastic to listen to the teacher’s

explanation; (2) some of the students are lack of attention to the lesson. There are

many students who chat one another; (3) there are some students who often ask to

go to the bathroom; and (4) some of the students walk in the class in order to

cheat other students’ worksheet because they feel afraid they cannot do the

exercise well.

During the pre-liminary observation and interview with teacher and

students, it can be seen when teacher teaches English he mostly presents the

material, reads the text, translates the text, students listen then answer the

questions in students’ book and LKS. Answering worksheet give less impression

for the students.

When the teacher teaches vocabulary, he sometimes just writes down the

difficult English words in the blackboard or makes a list of difficult words then

writes their meaning in Indonesia. He seldom involves students’ participation to

find by themselves the meaning of each word in Indonesia or guessing the

meaning related the context talking about. Such a way looks less challenging for

the students, ordinary and unattractive to grab students’ attention. The students

only imitate what teacher writes in the blackboard, then they write it in their

notebook without actually know what is meant by each word.

Next, the teacher just pronounces the words both in English and in

Indonesian term, asks the students to follow him, the students repeat it and learn it

by heart. The students asked to recognize, memorize and grasp the meaning of the

word themselves without adequate explanation of the word and without adequate


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understanding of the concept of each word. They recognize the word, memorize

the word but in no longer time.

In fact, so many teachers dominate class. They mostly do imitation-

repetition drilling, presenting material and students answering worksheet. Those

techniques are still teacher’s centered, whereas the new paradigm of education is

students’ centered that stimulus them to learn by doing. The center of learning is

not just how teacher teach but how students learn. The wrong answer and the

mistakes are also caused by translation method that has been explained above.

The teacher taught vocabulary mostly by translation at the beginning of the lesson

or translation of the material containing list of new words at the end of the lesson.

The matter of choosing the technique of delivering material is important

thing here. So based on the background above, this matter encourages the

researcher to conduct a classroom action research that have efforts to solve the

problems in vocabulary mastery. The research will be focused on the

implementation of brainstorming activities in improving students’ vocabulary

mastery. The researcher applies brainstorming activities to teach vocabulary that

is reflected in activity based teaching and in communicative language learning.

Carbo, Dunn, and Dunn (1986) define:

“Brainstorming is an exciting group participation technique designed todevelop multiple answers to a single question, alternate solutions toproblems and creative responses. It is an associative process thatencourages students to call out. Thus, it responds to personal motivationand does not suppress natural spontaneity (p. 235).”

Brainstorming also defined as thinking up as many answers to a question

as possible (Family Education, 2013). Then brainstorming is explained as “Curah

gagasan; alat bantu yang digunakan untuk mengeluarkan ide dari setiap anggota

tim yang dilakukan secara terstruktur dan sistematis. Kunci sukses suatu sesi

brainstorming adalah suasana bebas tanpa kritik untuk menggali ide kreatif demi

mendapatkan solusi alternative tanpa batas (Lean Sig Sixma Imdonesia. 2013).”

Hornby in Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (2005: 176) describes

brainstorming is a way of making a group of people all think about something at

the same time, often in order to solve a problem or to create good ideas.


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Brainstorming can be done in many ways, but the purpose is always to have

students get their ideas out and somewhat organized. Lists, webs, story maps,

graphic organizers, simple outlines, or even pictures or diagrams are all effective

ways for students to start to get in touch with their ideas.

With brainstorming activities the students can create ideas as many as

possible and it means that they also create many new vocabularies related to the

topic. Brainstorming activities can be held in various techniques, using various

materials and procedures depend on the creativeness of the teacher. Teacher will

be helped by this technique because it can be implemented in the classroom since

it has wide variations and of course it is interesting for the students.

There are various activities of this technique that believed by the

researcher can interest the students to be actively participate in the classroom. For

example guessing game, miming game, mind mapping, word mapping, word

listing and some other activities included to this technique.

Using brainstorming activities will help the students to be active in

finding the words and finally pronouncing the words together. The advantage of

brainstorming activity is it has the opportunity to let the students to find and to

produce new words in the target language. It means that they do not only find the

new words, but also try to grasp and understand the meaning of the words, and

finally they try to spell and pronounce the words.

The researcher conducts brainstorming activities because she also regards

the condition of school and students that have limited teaching sources and

teaching equipment. The teacher should create a teaching activities and teaching

aid that are manageable, possible to be done but effective to improve students’

vocabulary mastery. Moreover vocabulary mastery is always needed in

communication so the students should memorize vocabularies by long term

memory. To memorize thing for long term, the students should be impressed first.

It will be difficult for them to memorize new vocabulary by just repeating,

because it does not impress them. Brainstorming activities activates the students

and gives them impressions.


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It can be assumed that brainstorming activities is effective to improve

students’ vocabulary mastery. It suits with the condition of school and students

who cannot provide adequate and expensive teaching equipment. Brainstorming

activities is easy, cheap and can be done by almost everyone. It is manageable

because it can be suited to the condition of the students, class, and teaching

activities.

In this study, the researcher uses brainstorming activities as a teaching

technique that facilitate the students on the eighth grade of junior high school in

getting better mastery of vocabulary.

The researcher is interested in carrying out a study entitled “The

Implementation of Brainstorming Activities in Improving Students’

Vocabulary Mastery (A Classroom Action Research on the Eighth Grade

Students of SMP Negeri 39 Purworejo in 2009/2010 Academic Year)”

B. Problems Statements

By virtue of background of the study which has described above, the

problems can be formulated as follows:

1. Can and to what extent the implementation of brainstorming activities

improve students’ vocabulary mastery ?

2. How is the class situation when the brainstorming activities are

implemented to improve students’ vocabulary mastery?

C. Objectives of the Study

The objectives in this research are:

1. To identify whether and to what extent the implementation of

brainstorming activities improves the students’ vocabulary mastery.

2. To describe the class situation when brainstorming activities are

implemented in the classroom.


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D. Benefits of the Study

The research result is expected to be able to give some benefits, such as

following:

1. Theoretical benefits

The result of the research is able to increase the knowledge of

teaching vocabulary especially related to brainstorming activities.

2. Practical benefits

a. For the students

The study can enhance the students’ vocabulary mastery.

b. For teachers

The study can give contribution in solving problems related to the

teaching of vocabulary and enrich their teaching techniques to be

implemented in the classroom.

c. For the school

The study will enrich teaching techniques in the school.

d. For English Education Department

The result of this research is expected to enhance reference about

strategy of vocabulary teaching using brainstorming activities.

e. For other researcher

The result of the study will be able to become a reference for

similar studies.

f. For the researcher

The study can bring her to a better understanding of improving

students’ vocabulary mastery and give practical contributions to her on

how to improve students’ vocabulary mastery using brainstorming

activities.

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