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IMPROVING STUDENTS’ VOCABULARY MASTERY

USING EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING

(A Classroom Action Research on the Sixth Grade of SDN Banaran 01 in the Academic Year of 2009/2010)

THESIS

By

IKE ANISA S890306018

Submitted to Fulfill One of the Requirements for Getting the Graduate

Degree of Education in English

ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

GRADUATE SCHOOL

SEBELAS MARET UNIVERSITY

SURAKARTA

2011


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APPROVAL

IMPROVING STUDENTS’ VOCABULARY MASTERY

USING EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING

(A Classroom Action Research on the Sixth Grade of SDN Banaran 01 in the Academic Year of 2009/2010)

IKE ANISA S890306018

This thesis has been approved to be examined by the Board of Thesis Examiners of the English Department, Graduate School of Sebelas Maret University, Surakarta on April 4th, 2011.

Consultant 1 Consultant II Dr. Ngadiso, M.Pd Dr. Abdul Asib, M.Pd. NIP. 19621231 198803 1 009 NIP. 19520307 198003 1 005

The Head of English Education of Graduate School

Sebelas Maret University of Surakarta

Dr. Ngadiso, M.Pd NIP. 19621231 198803 1 009


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1


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Pronouncement

This is to certify that I myself write this thesis entitled “Improving

Students’ Vocabulary Mastery Using Experiential Learning (A Classroom Action

Research on the Sixth Grade of SDN Banaran 01 in the Academic Year of

2009/2010)”.

It is not a plagiarism or made by others. Anything related to others’ work

is written in quotation, the source that is listed on bibliography.

If then this pronouncement proves incorrect, I am ready to accept

academic punishment, including the withdrawal or cancellation of my academic

degree.

Surakarta, ………….2011

IKE ANISA


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Abstract

Ike Anisa. S890306018. IMPROVING STUDENTS’ VOCABULARY MASTERY USING EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING (A Classroom Action Research on the Sixth Grade of SDN Banaran 01 in the Academic Year of 2009/2010). Thesis, Surakarta. English Education Department, Graduate School, Sebelas Maret University. 2011. The Supervisors: (I) Dr. Ngadiso, M.Pd; (II) Dr. Abdul Asib, M.Pd. This research was conducted because of the low vocabulary mastery of the sixth grade students of SDN Banaran 01 Grogol Sukoharjo in the academic year 2009/2010. The research is aimed at finding out (1) whether the experiential learning method can improve students’ vocabulary mastery; (2) what happens in class when the teacher applies the experiential learning method. The researcher conducted a classroom action research. The action research was conducted in two cycles. Each cycle consisted of six steps: identifying the problem, planning the action, implementing the action, observing and monitoring the action, reflecting and evaluating the result of the observation, and revising the plan. There are two types of data in the research, namely the numerical and non numerical data which were collected by observation, interview, questionnaire, and test. The numerical data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, finding out the mean scores in the tests and the significant difference of the scores using t-test of non-independent variable. The non-numerical data were analyzed using Constant-comparative technique proposed by Glasser and Corbin consisting of the following steps: (1) comparing incidents applicable to each category; (2) integrating categories and their properties; (3) delimiting the theory; (4) writing the theory.

The result of the study showed that: (1) the use of experiential learning in the class improved students’ vocabulary mastery in terms of: (a) the improvement of understanding meaning; (b) the improvement of pronunciation; (c) the improvement of spelling and (d) the improvement of using the words. (2) experiential learning can improve classroom atmosphere: (a) making the classroom situation more alive; (b) improving students’ confidence, motivation, and involvement in English class.

Related to the research findings above, the researcher wanted to propose some recommendations for the English teacher to apply experiential learning to teach vocabulary. Experiential learning can be a highly effective educational method. Experiential learning can motivate the students, make them pay attention and take part in teaching learning process. Teaching vocabulary using experiential learning can attract students’ interest in learning English and help them to grasp and remember the vocabulary meaning.


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MOTTO

A friend in need is a friend indeed.


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Dedication

This thesis is dedicated to:

Her parents, for their love and pray.

Her beloved husband, Arseto Noorman, ST., for his great love and patience.

Her beloved daughter and son, Lintang Maharani and Abyan Surya; who always

give her spirit.

Her beloved sisters: Mbak Yay, Mbak Wulan, n Mbak Kris.

The Headmaster of SDN Banaran 01 Grogol, Sukoharjo, Hadi Warsito, S.Pd, who

gives the permission to the researcher to conduct the research in the school.

All of her friends in SDN Banaran 01 who always give the support to finish this

thesis.


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Acknowledgment

The researcher would like to address her greatest thanks to Allah SWT

WHO has given everything that helps the writer to finish this thesis as one of the

requirements for achieving the graduate degree of the English education. Without

His blessing, help, guidance, and love, the researcher can do nothing. Then, this

thesis can never be completed without helps, guidance, and supports from many

people. So, the researcher would like to express her great gratitude to:

1. The Director of Graduate School Sebelas Maret University, who gives

permission to write the thesis.

2. The Head of the English Education Department, Dr. Ngadiso, M.Pd for giving

the researcher the permission to write the thesis.

3. Dr. Ngadiso, M.Pd. and Dr. Abdul Asib, M.Pd., her consultants, for giving her

advice and guidance in accomplishing this thesis.

4. Mr. Walimin as her collaborator for his help and advice.

The researcher realizes that this is not perfect. Therefore, she hopes and

accepts comment and suggestion. Finally, she truly hopes that this thesis will be

useful for the readers.

Surakarta, February 2011

IA


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TABLE OF CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE ……………………………………………………………….. i

APPROVAL ………………………………………………………………... ii

LEGITIMATION FROM THE BOARD OF EXAMINERS ……………… iii

PRONOUNCEMENT ……………………………………………………… iv

ABSTRACT ………………………………………………………………... v

MOTTO …………………………………………………………………….. vi

DEDICATION ……………………………………………………………… vii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT …………………………………………………. viii

TABLE OF CONTENT ……………………………………………………. ix

LIST OF APPENDICES …………………………………………………… x

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ………………………………………. 1

A. Background of the Study …………………………….. 1

B. The Problem Statement ………………………………. 7

C. The Objectives of the Study ……………….………… 8

D. The Benefit of the Study ……………………………. 8

CHAPTER II REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE ……………… 9

A. Vocabulary …………………………………………… 9

1. General View of Vocabulary ……………………. 9

2. Definition of Vocabulary Mastery ………………. 11

3. Types of Vocabulary ……………………………. 13

4. Teaching Vocabulary ……………………………. 15

B. Teaching English to the Young Learners …………… 19

1. Definition of the Young Learners ………………. 19

2. Characters of the Young Learners ……………… 20

3. Teaching English is Elementary School ……...... 21

4. Procedure of Teaching Vocabulary …………….. 25


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C. Experiential Learning ……………………………… 26

1. The Nature of Experiential Learning ………….. 26

2. The Principles in Experiential Learning ……..... 29

3. Steps in Teaching of Experiential Learning …… 32

4. Strengths………………………………………... 34

5. Weaknesses…………………………………….. 35

D. Rationale ………………………………………… 36

E. Action Hypothesis ……………………………….. 39

CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ……………………... 40

A. The Time and Place of Research ………………… 40

B. The Subject of the Study ………………………… 40

C. Research Design …………………………………. 41

1. The Nature of Action Research …………….…. 41

2. The Model of Action Research …………….…. 43

3. The Procedure of Action Research ………….... 44

D. Data Sources ….………………………………….. 46

E. The Technique of Collecting the Data ………….. 47

F. Technique of Analyzing Data …………………….. 49

CHAPTER IV THE RESULT OF THE STUDY ………………….…. 51

A. Introduction …………………………………….. 51

B. Research Finding ……………………………….. 53

C. Cycle 1 ………………………………………..… 54

1. Identifying the Problem …………………..… 54

2. Planning the Action ………………………… 55

3. Implementing the Action …………………… 56

4. Observing the Action ……………..…..……. 67

5. Reflecting of Cycle 1 ……………..…..……. 70

6. Revising the Plan ………………..……..…... 73

D. Cycle 2 ……………………………………..…… 75

1. Identifying the Problem ………………..…... 75


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2. Planning the Action ………………………... 75

3. Implementing the Action ……………...…… 76

4. Observing the Action ………………....……. 85

5. Reflecting of Cycle 2 ………………....….… 89

E. Discussion ……………………………….……... 92

CHAPTER V CONCLUSIONS, IMPICATIONS, AND

SUGGESTIONS ………………………………..……. 100

A. Conclusions ……………………………..………. 100

B. Implications ……………………………..………. 101

C. Suggestions ……………………………….…….. 102

BIBLIOGRAPHY

APPENDICES


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LIST OF APPENDICES

Appendix 1 Blue Print Angket Motivasi Belajar ……………………….. 106

Appendix 2 Angket Motivasi Belajar …………………………………… 107

Appendix 3 Table of Questionnaire ……………………………………... 110

Appendix 4 Questionnaire of Students Perception about the Action……... 111

Appendix 5 Blue Print of Pre Test ………………………………………. 112

Appendix 6 Pre Test Material …………………………………………… 113

Appendix 7 The Result of Validity and Reliability……………………… 116

Appendix 8 Lesson Plan for Cycle 1 (First meeting) ……………………. 120

Appendix 9 Lesson Plan for Cycle 1 (Second meeting) …………………. 123

Appendix 10 Lesson Plan for Cycle 1 (Third meeting) …………………… 126

Appendix 11 Worksheet for Cycle 1 (First Meeting) ……………………. 129

Appendix 12 Worksheet for Cycle 1 (Second Meeting)…………………. 132

Appendix 13 Worksheet for Cycle 1 (Third Meeting) …………………… 134

Appendix 14 Lesson Plan for Cycle 2 (First meeting) ……………….…… 136

Appendix 15 Lesson Plan for Cycle 2 (Second meeting) …..……………... 139

Appendix 16 Lesson Plan for Cycle 2 (Third meeting) …..……………….. 142

Appendix 17 Worksheet for Cycle 2 (First Meeting) ……………………… 145

Appendix 18 Worksheet for Cycle 2 (Second Meeting) …………………... 147

Appendix 19 Worksheet for Cycle 2 (Third Meeting) …………………….. 148

Appendix 20 Blue Print of Post Test Cycle 1 ………………………..……. 149

Appendix 21 Post Test of Cycle 1…………………………………………. 150

Appendix 22 Blue Print of Post Test of Cycle 2..…………………………. 153

Appendix 23 Post Test of Cycle 2 ………………………………………… 154

Appendix 24 The Result of Pre-Test Scores……………….…………….. 156

Appendix 25 The Computation of the Score in Cycle 1.………………….. 157

Appendix 26 The Computation of the Score in Cycle 2.………………….. 158

Appendix 27 The Result of All Scores ……………………..……………... 159


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Appendix 28 The Computation of the Scores in Cycle 1 ………………… 160

Appendix 29 The Computation of the Scores in Cycle 2…………………. 161

Appendix 30 Picture of Teaching and Learning Process …………………. 162

Appendix 31 Interview Notes …………………………………………….. 165

Appendix 32 Teachers’ Diary ……………………………………………. 168


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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

As everybody knows, all countries in the world use English as an

international language. It plays an important role in every aspect of human

life such as communication, education, science, and technology. English is

mostly used in the world. English is mostly used in scientific fields such as

science and technology. There are so many books that are written in

English, especially in educational fields, from elementary school to college.

Because of the reasons, teaching English should be given from the

beginning, it should be given when the students sit in the elementary school

or in kindergarten.

In Indonesia, English is the first foreign language which is taught

formally from the junior high school to the university level. However,

nowadays, English is taught in some elementary schools, and even in the

lower level such as kindergarten and play groups. It means children are

introduced to English earlier. It is hoped that they will learn English more

naturally as they learn their mother tongue, besides it will be the basis for

the students to learn English in the higher level. According to Halliwel

(1992: p. 3), children come to primary school with this ability already

highly developed.

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A number of elementary schools in Indonesia have begun to

introduce English into their curriculum as a local content. It is clearly stated

in the curriculum of elementary education. “… pelajaran bahasa Inggris

tidak diwajibkan di Sekolah Dasar melainkan sebagai muatan lokal.”

(GBPP Muatan Lokal SD Bahasa Inggris (1995: p. 1).

At elementary school, English is introduced to the students through

learning its vocabulary because vocabulary is the most important element

that will become the basic competence in order to get other competences

like listening, speaking, reading, and writing. If the students have mastered a

number of vocabularies required in their level, it will be easier for them to

master those elements in English learning. Hardjono defines: “Dari semua

aspek dasar bahasa asing yang harus dikuasai siswa dalam proses belajar,

aspek kosakata yang paling penting tanpa penguasaannya tidak mungkin

orang biasa menggunakan bahasa asing.” (1998: p. 71). It means

vocabulary is essential thing that has to be learned by the students in order

to master English well.

Hatch and Brown (1995: p. 1) state that vocabulary is the foundation

to build language which plays a fundamental role in communication. It

means that vocabulary is the first priority in learning English.

As the basic component of the four language skills, vocabulary has

to be mastered by the learners. Vocabulary is the main point to learn

English. Without it a student will get difficulty to learn English. In

elementary school, vocabulary is the first step to learn English. By knowing


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the vocabulary from the beginning the children will get a lot of knowledge

and will not get difficulties in mastering language skills. Thus, vocabulary

should be on the first priority in the English language teaching and learning.

Vocabulary mastery has always been an essential part of English as

foreign language. There is no doubt that vocabulary mastery plays an

important role in the four language skills. They are listening, speaking,

reading, and writing. All four aspects are interrelated. But before students

master all aspects, they must master vocabulary first. Vocabulary must not

be neglected by anyone who learns English.

From the importance of vocabulary above, teachers should give

serious attention in teaching vocabulary especially to the children, because it

is a crucial thing in learning English. To teach vocabulary in elementary

school is not easy. There is a difference between teaching children and

teaching adults. Teachers must have extra power to teach them and the

children have certain characteristics and need a certain treatment. It is also

the first chance of learning a foreign language. So the teacher should find

the best or the effective method to teach English vocabulary.

To teach English, especially in Elementary School, teachers will face

some problems during the teaching learning process. Even though, teachers

have their own priority to manage their classroom, as Richards states

“teachers have primary responsibility for how they teach; they may assume

very different roles within their own classroom (1994: p. 97).” So, teachers

should make their classroom more comfortable and interesting, especially


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teaching English in Elementary School. Here, problems always occur when

teaching English is applied in Elementary School students. This can be

proven from pre research in the sixth grade students of SDN Banaran 01

Grogol Sukoharjo. From the pre research, the researcher found that the

students’ vocabulary mastery is low. It is because the students get

difficulties in mastering vocabulary. They are: (1) the students get

difficulties in grasping and memorizing the meaning of the words; (2) they

found it hard to spell the words correctly; and (3) they get difficulties in

pronouncing the words correctly; and (4) they get difficulties in using

vocabulary in a sentence.

They are able to use the vocabulary if they know the meaning, how

to pronounce, how to spell, and how to use them in a sentence. Knowing the

meaning of some words does not merely know its translation in different

language. Knowing means understanding how the words are put in different

contexts and used differently. For example: good morning. The students not

only know that good morning is selamat pagi but they can greet someone in

the morning using good morning.

How to pronounce can be understood from pronouncing the words

correctly. Students can distinguish the slightly different words such as, tree

and three. English has more complex pronunciation than Bahasa Indonesia,

and it often becomes a problem.

How to spell means that the students are able to spell the words. It

will be difficult thing when the words are similar to the others. For example:


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sea and see. Usually, it is tightly connected with knowing of words. When

students understand the word, they will be able to indicate whether to spell

sea or see.

How to use words is an ability to use or to apply the words either in

spoken or written. For example: a student says, “jump to the left” when the

teacher says “jump”. In another occasion, the student says: “jump to the

chair ”. In this case, of course, the student has already understood how to

use the word jump in different contexts.

By conducting observation and interview, the researcher found some

psychological barriers from the students. They feel shy and afraid to ask the

teacher if they find a difficulty. These problems may give a great influence

to their learning process.

The other reason that causes of the students’ failure is the teacher’s

teaching method. He/she is not creative when teaching the foreign language

to children. Sometimes it makes the students get bored and they also feel

that the teaching method doesn’t give more chances to them to internalize

the words in their memory.

In teaching English in Elementary School the method which is used

should be communicative and suited to the students’ characteristics as the

children. It is aimed to create the teaching learning process which is

interesting and comforting to the students so that they can reach the learning

goal and English becomes a more attractive subject for them.


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From the reason above, the researcher suggests experiential learning

method as the solution. Experiential learning method can be used in

teaching vocabulary to make the teaching learning process much interesting

and fun. It will increase students’ interest in learning process in the

classroom, because the circumstances become more interesting. It is suitable

with the characteristics of the young learners who like playing and talking

about ‘here and now’ so experiential learning can be helpful in teaching

vocabulary. Brown states that experiential learning is an especially useful

concept for teaching children, whose abstract intellectual processing

abilities are not yet mature (2001: p. 238).

There are some experiential learning that could be proved effective

to apply for the elementary students as “Role Play”, here the students are in

groups, and each group must take the topic/problem paper which is prepared

by the teacher, and then they do role play with their groups based on the

situation from the topic/problem paper they had chosen. Another

experiential learning that could be proved effective is “Roulete” (The

teacher flies a paper plane and when the paper plane lands on one student,

he/she must answer the question from the teacher). Then, if the student can

answer the question they will get score. He/she has a chance to fly the paper

to his/her friend, and he/she can give a question to his friend. But if the

student can’t answer the question, she/he must be punished.

From the explanation above, it is not doubtful that the researcher

chooses experiential learning because it has some strengths as follows:


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a. Helping learners involve actively in the learning process.

b. Providing a challenge which encourages learners to stretch

themselves (in order to answer the question).

c. Helping learners to forget they are studying: they lose themselves in

the fun activity of the learning process.

d. Encouraging collaborative learning: By having active interaction

among members of a group, learners are demanded to involve in real

communication.

Based on the reasons above, the researcher wants to use experiential

learning method as the method to improve student’s vocabulary mastery.

The researcher is interested in carrying out a study on “Improving Students’

Vocabulary Mastery Using Experiential Learning (A Classroom Action

Research on the Sixth Grade of SDN Banaran 01 in the Academic Year of

2009/2010).

B. The Problem Statement

Based on the background of the study above, the researcher focuses

on a certain problem related to the efforts to overcome students’ difficulties

or problems in vocabulary mastery. In this case, the problem can be

formulated as follows:

1. Can the experiential learning improve students’ vocabulary mastery?

2. What happens in class when the teacher applies the experiential learning

method?


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C. The Objectives of the Study

This research is aimed to improve students’ vocabulary mastery. In

details, this research has the objectives as follows:

1. To know whether the experiential learning method can improve

students’ vocabulary mastery.

2. To know what happens in class when the teacher applies the

experiential learning method.

D. The Benefits of the Study

The study result is expected to be able to give some benefits for the

teachers, students, and the other researcher. For the students, with the

students’ high vocabulary it is expected that they will be able to grasp the

meaning of words easily and also improve their reading, speaking, and

writing skills. Furthermore, the students will be motivated to learn English.

For the teachers, it is hoped that the result of the study will be one of

the considerations taken by teachers of Elementary School in teaching

vocabulary. For the school, it is expected that this new method of teaching

vocabulary will enrich teaching techniques in this school.

For the other researcher, this research is expected to be able to give

practical contributions to the other researcher on how to improve the

students’ vocabulary mastery using experiential learning.


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CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

A. Vocabulary

1. General View of Vocabulary

In general, students interpret vocabulary only as a matter of words,

as Burn and Broman (1975: p. 27) state that vocabulary is the stock of

words used by person, class or profession to state their idea. They also state

that almost every individual uses several different vocabularies, they are

often designated as hearing, speaking, reading, and writing. Words are

symbols of ideas, one needs facility in the use of words. In this definition

they try to see the meaning of vocabulary from the general point of view

Sometimes students perceive that vocabulary is only the words and

their meanings. They actually need to know the nature of vocabulary and

whatever is related to vocabulary in order to make them recognize the

importance of vocabulary, because vocabulary is central to language and of

critical importance to typical language learner. It means that vocabulary is

an important thing for learners to master vocabulary. Without a sufficient

vocabulary, one cannot communicate effectively or express ideas in both

oral and written forms.

According to Hornby, vocabulary is the total numbers of words in a

language and vocabulary is a list of words with their meanings (1995: p.

131). It means that vocabulary is a number of words along with the meaning

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in a language that is known by a person. Here, words are symbols that

represent, either physical object or idea. Dealing with the vocabulary Ur

states that vocabulary can be defined, roughly, as the words we teach in the

foreign language. However, new item of vocabulary may be more than a

single word (1996: p. 60).

Meanwhile vocabulary mastery has always been an essential part of

English as a foreign language. There is no doubt that vocabulary mastery is

the basic in learning English. Here, the word mastery can be defined as a

test assessing performance on an objective (Gagne, Briggs, and Wager,

1992: p. 262). Furthermore, Zimmerman (in Cody and Huckin, 1997: p. 5)

states that “vocabulary is central to language and critical importance to the

tipycal language learning”. Vocabulary should not be neglected by those

who learn a language. It even needs to be mastered if someone wants to

master the four language skills. Inadequate vocabulary obstructs students’

development in learning English.

Furthermore, Thornbury (2002: p.130) states some characteristics of

what is called as ‘knowing a word’, he says: knowing a words means

knowing:

· The word’s form – both spoken and written

· The word’s meaning ( or meanings )

· Any connotations the word might have

· Whether the word is specific to a certain register or style

· The word’s grammatical characteristics – e.g. part of speech


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· The word’s common collocations

· The word’s derivations

· The word’s relative frequency’

Those aspects can be realized receptively (in listening and reading)

or productively (in speaking and writing). A good vocabulary test needs to

consider the multidimensional characters of them.

It can be concluded that vocabulary is a total numbers or a list of

words as symbols of ideas of a foreign language text or grammar which are

needed to express the idea.

2. Definition of Vocabulary Mastery

Vocabulary is an essential element of English as a foreign language.

Having mastered a large number of vocabularies we will likely be able to

express our ideas in the language conveniently. It is true that vocabulary

plays an important role in learning and understanding the language. Hence,

vocabulary is important that the teaching of it should be carried out as well

as possible in English language teaching at elementary schools.

Vocabulary mastery plays an important role in learning a language.

There are some definitions of mastery that are proposed by experts. Swannel

(1994: p. 656) defines mastery as comprehensive knowledge. This

definitions is supported by Hornby who states that mastery is complete

knowledge or complete skill (1995: p. 721). According to Culson (1987: p.


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1050), mastery is skill to use the knowledge. It means that mastery is ability

to use one’s knowledge.

Mastery means natural or acquired facility in a specific activity:

ability, adeptness, art, command, craft, expertise, expertness, knack,

proficiency, skill, technique (http://www.answers.com/topic/mastery). It can

be said that mastery is possession of skill, ability, and technique in

conducting a certain activity.

From these definitions, it can be concluded that mastery means the

skill to understand, use, and apply something learned. Meanwhile, the

definition of vocabulary is a total number of words in a certain language

used to express meaning. Thus, vocabulary mastery can be defined as the

ability to understand and use the knowledge dealing with a list of words in

certain language to express meaning.

Vocabulary mastery can be shown through four major skills, which

are defined as writing, speaking, reading, and listening. Ideally, someone

who has high vocabulary mastery can recognize meaning of words both in

written and spoken forms. She can also pronounce it well, relate to

appropriate object or concept, and know how to combine it with other

words.

Here, vocabulary mastery deals with words and meaning. The

teacher should select and classify the words according to the level of the

students in a certain way so the students will learn them easily. The teacher


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has to present the meaning of words in a way that is comprehensive to the

students.

From the explanation above vocabulary mastery means an ability to

use words in conducting communication, and students understand the set of

words. It can also be said that the set of words likely to be used by those

students when constructing new sentences.

It can be concluded that the success in learning English required

vocabulary mastery. Indeed, having mastered a large vocabulary cannot

guarantee learners’ competence in learning English but it is true that

inadequate vocabulary minimizes the chances to succeed in learning

English.

3. Types of Vocabulary

Thorndike and Lorge (in Nation, 1990: p. 19) classify types of

vocabulary as follows:

Types of

vocabulary

Numbers of

words

Frequency Coverage of

text

Implications

for teaching

and learning

High –

frequency

words

2,000

Occur

freuently

About 87% of

the running

words in a

text

Spend a lot of

time on these

words. Make

sure they are

learned.


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Academic

vocabulary

Technical

vocabulary

Low –

frequency

words

800

About 1,000

to 2, 000 for

each subject

About

123,000

Occur

frequently in

most kinds of

academic texts

Occur,

sometimes

frequently in

specialized

texts

Do not occur

very

frequently

About 8% of

the running

words in

academic texts

About 3% of

the running

words in a

specialized

texts

About 2% or

more of the

words in any

texts

If learners are

in upper

secondary

school or in

tertiary

education.

Based on the table above, teacher needs to decide which groups of

the words that their learners need. This is an important decision because it

will affect the amount of learning expected and it will affect the type of

learning, receptive or productive.


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4. Teaching Vocabulary

Teaching in early stage or in the primary school is very essential.

Teacher should give certain attention in teaching vocabulary and decide the

area of words that become the basic need for the pupil. Burns and Browman

say that the teacher must give attention to develop the vocabularies of each

child through carefully planned instruction and to do so, he or she must be

aware of what words are and how they are formed (1975: p. 295). In further

explanation Burns and Broman (1975: p. 296) also explains:

Since vocabulary development is so closely related to abstract thinking, the teacher is concerned with number, the breath, and the dept of concept with which pupils have some acquaintance. For concept development, the individual should have actual experience with the concrete object, person, idea, and event-mainly through sense impressions.

It is undeniable that most learners’ vocabulary grows through

incidental learning such as through continuous exposure to comprehensible

language in reading, speaking, and writing exercises (Krashen in Fauziati,

2005: p. 155). Anyhow, this does not mean that explicit vocabulary

instruction is less important to foreign language learners. Even though they

are keen readers with different materials, they take a lot of benefits from

direct vocabulary instruction. They can effectively expand their vocabulary

knowledge.

It has been so far that vocabulary is very important for second

language learners, only with a sufficient vocabulary learners can effectively

express their ideas both in oral and written form. Thus, they should have


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good ideas how to expand their vocabulary so that they can improve their

interest in learning.

Knowing some principles on the way one’s vocabulary develops in

relations to memory will make us aware of the particular teaching methods

suitable for vocabulary teaching and learning. By using appropriate method

to learn new vocabulary, students will find it useful and interesting.

According to Ur (1998: p. 60 - 62) there are some aspects of

vocabulary that both teacher and learners must give their attention to, they

are as follows:

a. Form

Here, the mastery of vocabulary involves the mastery of pronunciation

and spelling. The learner has to know how the word is sounded and how

the word is spelled. In teaching, the teacher needs to make sure that both

these aspects are accurately presented and learned.

b. Grammar

The grammar of a new word needs to be taught if this is not obviously

covered by general grammatical rules. A word may have an

unpredictable change of form in certain grammatical contexts. It is

important to provide learners with the information at the same time the

teacher teaches the base form of a word.


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c. Collocation

The collocation typical of particular items is another factor that makes a

particular combination sound ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in a given context. So

this is another piece of information about a new item which may be

worth teaching. Collocation is also often noted in dictionaries, either by

providing the whole collocation under one of the head-words, or by a

note in parenthesis.

d. Aspect of meaning

1) Denotation, connotation, appropriateness

Denotation is the meaning of a word that primarily refers to the real

world. It is often the sort of definition in dictionary. Meanwhile, a

less obvious component of the meaning of an item is its connotation,

the associations, or positive or negative feelings it evokes, which

may or may not be indicated in a dictionary definition.

Besides denotation and connotation, an aspect of meaning that also

needs to be taught is whether a particular item is appropriate one to

use in a certain context or not. It is useful for a learner to know that a

certain word is very common, or relatively rare, or ‘taboo’ in polite

conversation, or tends to be used in writing but not in speech, or is

more suitable for formal than informal situation, or belongs to a

certain dialect.


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a) Meaning relationship

How the meaning of one item relates to the meaning of others can

also be useful in teaching. There are various such relationship, they

are: synonyms (item that mean the same or nearly the same);

antonyms (items that mean the opposite); hyponyms (item that serve

as specific examples of a general concept); co-hyponyms or co-

ordinates (other items that are the same kind of thing); super-

ordinates (general concepts that cover specific items); and translation

(words or expression in the learners’ mother tongue that are

equivalent in meaning to the item being taught).

e. Word formation

Vocabulary items, whether one-word or multi-word, can often be

broken down into their components exactly how these words are put

together is another piece of useful information. Teachers may teach the

common prefixes and suffixes. However, they should be warned that in

many common words, the affixes no longer have any obvious

connection with their root meaning. Another way vocabulary items are

built is by combining two words to make one item.

From that discussion above, it can be concluded that vocabulary

mastery is a complete skill to understand and apply the stocks of words. It

constitutes an essential thing that students have in order to be able to listen,


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read, write and speak. There are some indicators of vocabulary mastery:

pronunciation, spelling, meaning, and using vocabulary especially to make

simple sentences, which are used by the researcher to conduct teaching

vocabulary and used in testing the students’ vocabulary mastery.

B. Teaching English to the Young Learners

1. Definition of the Young Learners

The young of all species play and learn with their experience in real.

It is their way of learning to live in society. When children are doing

experience and play, they learn a multiplicity of concepts, skills,

understanding, and attitudes simultaneously, and they draw relationship

among concepts. For example, when children build with blocks, they are

concerned with the shapes, sizes, and relationship, or when they are doing

experience in their life by knowing what happens in surrounding they are

concerned with their feelings. Doing experience by themselves, they face

problem with construction, share materials with others, and communicate

their ideas and feelings.

In order to maximize learning children need to be able to do

experience and play. When a child learns through experience, the learning

becomes internalized and remains a part of his or her being. Also when the

children are seriously interested on their experience, they observe carefully

and become familiar with the properties of materials he or she is using.


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2. Characteristics of the Young Learners

Several characteristics attached to children are that children like

playing, talking about “here and now, and understand and retain the

meaning better when they have seen some objects associated with them.

a. Children like playing

One characteristic of children is that they love playing, they do like

playing. Children like playing and learn things while playing. The

implication to language teaching is that experiential learning by doing

games or role play are effective ways for teaching language.

b. The children talk about “here and now”

Adults both observe and impose the cooperative principle when they

talk to young children. They make what they say relevant, talk about the

“here and now” of the child’s world. They encourage the children to take

their turns and make their contributions to the conversation. They make sure

that children make their contributions truthful by correcting them (Clark and

Clark in Fauziati, 2002: p. 171).

The phenomena imply that the children’s world involves around the

here and now. Therefore, they should not be asked to discuss abstract things

or life and situation in the past or in the future. In other words, children’s

interest is narrower, restricted primarily to themselves, their immediate

surrounding, their families, and friends.


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Teaching and learning process, therefore, should give enough

opportunities for them to use English in every day contexts. Children learn

by doing, they learn language by using it, listening to it, speaking it, and

writing it.

c. Association and memory

Children understand and retain the meaning better when they have

seen some objects associated with it. For this reason, the teacher should

expose the students to real life situations. With their experience in real life

they can learn English effectively.

3. Teaching English in Elementary School

Like other profession, teaching requires a long and difficult period of

academic preparation, legal recognition, and social responsibility. Teaching

children is different from teaching adult because they have special

characteristics. The teachers are demanded to be active and creative in

teaching young learners. They should explore their abilities and

competences. One of the ways is by using everything in environment to help

success of teaching and learning process in order to be more effective.

There are some elements that should be learned in learning a foreign

language especially English, one of them is vocabulary. It is very important

because people can’t express their thought and understand other’s thought if

they don’t have enough vocabulary. The same perception is also stated by


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Gattegno (in Richards and Rodgers, 2003: pp. 37 and 82). He pinpoints that

in language learning, vocabulary is seen as a central dimension and the

choice of it is very crucial. This is supported by Palmer (in Thornbury,

2002: p. 30) who says that vocabulary is one of the most important aspects

of foreign language learning and the essential component of reading

proficiency.

Teaching English vocabulary in primary school is very crucial. It is

stated by Burn and Broman (1975: p. 295) that the teacher must give

attention to develop the vocabulary of each child through carefully planned

instruction and to do so, she must be aware of what words are and how they

are formed.

Here, the success of language teaching not only depends on the

teachers’ and the students’ competence but also on the method of teaching

vocabulary. There are many methods of teaching vocabulary. Not all the

methods are helpful for the students. In this case the teacher has to choose

the appropriate method.

Burns and Broman (1980: p. 297 – 305) propose numerous methods

to develop children’s vocabulary such as the following:

a. Firsthand experience

A varied background of firsthand experience, field trips, and

excursions is profitable at all grade levels. Concrete experience permits

the word to be associated with real situation: consequently, school should

try to extend the experience of the children. The nature and quality of the


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educative experiences that children meet both inside and outside the

classroom are primary factors that determine speaking, writing, reading,

and hearing vocabularies.

b. Books

Books are other significant sources of vocabulary growth,

particularly books that provoke questions and discussion. Pupils need a

variety of interesting, easy to read books so that new words and ideas can

be learned from the context.

c. Context clues

Children who read extensively can learn many words just through

use of context. Wide reading provides the opportunities for context to

illuminate words meaning when it is essential to the on-flow of thought.

Through a variety of reading material, the reader can begin to recognize

subtleties and varied meanings of words.

d. Visual and other instructional aids and materials

Visual aids should be utilized frequently, not only to illustrate the

words that have been used but to suggest other words. Individuals are

helped in their word selection by special illustrative sentences, pictures

and illustrations, or explanation that dramatizes the meaning of particular

word.

e. Context areas

In every subject field, teachers should develop vocabulary carefully.

The vocabulary problem is more acute in textbook than it is in general


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reading material. The selection of textbook that avoid complicated

verbiage and explain new terms clearly when they are introduced is one

important way of reducing the vocabulary problem to teachable

proportions.

f. Oral and written expressions

Teachers should encourage variety in oral and written expression. A

conscious effort needs to be made by the teacher to encourage use of

words that express thought exactly, rather than words that perform

omnibus service.

g. Teacher-model

The teacher can use new words, sometimes in reading aloud,

sometimes in providing explanations. Particularly in the primary years,

when most pupils are occupied with developing recognition of words

already in their understanding, reading and speaking vocabulary, the

teacher need to read and tells many stories to the group. In reading to

children it is inadvisable to simplify the vocabulary. After reading a new

story, new words may be discussed and in later retelling or dramatization,

the use of the new words should be encouraged. Pupils are great imitators

and if the teacher employs good vocabulary, they tend to approach his

levels of expression.

All of those presentation methods, either singly or in combination

are useful ways of introducing new words. To make the words

memorable, the teacher should use a suitable method to teach vocabulary


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for the children. In this research, the researcher chooses experiential

learning as a method to improve the students’ vocabulary mastery.

In applying experiential learning, the researcher used firsthand

experience method to teach vocabulary. Because it can be a highly effective

educational method. There are many benefits for language and learning.

These include: new knowledge, increased language proficiency, new

vocabulary (specialist and general), literacy learning - for the young this will

include simple concepts of print, new words, and a growing grasp of

sentence structure, etc. whereas for the older child this can extend

knowledge of new written genres, writing for new audiences, growing

reading and research skills, a stimulus to creativity, and increased interest in

learning.

4. Procedure of Teaching Vocabulary

In teaching vocabulary teacher can devise additional frame of word

lesson for students who need added experience. The procedure of teaching

vocabulary can be divided into three stages, they are as follows :

a. Presentation

In this stage, teacher can use various methods and technique, which

are recommended in the previous discussion. However, teachers

have to be careful in selecting the methods that they use in teaching

activity. Dealing with this, teachers must consider about the


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student’s need of vocabulary, the area of vocabulary, which is

appropriate with the students level and how the vocabulary can be

stored in the student’s brain.

b. Practice

In the second stage, the teacher gives exercises to his students in

order to practice the subject items. Completion, matching, etc. are

several types of exercises that can be used by the teacher in this

stage.

c. Production

In this stage the students are expected to apply the newly learned

vocabulary through the speaking activities or writing activities.

C. Experiential Learning

1. The Nature of Experiential Learning

Experiential learning is learning through reflection on doing. Here,

experiential learning focuses on the learning process for the individual.

Keeton and Tate (in Brown, 2000: p. 239) state:

“ The learner is directly in touch with the realities being studied. It is contrasted with learning in which the learner only reads about, hears about, talks about, or writes about the realities but never comes in contract with them as part of the learning process … It involves direct encounter with the phenomenon being studied rather than merely thinking about the encounter or only considering the possibility of doing something with it.”


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According to Brown (2000: p. 238) experiential learning includes

activities that engage both left – and right – brain processing, that

contextualize language, that integrate skills, and that point toward authentic,

real world purposes. It means that experiential learning is constructivist

learning, where students are active learners, constructing their own

knowledge, rather than observing the demonstrative behavior of a teacher.

Because experiential learning is active learning, students more readily

understand what they are learning and thus retain the knowledge to a greater

degree than when merely having information presented to them by another.

The hands-on nature of experiential learning is highly motivating for

students. Such learning may involve one or more of the following

instructional strategies:

• experiments,

• field observations,

• field trips,

• focused imaging,

• games,

• model building,

• role plays,

• simulations, and

• surveys


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From the model of experiential learning above one of the examples

is field trips, here we can borrow students going to the zoo and learning

through observation and interaction with the zoo environment, as opposed to

reading about animals from a book. Thus, one makes discoveries and

experiments with knowledge firsthand, instead of hearing or reading about

others' experiences.

Another example of experiential learning is playing game and

learning through it. Children usually like playing and game is effective way

to discover and experiment everything in their surrounding and it also an

effective way to teaching English especially vocabulary for the children.

In this research IA used games and role plays to improve the

students’ vocabulary mastery, because by learning through games, the

students are more actively involved in the experience, can interact with

others, more creative, conducive, can improve the learners’ spirit and

learning through fun helps the learner to retain the lessons for a longer

period.

Role plays is also used in teaching vocabulary because most

educators understand the important role experience plays in the learning

process. A fun learning environment, with plenty of laughter and respect for

the learner's abilities, also fosters an effective experiential learning

environment. It is vital that the individual is encouraged to directly involve


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themselves in the experience, in order that they gain a better understanding

of the new knowledge and retain the information for a longer time.

2. The Principles in Experiential Learning

Brown (2000: p. 238) highlights for us that experiential learning is

giving the students concrete experiences through which they “discover”

language principles by trial and error, by processing feedback, by building

hypotheses about language and by revising these assumptions in order to

become fluent.

Using Experiential learning in teaching vocabulary can be fitted to the

real situation in the classroom. To be said knowing vocabulary, students

have to know the meaning, the spelling, the pronunciation, and the use of

the words. In order to equip the students in those four aspects.

In experiential learning, immediate personal experience is seen as

the focal point for learning, giving ‘life, texture, and subjective personal

meaning to abstract concepts and at the same time providing a concrete,

publicly shared reference point for testing the implications and validity of

ideas created during the learning process ( Kolb in Nunan 1993: p. 14).

Here, in grasping experience some of us perceive new information

through experiencing the concrete, tangible, felt qualities of the world,

relying in our senses and immersing ourselves in concrete reality. Others

tend to perceive, grasp or take hold of new information through symbolic

representation or abstract conceptualization – thinking about, analyzing, or


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systematically planning, rather than using sensation as a guide. Similarly, in

transforming or processing experience some of us tend to carefully watch

others who are involved in the experience and reflect on what happens,

while others choose to jump right in and start doing things. The watchers

favor reflective observation, while the doers favor active experimentation.

Here, Kolb (in Nunan, 1993: p. 16) figures the general theoretical

model of experience into four stages of orientation to learning: concrete

experience, abstract conceptualization, reflective observation, and active

experimentation.

1) Concrete experience

with an involvement in personal experiences and an emphasis on

feeling of over thinking. This is an ‘artistic’ orientation relying on

intuitive decision-making.

2) Abstract conceptualization

using logic and a systematic approach to problem-solving, with an

emphasis on thinking, manipulation of abstract symbols and a tendency

to neat and precise conceptual system.

3) Reflective observation

focusing on understanding the meanings of ideas and situations by

careful observation, being concerned with how things happen by

attempting to see them from different perspective and relying on one’s

own thoughts, feeling and judgment.


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4) Active experimentation

with an emphasis on practical applications and getting things done,

influencing people and changing situations, and taking risk in order to

accomplish things.

According to the model above, experiential learning is seen as four

basic stages. Thus, simple everyday experience is not sufficient for learning.

It must be observed and analyzed consciously. It can be argued, that

theoretical concepts will not become part of the individual’s frame of

reference until they have been experienced meaningfully on a subjective

emotional level. Reflection plays an important role in this process by

providing a bridge between experience and theoretical conceptualization.

The process of learning is seen as the recycling of experience at deeper

levels of understanding and interpretation. This view entails the idea of

lifelong learning.

In conclusion, experiential learning will give a significant

contribution to the success of teaching learning process. They have a great

power in motivating and stimulating the students. The teacher, therefore, is

encouraged to use experiential learning in teaching the students, especially

to young learners to teach vocabulary.


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3. Steps in Teaching Vocabulary using Experiential Learning in the Classroom

In the classroom the teacher and students take on roles similar to that

of the parent and child respectively. Teacher introduces the learners to the

topic and covering basic material that the learner must know beforehand.

The activity may be a simple game, simulation or may involve more

complex grammar and more detailed scenarios. Experiential learning can be

used to practice and teach various things. It is well suited to teaching

classroom language and other vocabulary connected with actions. It can be

used to teach imperatives and various tenses and aspects. It is also useful

for role plays. http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index. php?title=

Experiential Learning#Weaknesses.2FCriticisms

Experiential learning is largely about movement. By introducing the

learners’ knowledge to the topic, they learn verbs and many kinds of nouns,

learning increases and stress decreases. However, it is recognized that

experiential learning is most useful for beginners, though it can be used at

higher levels where preparation becomes an issue for the teacher. It does not

give students the opportunity to express their own thoughts in a creative

way. The following are some steps to integrate experiential learning in the

classroom:

a. Aspect of meaning

1) Teacher explains in native language about the rule of experiential

learning by introducing the topic, that is the students just listen and


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need not to speak at first. They have to act out the commands from

the teacher.

2) Teacher asks some students to come to the front of the room and sit

with her/him in chairs that are lined up facing the other students.

Other students listen and watch.

3) Teacher gives some nouns and various commands beginning with

verbs while doing them together with some students.

4) Teacher allows the students to mention the words and to do the

instructions.

5) Then, teacher asks one of the students to mention and perform the

instructions alone.

6) Teacher approaches the other students who have been sitting

observing her/him and the volunteers and gives the same commands.

7) The students follow the teacher’s action.

8) After the students master the instructions and some nouns, the

teacher gives the new ones as the steps above.

9) Teacher turns to the rest of the class and gives the commands

randomly to the students.

10) The last step, teacher writes the new commands on the blackboard.

Each time she/he writes a command, she acts it out.

11) The students copy the sentences from the blackboard into the

notebooks.


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b. Aspect of spelling

1) The teacher asks the students to write the words and the

instructions on the board.

2) The teacher asks students to spell the words along with her.

3) The teacher asks the students randomly to spell the words alone.

c. Aspect of pronunciation

1) The teacher asks a student to play the game and practice the

dialogue.

2) Then, the students play the games and practice the dialogue.

3) From the first student, teacher can check the pronunciation, and

from the second student, teacher can check whether the meaning

is correct.

d. Aspect of using word

1) The teacher asks the students to make new imperative sentences

spoken or written using the same words on the board.

2) The teacher asks the students to practice using their sentences.

4. Strengths

Kolb in Nunan (1993: p. 24-25 proposes that there are some

strengths of experiential learning which enable students to improve their

achievement. The strengths are as follows:


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1. Helping learners involve actively in the learning process.

2. Providing a challenge which encourages learners to stretch

themselves (in order to answer the question).

3. Helping learners to forget they are studying: they lose themselves in

the fun activity of the learning process.

4. Encouraging collaborative learning: By having active interaction

among members of a group, learners are demanded to involve in real

communication.

5. Weaknesses

Despite having the strengths, experiential learning also has

weaknesses when it is applied in teaching vocabulary. There are some

weaknesses as stated by Kolb in Nunan (1993: p. 34-37).

1) The concrete experience part of the learning cycle is not

appropriately explained in the theory and remains largely

unexplored.

2) The idea of immediate and concrete experience is problematic and

unrealistic..

3) The ELT concepts are too ill-defined and open to various

interpretations.

4) ELT model is only an attempt to explain the societal benefit.

5) The experience is the starting point of knowledge acquisition and

disregards the observations concerning the subjective reality of the

learner


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6) The ELT learning model focused on the learning process for a single

learner and failed to mention how the individual fit into a social

group during this process and what role this group may play. Also,

there was no discussion on how a social group may gain knowledge

through a common experience.

D. Rationale

The greatest difficulty faced by the students in learning English is

vocabulary mastery. In fact, vocabulary is an essential part to master the

four language skills, namely listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

Therefore, to master a language easily, the students should have a stock of

vocabulary. In elementary school vocabulary has become the first priority

that has to be taught to the young learners.

Problems always occur when teaching English is applied in

Elementary School students. This can be proven from a pre research which

was concluded in the sixth grade students of SDN Banaran 01 Grogol

Sukoharjo. From the pre research, the researcher found that the students’

vocabulary mastery is low and the students get difficulties in mastering

vocabulary as follows: (1) the students got difficulties in grasping and

memorizing the meaning of the words; (2) they found it hard to write down

the words correctly; and (3) they got difficulties in pronouncing the words

correctly; 4) they found difficulties in using vocabulary in sentences. So the

teacher should have extra power to teach the students in Elementary School

because children have specific characteristics.


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The researcher found some psychological barriers from the students.

They feel shy and afraid to ask the teacher if they find a difficulty. They are

afraid of being humiliated by their friends and their teacher if they cannot

answer well. They also do not have self-confidence in answering the

questions. These problems may give a great influence to their learning

process.

The other reason that causes the students’ failure is the teacher’s

teaching method. He/she is not creative when teaching the foreign language

to children. Sometimes it makes the students get bored and they also feel

that the teaching method doesn’t give more chances to them to internalize

the words in their memory.

The classroom situation in learning vocabulary showed that the

atmosphere was not alive, with the teacher domination of teaching

vocabulary. The students show low participation in using vocabulary.

Children are unique and not small version of adults. They have their

own characteristics. The characteristics cover their ways of thinking, their

attitude, their aptitude, etc. To give the best quality of teaching English to

children, the teacher should know and understand them. In general, there are

some characteristics of children in learning language, as follows: (a)

children like playing; (b) children talk about “here and now”; and (c)

children respond language well through concrete things rather than abstract

things. Based on their characteristics, teaching them is different from

teaching adults. The teacher should not only explain the topics, but also


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activate their three domains (cognitive, affective, and psychomotor) through

activities which are suitable to their characteristics.

In teaching vocabulary, the teacher should make the students

understand and memorize new words and their meaning not only in a short

period of time or at the moment when the vocabulary is given, but also in a

long period of time. To make the students memorize the meaning, spell,

pronounce, and use the words, the teacher should use a suitable method to

teaching children. In this research, the researcher chooses the experiential

learning as a method to improve the students’ vocabulary mastery.

Experiential learning is suitable with the children’s characteristics.

They like fun activities and talking about “here and now” in their learning

process. Experiential learning is a great way to present, practice, and revise

vocabulary, because experiential learning is an active learning which is

highly motivating for the students. Then, it will be advantageous if the

teacher uses the experiential learning method to improve the students’

vocabulary mastery. In applying this method, the researcher used simple

games and role play to improve students’ vocabulary.

The success of applying this method can be seen through indicators,

they are: (1) students know the meaning of words. One of activities is

playing the game. By doing so, it is easy for the students to memorize the

meaning of the words. In finding the meaning of words, students need not

open a dictionary because it has already been clear through the instructions

they have practiced before; (2) Students are able to pronounce words


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correctly. The teacher gives the commands several times in a correct

pronunciation in order to give examples to the students. The teacher asks the

students to pronounce the words and corrects the students’ pronunciation;

(3) Students are able to spell or write words. The teacher gives some words

and asks the students to spell and write the words after the teacher has given

students the correct spelling of words and writes them on the white board;

and (4) students are able to use words in a sentence. Teacher asks the

students to make new commands or sentences based on the words given.

So, the researcher assumes that by using the experiential learning

method in teaching learning process, vocabulary mastery of the elementary

students can be improved.

E. Action Hypothesis

From the previous explanation, the researcher makes a hypothesis

stating that using the experiential learning method is able to improve the

students’ vocabulary mastery.


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CHAPTER III

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter presents a discussion of the methods used in this study.

The discussion includes research setting, subject of the study, research

design, procedures of action research, data and data resources, techniques of

collecting the data, and technique of analyzing the data.

A. Time and Place of Research

This research will be conducted in SDN Banaran 01 which is located

in Ds. Banaran, Grogol, Sukoharjo. It is one of the state elementary school

in Grogol subdistrict, Sukoharjo regency. The writer conducts the research

from October – December 2009.

B. Subject of the Study

The subjects of the research are the sixth grade students of SDN

Banaran 01. There are 14 students in this class consisting of 7 girls and 7

boys. Most of them are from low economic status with uneducated parents

while the others come from immediate economic status whose parents are

government officers or businessman. Unfortunately not all the parents have

great concerns to their children’s education. It is seen when there are some

students who frequently do not do their homework and even forget to bring

40


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the English book or notebook in the English class. It indicates that their

parents do not care with their children when they study at home.

In doing this research, the researcher actively participate in the

teaching learning process. She acts both as a teacher and the observer. She

will also do collaboration with other observers. They are: the sixth grade

teacher and the other English teacher.

C. Research Design

1. The Nature of Action Research

In this research, the researcher uses a Classroom Action Research

(CAR). CAR in a simple way can be understood as an action research which

is conducted in a classroom. It can be defined as a study of attempts to

overcome classroom problems or to improve things related to educational

problems for betterment done by practitioners or teachers, or in

collaboration between teachers and researchers by means of their own

practical actions and their own reflection upon the effects of those actions

(Ebbut, 1985 (in Hopkins, 1993: p. 45) ; Kemmis (in Hopkins, 1993: p. 44).

Mills (2000: p. 6) says that action research is any systematic inquiry

conducted by teacher researchers, principals, school counselors, or other

stakeholders in teaching or learning environment, to gather information

about the ways that their particular school operate, how they teach, and how

well their students learn.


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Another expert describes action research as a form of self-reflective

inquiry carried out by practitioners, aimed at solving problems, improving

practice, or enhancing understanding (Carr and Kemmis in Nunan (1989: p.

12). It means that action research has to do with improvement.

Meanwhile, Ebbut (1985) as quoted by Hopkins (1993: p. 45) states

that action research is the systematic study of attempt to improve

educational practice by group or participants and by means of own

reflection upon the effects of those action.

There are three characteristics of action research: firstly, the action

research is carried out by practitioners rather than outside researchers.

Secondly, the kind of the action research is collaborative, and thirdly, the

action research is aimed at changing condition (Nunan, 1992: p. 17 (quoted

from Kemmis and McTaggart, 1998).

It can be concluded that action research is a systematic action done

by teachers, researchers,, principals, school counselors, or other

stakeholders in order to get improvement. It focuses on the solution of day-

to-day problems by knowing the ways the participant of a particular school

operates (how both the teacher teaches and the students learn).

This classroom action research is done in collaboration. It is done by

the researcher and an English teacher of SD Negeri Banaran 01 Grogol as

the collaborator. This research is intended to improve the vocabulary

mastery of the sixth grade students in SD Negeri Banaran 01 Grogol by

using experiential learning.


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2. The Model of Action Research

Action research in this classroom action research uses the model

based on Hopkins views (1993: p. 48). In his model, there are four crucial

basic steps which can be expanded into six steps including identifying the

problem, planning the action, the implementation of the action observing or

monitoring the action, reflecting the result of the observation, and revising

the plan fro the following step. These steps form one cycle and can be

repeated into several cycles.

Action research occurs through a dynamic and complementary

process consisting of four essential steps of planning, action, observation

and reflection. Each step will be explained as follow :


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a. Planning

It is a process to develop a plan of critically informed action in order to

improve what is already happening.

b. Action

It is an act to implement the plan.

c. Observation

It is a process of observing the effects of critically informed action in the

content in which it occurs.

d. Reflection

It is reflecting process on these effects as the basis for further planning;

The reflection was meant to judge the success of the cycle.

D. The Procedures of Action Research

The procedures of the action research covers 6 basic activities as

described in each cycle of Lewin’s model of Action Research. Those

activities are as follows:

1. Identifying the problems

The teacher identifies the problems first before planning the action.

The problems refer to the factors making the students difficult to master

vocabulary during the lesson before. Here the researcher uses 2

techniques, namely:


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a. Using test

To know whether the students master the vocabulary, the researcher

makes written test of vocabularies as pre-test and post-test to know the

students ability to master vocabulary.

b. Observation and interviews

The researcher observes the students behavior during the lesson and

makes interviews to the sixth class teacher to know the model of class

management and her student’s competence.

2. Planning the action

The researcher prepares everything related to the action as follows:

a. Preparing materials, making lesson plan, and designing the steps in

doing action.

b. Preparing sheets for classroom observation

c. Preparing teaching activity

d. Preparing a test.

3. Implementing the action

The researcher implements the teaching learning activity of

vocabulary using experiential learning.


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4. Observing / monitoring the action

The researcher observes all activities in the teaching learning process

while the homeroom teacher helps to create a conducive atmosphere in a

class. The researcher also makes collaborative efforts with a collaborator

to explore teaching possibilities. The function of collaborator here is to

evaluate the researcher’s teaching, offer suggestion on the best way to

teach, and help to create students motivation to learn English.

5. Reflecting the result of the observation

The researcher makes an evaluation on all she has observed to find

the weaknesses of the activities that have been carried out in using

experiential learning as the technique in teaching vocabulary.

6. Revising the plan

Based on the weakness of the activities that have been carried out in

using experiential learning as the method in teaching vocabulary, the

researcher revises the plan for the next cycle.

D. Data Sources

In this research, the researcher uses both quantitative and qualitative

data. The quantitative data are in the form of the students’ scores on

vocabulary mastery. The scores are gained through the vocabulary test. In

each cycle there is a pretest and post-test for vocabulary mastery. The data


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sources for the quantitative data are the students of the fifth grade of SDN

Banaran 01.

The qualitative data are in the form of information about the

implementation of experiential learning and students’ reaction to the method

that is used by the researcher as the teacher. Those data are taken from 3

sources, namely:

1. Events which happen in teaching learning process that uses experiential

learning method. The events are recorded in the researcher’s and

collaborator’s field notes.

2. Respondents. There are three respondents in this research, they are: the

headmaster, the experienced English teacher, and also the students who

join in the class.

3. Document or artifacts. The 2004 National Curriculum for English for

Elementary School, syllabus, and lesson plan used by the previous

teachers in teaching learning process.

E. Technique of Collecting the Data

Based on the data and data sources above, the researcher used the

following techniques. For the quantitative data the researcher used

vocabulary mastery test, consisting of pre-test and post-test. Every post-test

is given after some teaching learning process at the end of a cycle.


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The researcher also used what the so called validity and reliability as

stated in Ngadiso (2006: 1). The vocabulary test can be seen in Appendix.

The validity of the vocabulary test is analyzed with the following formula:

st = n

xå 2

ro = t

ti

sXX -

1

1

qp

The item is valid if ro is higher than rt.

Then to know the reliability of the test, the following formula is

used:

rkk = ÷÷ø

öççè

æ-

-å

21

1ts

pq

kk

Where rkk : estimated reliability

k : number of items on the test

p : the proportion of people who respond correctly to each item

q : 1 - p

st2 : observed score variance

The item is reliable if ro is higher than rt.

There are thirty items tested. The result of vocabulary test is that

twenty items are valid and reliable. The valid and reliable items are items

number 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, 15, 17, 18, 21, 23, 25, 27 28, 29 and

30. The items had represented for all indicators, they are five items for

aspect of meaning, ten items for aspect of spelling and pronunciation, and


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five items for aspect of using word. The process and the result of the

validity and the reliability of the vocabulary test can be seen in Appendix 7.

Meanwhile, for the qualitative data the researcher used the

following techniques:

1. Observation. This technique was done to the teaching and learning

process that used experiential learning method. The researcher used

participant observation technique in which the researcher was involved

as the teacher and other teacher as the collaborator.

2. Interview. The researcher interviewed some students for the purpose of

getting information about their vocabulary improvement after being

taught by using experiential learning method. By using interview, the

researcher also found the weakness of the method from the students’

perspective.

3. Questionnaire. The researcher decided to ask the students to fulfill the

questionnaire. Here the students should read the questions and give

responses or write in short answers.

E. Technique of Analyzing Data

There are two techniques in analyzing data, quantitative and

qualitative. First is numerical data or quantitative data. The numerical data

is in the form of vocabulary scores as the result of pre-test or post test. In

this research will be analyzed using descriptive statistics, with comparing

the mean of each test to find out the improvement of students’ vocabulary

mastery. Besides, the improvement of the scores will be analyzed with


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t-test non independent variable to find out the significance of the

improvement from cycle to cycle. The formula to find the mean and the

formula of t-test of non-independent variable as stated by Ngadiso (2006:

p.5-17) are as follows:

The formula to find out mean: n

XX å=

The for mulation of t-test was:

)1(

)( 22

-

å-å

=

nnnD

D

Dt

The qualitative data are analyzed using Constant Comparative

Method which is proposed by Glaser and Corbin (1967, in Lincoln and

Guba (1984: p. 339 – 340) which consists of four stages as follows:

a. Comparing incident applicable to each category,

In this stage, the writer may categorize some “incidents” from the source

by doing a comparative judgment.

b. Integrating categories and their properties

In this second step, there is a change from comparing incidents with

other incidents classified into the same category to comparing incidents

to the rule (properties) describing the category.

c. Delimiting the theory

It happens at the level of the theory construction, because fewer and

fewer modifications will be needed to get along with the data processed.

d. Writing the theory

The final step is the researcher can write the theory.


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CHAPTER IV

THE RESULT OF THE STUDY

The objective of the research is to improve students’ vocabulary

mastery using experiential learning. The result of the research

implementation is presented in chapter IV which consists of three sections.

They are introduction, research finding, and discussion.

A. Introduction

The students of the sixth grade of SD Negeri Banaran 01 Grogol

Sukoharjo are expected to master English well. Therefore, at elementary

schools, English is introduced to the students through learning its

vocabulary because it is the most important element that becomes the basic

competence in order to get other competencies like listening, speaking,

reading, and writing. If the students have mastered a number of

vocabularies required in their level, it will be easier for them to master those

elements in English learning. By knowing the vocabulary from beginning

the children will get lot of knowledge. Thus, vocabulary should be on the

first priority in the English language teaching and learning.

In fact, this condition has not been achieved yet and the students’

vocabulary mastery is low because the students had some problems during

the teaching learning process. The students got difficulties in mastering

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vocabulary. They got difficulties in grasping and memorizing the meaning

of the words. They found it hard to write down the words correctly. They

got difficulties in pronouncing the words correctly. They got difficulties in

using vocabulary in a sentence.

The researcher found that the students’ vocabulary mastery is low.

It is because the students get difficulties in mastering vocabulary. They are:

(1) the students get difficulties in grasping and memorizing the meaning of

the words; (2) they found it hard to write down the words correctly; and (3)

they get difficulties in pronouncing the words correctly; and (4) they get

difficulties in using vocabulary in a sentence.

The problem was also caused by the teaching method. He/she was not

creative when teaching the foreign language to children. He/she sometimes

made the students get bored and they also felt that the teaching method did

not give more chances to them to internalize the words in their memory.

The other problem is the classroom situation. The classroom

situation in learning vocabulary showed that the atmosphere was not alive,

with the teacher domination of teaching vocabulary. The students show low

participation in using vocabulary.

To solve the problems, the writer used some experiential learning to

be applied for the elementary students. Experiential learning has four

strengths: (1) helping involve learners actively in the learning process; (2)

providing a challenge which encourages learners to stretch themselves; (3)


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helping learners to remember they are studying; and (4) encouraging

collaborative learning.

B. Research Finding

The implementation of the research was in collaboration with the

sixth class teacher of SDN Banaran 01, Grogol, Sukoharjo that is Mr.

Walimin (W). Before conducting the research, the teacher (W) and the

researcher (IA) shared a common knowledge about action research. The

teacher (W) seemed enthusiastic and agreed to work together with IA. The

action research was conducted collaboratively.

The implementation of teaching vocabulary using experiential

learning through classroom action research consisted of two cycles. Each

cycle consisted of four meetings, three meeting for presenting the material

and one meeting for conducting the test. Each meeting took 70 minutes.

For the first cycle, the researcher used experiential learning to teach

vocabulary with topics “Hobby”, “Order and Request” and “Asking for

Permission”. For the second cycle, the topics were “Public Places” and

“Giving Direction 1” and Giving Direction 2”. Every cycle consisted of a

series of steps: identifying the problem, planning the action, implementing

the action, observing the action, reflecting and evaluating the result of the

observation, and revising the plan.

Before implementing the action in cycle one, the researcher had

conducted a pre-test to know students’ prior knowledge. This was aimed to


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measure students’ knowledge to the topic before the treatment and to make

a comparison with the post-test to know whether or not the students’

vocabulary improved. After finishing the action, the researcher conducted a

post-test to measure students’ improvement after having the treatment. The

topics of the pre-test and post-test were Hobby, Order and Request, Asking

Permission, Public Places, and Giving Direction. They consist of fifteen

multiple choice, and ten completion items. The description of each cycle is

presented in the following parts.

C. Cycle 1

1. Identifying the problem

Before the researcher implemented the research, she conducted a

pre-research, where, she did observation and interviewed with some

students. From the observation, it was found that mastery of English

vocabulary of the students was still low. Although they had learnt English

in the fourth class, they still found difficulties to remember the words they

had learnt before correctly. It was also known when they were asked to

answer the question in pre-test when the teacher gave oral test, only some

of them answered the question. The researcher could also see that the

students’ English scores of the test were still low. It seemed that they really

found difficulties to remember and grasp the meaning of words easily.

Even, they saw that English lesson was something difficult and boring

because the teacher taught in monotonous way. As the result, the students


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easily got bored and lacks of concentration. Because of this situation, the

students could not fully learn the lesson. That is why their vocabulary

mastery was low. It was also proven by the mean score of pre-test (only

57.78).

Based on pre-research, the researcher identified that the students’

vocabulary mastery should be improved by implementing a teaching and

learning process that could overcome the problems. Therefore, the

researcher designed teaching vocabulary using experiential learning.

2. Planning the Action

Finding the facts that the students’ vocabulary mastery is low, the

researcher tries to improve students’ vocabulary mastery by implementing

an action that is considered appropriate and interesting for the students, that

is, teaching vocabulary using experiential learning, great way to present,

practice, and revise vocabulary, because experiential learning helps students

actively learn English in enjoyable condition. The researcher believes that

experiential learning is appropriate method to improve students’ vocabulary

mastery.

Before implementing the action, the researcher prepares a lesson

plan as the teacher’s guide in teaching, the materials based on the

curriculum, students’ worksheet which consists of some tasks and other

things related to the action. All of these instruments are needed to support

the activities during the lesson so that the lesson can be well-organized and


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the objective can be successfully achieved. There are three terms in a lesson

plan: opening, main activities, and closing. Cycle 1 consists of three

meetings for presenting the material. Each meeting took 70 minutes. She

plans different activities for each meeting. But, there was still a connection

between the first and second meetings. The topic of cycle 1 was “Hobby”,

“Order and Request” and “Asking for Permission”. The objective of the

lesson is to introduce new vocabulary to the students related to the topic.

The action plan would be implemented by the researcher who is also as a

teacher.

3. Implementing the Action

The action plan was implemented by IA as a teacher. In the first

cycle, she introduced vocabulary dealing with Hobby. In implementing the

action, the researcher used the lesson plan that had been prepared before.

The action consists of three sections: opening, main activity, and closing.

Each of the section is described as follows:

1. The first meeting (Wednesday, 4th October 2009)

a. Opening

The lesson started at 09.00 am. The researcher (IA) and sixth

class teacher (W) came to the class, greeted the students, and checked

students’ attendance. The class was unorganized. The students ran here

and there and most of them were chatting with their friends. IA tried to


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create a good situation by telling the students that today activity would

be learning about hobby.

b. Main Activity

· Aspect of meaning

In the introduction and presentation phase, IA explore the

students’ knowledge about the topic of that day to build students’

background knowledge. She asked the students about what is hobby, she

asked “what is meant by hobby?” “ menurut kalian hobby itu apa sih”.

Then, some students said “ kesukaan…kesenangan…” and then the

teacher said “yes, good” and then the teacher asked them to mention

kinds of hobbies. She asked ”Coba sebutkan macam – macam hobby!”

then some students said “berenang…membaca…dolanan bu!... anu…

ngrungokke lagu bu!”, IA asked the students to open their book in the

topic of hobbies. Students are looking at the picture on the book and

some of them mentioned in English and the others mentioned in

Indonesia. The teacher tried to help the students by giving the English

names mentioned by the students. She says “Oke, now listen to me

carefully while you look at your book, sekarang tolong dengarkan

dengan baik sambil dilihat bukunya, there are many kinds of hobbies,

ada bermacam-macam hobi, swimming itu artinya berenang, reading

artinya membaca, listening to the music artinya mendengarkan musik”.

Then, the students matched the words about hobbies with the suitable


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pictures. By looking at the picture the students could answer and write

about the words of hobbies correctly. After that, she instructed the

students to write the meanings of the words of hobbies in Indonesia on

their note book.

· Aspect of spelling

In improving the students’ ability in spelling, IA wrote down

some words and sentences on the blackboard. The words are such as

swimming, collecting stamps, hiking, dancing, biking, gardening,

playing basket. Then, she asked volunteers to write down the phonetic

transcription. One boy came to the front and wrote the spelling of

swimming. Then, he spelled the words. After all the words were

mastered well, the teacher cleaned the board. Then, she asked them to

spell the words with the students. She spelled the words repeatedly.

Later, she, asked students randomly to spell the words alone. IA was

listening to the students’ spelling intensively while they were spelling

the words. She corrected their spelling after they finished spelling the

words.

· Aspect of pronunciation

In improving students ability to pronounce the new words

related to hobbies. In this activity, IA read a model of dialogue and

repeated by the students. For example: - What is your hobby?; My

hobby is reading. IA divided the students into group. She asked each

group to practice the dialogue by using role play at the book and then


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elaborate it by doing conversation among them dealing with their own

hobbies. This activity was conducted in 15 minutes. The situation in

doing the task was very noisy.

She asked each group to do experiential learning by doing

dialogue by using role play that they had done. IA checked their

conversation by listening the conversation of each group whether the

sentences are correct or not. Some students did not feel confident, so

they pronounced it in low voice and not seriously.

· Aspect of using words

After the students were trained how to know the meaning, the

spelling, and the pronunciation, IA let them to make new sentences

based on the vocabularies given. She asked them to make a simple

sentence related to hobbies. IA gave a model of making sentences by

telling their hobby. The example: “I like biking”. “He likes gardening,

etc..” Then she instructed the students to make sentence and practice

like the examples with their own words. Some students could do the

exercise correctly, but there were some who still have mistake in

making sentences. She corrected the errors made by the students.

c. Closing

Before closing the lesson, IA checked the students’

understanding about hobbies. There were some questions dealing with


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the vocabulary of the hobbies. IA asked the students randomly to answer

the questions. When the time given was over, IA summed up the lesson

of that day. She hoped that the situation would be better than the

situation in this meeting. Because there were no questions and the time

was over, IA thanked to the students and closed the lesson by saying

goodbye.

2. The second meeting (Wednesday, 11th October 2009)

a. Opening

The second meeting was conducted on Wednesday, 11th October

2009. IA started the lesson by greeting the students and checking

students’ attendance and asking about the students’ condition. In the

introduction phase, IA told the students that they would learn about

“Order and Request”. The situation was quiet because they haven’t

known yet about what order and request is. In this activity, IA still

applied experiential learning by using role play.

b. Main Activity


In the presentation phase, IA read the sentences about order and

request and asked the students to repeat after her. She also asked the

students to do the order and request sentences in real condition. When

IA read the sentence “Clean the blackboard, please” she asked the


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students to do that in reality. She said to one of the students to clean the

blackboard. But the first time the student didn’t understand what the

teacher said because they did not know the meaning, and then the

teacher said “Bagas, clean the blackboard, please!” then the teacher

said in Indonesia “Bagas, tolong hapuskan papan tulisnya!”. After

knowing the meaning of the order given by the teacher most of the

student said “oalahhh, iku toh artinya”, then Bagas, the student whom

teacher asked to clean the blackboard said “OK, miss!” then the teacher

thanked to the student by saying “Thank you, Bagas”, the student

answered “ You’re welcome miss”. Then, she asked them to give the

meaning of each word. There were some who still did not know their

meaning. She, then, discussed the words with the students. The

discussion was supposed to understand the meaning of the words. The

teacher also tried to help the students by motivating the students to

memorize the meaning of the sentences that had been learned.


To improve the students’ ability in spelling, IA wrote sentences

about order and request (command) and asked the students to copy

them in their note book. (sweep the floor, clean the desk, clean the

blackboard, open the door). The teacher wrote down only the spelling

of nouns, they are: floor, desk, blackboard, door on the board. Then,

the teacher asked the students to write down the spelling and spell them

later. After all of the words were mastered well, the teacher cleaned


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the board. Then, IA asked the students to write the instructions on the

board and to spell them along with her. Later, she asked the students

randomly to spell the words alone.


In improving the students’ ability to pronounce the new words

related to order and request (command). IA gave a model of order and

request by praticing a dialogue using role play. The students paid

attention to it. Then, she and one of the students stood in front of the

class demonstrating a model of order and request by role playing and

the other students tried to listen attentively. She gave a chance to the

students to practice it with their partners. The class was crowded, but

they enjoyed doing the role play. While the students were practicing,

the teacher monitored their pronouncing.

· Aspect of using word

In the last step of improving English vocabulary by using

experiential learning is teaching how to use word. After the students

were trained how to know the meaning, the spelling, and the

pronunciation of new words, IA gave some exercises to the students

individually to write down in English to form order and request in

correct sentence and arrange the jumble words to make command. The

answers were then checked together, and then the teacher and the

students were reviewing the topic about order and request.


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c. Closing

Before closing the lesson, IA summed up the lesson and asked

about the students’ difficulties and feeling. The students felt happy

because they could have ability in learning English by practicing it with

their friend and the teacher. Because the time was over, IA closed the

class and said goodbye.

At the end of the meeting, IA gave reflection to the students’

activity. She corrected the wrong pronunciation made by them, wrote

the wrong grammar used by the students and other difficulty met by

them.

3. The third meeting (Friday, 13th October 2009)

a. Opening

The third meeting was conducted on Friday, 13th October 2009.

IA started the lesson by greeting the students and checking students’

attendance and asking about the students’ condition.

IA told the students that they would learn about “Asking for

Permission”. The situation was quiet because they have not known yet

about what asking for permission is.

b. Main Activity


In the presentation phase, IA asked the students to look at the

picture and read the dialogue. When IA read the sentence “May I go to


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the toilet” suddenly one of the boy went forward to ask permission to go

to the toilet. She asked him to say in English but he couldn’t because

he did know the meaning and she explained. She said to the students if

they wanted to ask permission, they should use expressions of asking for

permission such as “May I…..?” Could I…..?”, and the responses are

such as yes certainly, yes, please, sure, of course, be careful. After

reading the words, she asked them to give the meaning of the

expressions of asking for permission and write on their note book. Some

of them asked the teacher to give the meaning. The teacher tried to help

the students by giving the answer and motivating them to memorize the

meaning of the sentences that had given.


To improve the students’ ability in spelling, the teacher wrote

some expression of asking permission on the board and asked the

students to write them down on their book. (May I go home now? May I

borrow your book?, May I return your book?, May I clean the

blackboard?, May I sweep the floor? After all of the words were

mastered well, IA cleaned the board, then. IA asked the students to write

the expression of asking permission on the board and to spell them along

with her. Later, she asked them randomly to spell the words alone. She

also asked them to spell the expression of asking for permission

repeatedly.


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In improving the students’ ability to pronounce the new words

related to asking permission, in this activity, the students had to practice

the dialogue by using role play. She asked them to repeat after the

teacher. Students did role play according to the book in good

pronunciation, however, there were some who still mispronounced. The

teacher corrected them. They practiced role play with their partner.


The last step of improving English vocabulary mastery by

experiential learning was teaching how to use the words. After the

students were trained how to know the meaning, the spelling, and the

pronunciation of new words, then in this activity, IA gave some

exercises to the students individually to complete the sentences using

suitable words provided in the box. She asked to write the words to

make asking for permission in correct sentence and the answers were

checked together. Then the teacher and the students were practicing the

topic about asking for permission.

c. Closing

Before closing the lesson, IA summed up the lesson and asked

about the students’ difficulties and feeling. The students felt happy

because they could have ability in learning English by practicing it with

their friend and the teacher. She told that next Saturday they would have


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a test. Because the time was over, IA closed the lesson and said

goodbye.

At the end of the meeting, IA gave reflection to the students’

activity. She corrected the wrong pronunciation made by them, wrote

the wrong grammar used by the students and other difficulty met by

them.

4. The fourth meeting (Saturday, 14th October 2009)

a. Opening

The day’s program was having a test. IA greeted the

students and asked their condition. They answered eagerly. IA

explained about the day’s program that she would have a test like that

she had announced before.

b. Main Activity

In the third meeting, post-test 1 was conducted to know the

students’ learning achievement after treatment. In this activity the

students did the test on the worksheet that had been given by the

teacher.

c. Closing

Having finished the test, IA closed the class. Before ending the

class IA gave general review about the whole activities that she had

done during the research. IA hoped that they could maintain their


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participation in English class especially learning vocabulary. She ended

the lesson by saying goodbye.

4. Observing the Action

When the teacher (IA) implemented teaching vocabulary using

experiential learning, the process was observed and the result can be

explained as follows:

a) The first meeting

In the first meeting, the students were enthusiastic when IA and

the sixth class teacher (W) enter the classroom. The class was still

unorganized. The students run here and there and most of them were

chatting with their friends. They have not active yet to answer the

teacher’s questions, all of them still answered in Indonesian. They

started to do role play to experience the conversation on the book, and

did conversation with the other friends and the teacher, even though

their English was very bad and there were many students made

mispronunciations. So, IA guided them to pronounce the English words

for the hobbies.

The situation of the class was very noisy, because most of the

students tried to practice the conversation with laugh and joke many

times. Some students chatted with their friend or when out of the class.

It took much time to warn them to be in order. Then, IA asked the


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groups to practice their conversation. Some students were still shy and

they did not feel confident so they were not practicing well. And not all

of the students were active in doing this activity. Some of them only

watched and listened their friends’ conversation.

b) The second meeting

In the second meeting, the teaching learning process ran better

than the previous meeting. The students enjoyed the experiential

learning activity. Even, IA did not need to ask them to do it as they were

enthusiastic to do the activity by themselves. Most of the students said

“bu, maju lagi kaya kemaren bu”. And when the teacher says in English

they tried to understand the meaning and try to give responses. When the

teacher said “ clean the blackboard, please!” most of the students were

very enthusiastic to give response by saying ”blackboard itu papan tulis

ya bu, ooooo…. kon ngapus papan tulis toh bu”. Then the teacher said “

yes, that’s right”.

Next, IA presented the use of the order and request. And then

when the students were asked to write the order and request on their

notebook they suddenly told by themselves by practicing it with their

friend. One of them said “Don’t smoke at school, tidak boleh merokok

di sekolah”. And then the other friends followed to read and practiced

with their friend. This activity run better. But while they were practicing

most of the students practiced the activity in loud voice so it bothered


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the other students who also learnt seriously in classroom. And then the

teacher asked the students to do the task and then checked it together.

c) The third meeting

In the third meeting, the teaching learning process ran better than

the second meeting. The students enjoyed the experiential learning

activity. They were enthusiastic and had high participation. When the

teacher asked the meaning, some of the students could answer correctly.

However, some of them made some mistakes in pronouncing some

words and they were still lack of vocabulary.

The teaching and learning process was alive. Students took good

participation in the activities. Besides, they did the activities

individually, they also practiced in role playing.

d) The fourth meeting

In the third meeting, post-test 1 was conducted to know the

students’ achievement in learning the vocabulary after the treatment

was implemented. The result of the post-test 1 showed improvement of

students’ mean score. The mean score increased from 56.79 in pre-test

to 67.29 in post-test 1.


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5. Reflecting of Cycle 1

The researcher (IA) and the sixth class teacher (W) saw several

positive results and weaknesses in the first cycle. For the observation,

experiential learning could focus the students’ attention and

concentration in learning English. The researcher found the students’

progress in learning vocabulary. Some students had enough courage to

give response and opinion about the task. Based on the students’ diary,

some students told that their English is improving when they learn using

experiential learning.

Teaching vocabulary using experiential learning also increased

their motivation in joining the lesson. They were enthusiastic in doing

some activities, especially applying the vocabulary in real conversation

with their friends. The students seemed happy when they were directly

involved in learning process using experiential learning. They could

pronounce and spell the words better. They got new words which were

in correct grammar. They could give the meaning each word and

sentence. However, there were some students who were still passive

during the implementation of the actions, not all of the students were

active. There were some students who still kept quiet and did not give

their response or opinion. There were some students who could not

memorize the meaning.

The result of the test shows that the mean score of pre-test is

56.79 and the mean score of post-test is 67.29. It can be concluded that


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there is a better progress than pre-test. The result of the vocabulary

showed that there was improvement from pre-test to post-test.

Even though in general the researcher found the students’

improvement in vocabulary, some students still had difficulty in

memorizing the vocabulary. When the teacher gave some questions,

there were some students who did not raise their hands and did not try to

answer the questions. When the teacher asked them to work in groups,

they did not participate to finish the tasks. They only chatted and even

disturbed their friends.

Besides problems dealing with the vocabulary mastery, the class

situation needs to be improved. Not all students were active. Some

classroom activities did not run well. Some students did not take part

actively in teaching learning process. They were busy with their own

activities. From the research reflections of the observation above it can

be concluded that cycle 1 is not satisfactory. To gain the better progress

goal and better product, it was necessary to conduct learning action in

the second cycle.

In cycle 1, the difficulties faced by the students are: some of the

students still had difficulties in memorizing the vocabulary. The other

problems were the students were still incorrect in writing down the

words and they still had difficulties in pronouncing and spelling.

To solve the problem of class situation, first, the writer replaced

the method of experiential learning in the form of game to attract their


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attention and to motivate them to join the teaching and learning process.

Second, the writer did not force them to be always correct in answering

her questions but she gave them more chances to think and to do the

activities in teaching and learning process. Third, the teacher would

reduce the students’ noise by making them more active in learning

process. She would give the students rewards such as praise. Finally,

managing the time to be adjusted with the time allotment.

The result of Cycle 1 can be seen in the table below:

Table 4.1 The Summary Result of the Research Cycle 1

Class condition based on the result data from Observation/Interview

Before Research (Cycle 1) After Research (Cycle 1)

1. Difficulty in grasping and memorizing the meaning of the words.

2. Difficulty in writing down the words correctly.

3. Difficulty in pronouncing the words

4. Difficulty in using vocabulary in a sentence

5. Feel shy and afraid to ask the teacher.

6. Lack of self confidence 7. Little vocabulary 8. Not innovative teacher

1. There were some who still forgot vocabulary.

2. There were some who were still incorrect in writing down words.

3. There were some who still mispronounced the word(s)

4. There were some still misused the structure of the sentence(s)

5. There were some who were still shy, afraid.

6. There were some who still felt doubt.

7. There were some who still having little vocabulary

8. Innovative teacher


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Students’ vocabulary Mastery (Based on the observation)

Before Research (cycle 1) After Research (Cycle 1)

1. Pronunciation : low

2. Spelling : low

3. Words usage : low

4. Meaning : low

1. Pronunciation : fair

2. Spelling : fair

3. Words usage : fair

4. Meaning : fair

Students’ vocabulary Mastery (Based on the pre-test)

Pre-test Post-test

Mean : 56.79 Mean: 67.29

6. Revising the Plan

From the observation of cycle 1, the researcher (IA) found some

problems in teaching and learning process. She tried hard to manage the

class and implement activities. The class was still noisy. There were

some students who still chatted, laughed among themselves and walked

around the class. Not all of the students were involved in teaching

learning process. There were some students who were still passive, and

they did not feel confident to take part in classroom activities. There

were also problems dealing with vocabulary mastery. Some students still

had difficulty in memorizing, speaking, pronouncing and using the

sentences.

Based on the reflection, the researcher decided to plan cycle 2.

She planned the classroom activities involving all students’

participation. Here, the teacher would reduce the students’ noise by


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making them more active in learning process. She would give the

students rewards such as praise. The teacher designed some interesting

activities such as games and role play.

Some things which were necessary to be improved in the second

cycle as the improvements of the lack in the first cycle were as follows:

1) Enhancing the experiential learning to keep the class active and

interactive.

2) Supporting the students to perform their activities in practicing in

front of the class as well as possible. It was unnecessary to be shy,

inferior, and afraid to make mistakes.

3) Leading them to pronounce and spell the difficult word(s) many

times, give some more exercises.

4) Focusing to improve the other aspects of vocabulary on meaning and

using word.

5) Supporting them to say more loudly, reminding not to be afraid to

make mistakes.


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D. Cycle 2

1. Identifying the Problem

Based on the result of cycle 1, there were some problems which

were found by the researcher. One of the problems was that some of the

students still had difficulties in memorizing the vocabulary. The other

problems were the students were still incorrect in writing down the

words and they still had difficulties in pronouncing and spelling. They

were also still passive when they had to give the response or answer the

questions. Although the first cycle showed that the students’ vocabulary

mastery improved, she found problems about the lack of participation of

the students in teaching and learning process.

2. Planning the Action

Before conducting the second cycle, the researcher prepares

lesson plan. The implementation of teaching vocabulary using

experiential learning would be held in four meetings. In this activity IA

used the model strategy of games. The topic of this cycle was “Public

Places”, and “Giving Direction”. The objective of the lesson is to

introduce new vocabulary to the students related to the topic.

However, the researcher made some changes to overcome the

weaknesses of previous cycle. The changes are: (1) the researcher would


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involve the students in experiential learning activities by using strategy

of model games; (2) the researcher would implement many interesting

activities. She will use experiential learning by encouraging

collaborative learning; having active interaction among members of a

groups, learners will involve in real communication.

3. Implementation the Action

In this cycle, the teacher (IA) implemented the action plan and to

get the result, the researcher (IA) observed the process during teaching

learning process in the classroom. The second cycle was conducted in

three meetings for presenting the material. Each meeting took 70

minutes.

1) The first meeting (Wednesday, 18th November 2009)

a. Opening

The researcher (IA) entered the classroom with her

collaborator (W). IA started the lesson by greeting the students. She

also checked the students’ attendance and asked about the students’

condition.

b. Main Activity


In the introduction phase, IA told the students that they

would learn about public places. She explored the vocabularies by


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finding the meaning of the words of public places. She asked the

students about what kinds of public places, she said “menurut kalian

public places itu apa saja?” then the students said “rumah

sakit…pasar…supermarket…” the situation was little bit noisy

because almost all students mentioned the names of public places.

There were some students who spoke English but there were also

ones who spoke Indonesia. She asked them to look at the picture

and mention some words about public places and tried to memorize.

After that she asked them to give the meaning of the words.


To improve the students’ ability in spelling, IA wrote some

new vocabularies about public places and asked the students to copy

it in their book. She read the words and asked the students to repeat

after her. IA wrote down only the spelling of nouns, they are: post

office, church, market, library, museum, town hall, monument) then,

she lead the students spell the words repeatedly. After that, the

teacher asked the students to open their LKS on public places topic.

Then, while the teacher was spelling the new vocabularies, the

students were paying attention to the teacher’s explanation and their

LKS.


In improving the students’ ability to pronounce the new

words related to public places, the teacher (IA) asked the students to


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play experiential learning with the games. The teacher and the

students conducted “Roulette”. The students were really enthusiastic

to do the activity and they seemed to be active in the activity. She

prepared a paper plane as the tools to play roulette. The teacher flies

the paper plane and when the paper plane landed on one student,

he/she must answer the question from the teacher. Then, if the

student could answer the question they would get score. He/she had

a chance to fly the paper to his/her friend, and they could give a

question for their friend. But if the student couldn’t answer the

question so he/she must be punished. Here, the students were active

in answering all questions given by the teacher and they were very

happy until they did not want to quit the lesson even the time was

over. When the students asked a question and answered, the teacher

checked the pronunciation. After that the question and answer were

pronounced repeatedly.


The last step of improving English vocabulary mastery by

experiential learning was teaching how to use the words. After the

students were trained how to know the meaning, spell, and

pronounce of new words, then in this activity, IA gave some

exercises to the students individually to make correct sentence by

arranging the words and the answers were checked together.


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b. Closing

Before IA closed the lesson, she asked the students to learn

more about English vocabularies. She reviewed some words

including aspect of meaning, spelling, pronunciation, and using the

words in sequences. Then, she closed the lesson by saying goodbye.

2) The second meeting (Saturday, 21st November 2009)

a. Opening

The English teacher (IA) and her collaborator (W) entered

the classroom. When they entered the classroom, the students

screamed “ hooray… bu ike, bahasa Inggris”, “asyiikkkkk…..”.

They were very enthusiastic.

b. Main Activity


In this activity, IA told to the students that they would study

outside the classroom. They asked the teacher “metu bu… ngopo?”

then the teacher said “ada deh… pokoknya it will be fun,

menyenangkan”. That day the researcher wanted to ask the students

to make an outside activity by applying games.

But before that the teacher told to the students that they

would learn about public places. Before starting the activity, the


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teacher gave some explanation about the topic and the students

seemed very enthusiastic to follow the activity.

That day the teacher and the students were conducting the

experiential learning activity which is called “topic card” study. This

experiential learning activity made the students very enthusiastic to

involve in teaching learning process. The teacher had prepared the

questions in the card such as “What building is it?”. Then, the

classroom was divided into several groups. Each group consists of

two or three students. Then, one of the students in the group took the

card randomly from the teacher. And then, they discussed the topic

in the card with their group. They worked cooperatively with the

members of the group. The students were enthusiastic in doing this

activity. After they discussed about the topic, then the teacher asked

them to perform with their groups in doing the “topic card” in real

conversation. After finding the correct answers, they wrote the

meaning of the answer.


IA wrote down some words of public places and preposition

on the blackboard, they were: the post office is near the bank, the

hospital is beside the drugstore, the cinema is in front of the

restaurant, the library is behind the mosque, the hotel is between the

police station and the market. Then, she asked volunteers to write

down the words. The word near had been done as example. One


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boy came to the front and wrote the phonetic spelling of the rest of

words. Then, he spelled the words followed by the other friends.


In improving the students’ ability in pronouncing, IA

pronounced the previous the words of public places and preposition

followed by action and then wrote on the board. The students

repeated them, they were: the post office is near the bank, the

hospital is beside the drugstore, the cinema is in front of the

restaurant, the library is behind the mosque, the hotel is between the

police station and the market. IA asked one volunteer to pronounce

beside and asked the other students to repeat. Then, she asked the

students randomly to pronounce in front of. By doing so, the teacher

and the other students could check whether the pronunciation was

correct or incorrect.


The last aspect, IA asked the students to complete the

sentence with the suitable words to make good sentence with the

vocabularies they had learnt before. Here, the students practiced to

use the sentences in correct grammar. The students could do the

exercises well.


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c. Closing

Before IA closed the lesson, she asked the students to learn

more about English vocabularies. She reviewed some words

including aspect of meaning, spelling, pronunciation, and using the

words in sequences. Then, she closed the lesson by saying goodbye.

3) The third meeting (Monday, 23rd November 2009)

a. Opening

It was a bright morning. After having ceremony she entered

the class and greeted the students, “Good morning students!” and

they answered in high spirit, “Good morning, Mom!” then she asked

their condition and checked the students’ attendance. She explained

that day she would continue the discussion about giving direction.

b. Main Activity


IA told the students that they would learn about giving

direction. She showed the students the model of sentences used in

giving direction and location. The model: where is your house, go

straight, turn right, turn left, beside, between, near, across. The

situation was not crowded because almost all students paid attention

attentively. Then, IA asked the students to look at the map on their

book and complete the sentences and answer the questions. After


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that she asked them to give the meaning and find the synonyms-

antonyms of the words in the picture. They could answer correctly.


In improving students’ ability in spelling, IA taught spelling

by playing the game what is called “spelling race”. The method

was: the board was divided into two halves, and a representative

from each of two teams stood at the board with a chalk. The teacher

showed the rest of the class a word on a card. The team must

simultaneously spell the word to their representative, who cannot see

the word. The first team to get the word on the board with its correct

spelling earned a point. The game continued with different students

taking turns to be the team representative. Here, the students got

active in spelling the word given by the teacher and they were very

happy until they did not want to quit the lesson. They enjoyed the

game very much. Then, She drilled them to spell the words about

giving directions. They repeated to spell the direction loudly.


The teacher wrote down the words on the blackboard, they

were: go straight, turn left, turn right and across. She asked one

volunteer to pronounce turn right and asked the other students to

repeat. Then, she asked all of the students to pronounce the words

on the board. After that, she asked the students randomly to

pronounce go straight. By doing so, the teacher and the other


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students could check whether the pronunciation was correct or

incorrect. It was repeated for all words on the board.

· Aspect of using word

In this activity, IA gave the students clue, “in front of” and

asked them to make new sentence with the vocabularies they had

learnt before. The boy in front of the teacher answered, the school is

in front of the building”. Then, she asked one student to give a clue

and the other students made different sentences. Most of students

made a sentence that was slightly different from the example given.

c. Closing

Before the time was over, IA summed up the lesson. She

told that next Wednesday they would have a test. The students yelled

“Oh, My God” and the others seemed to be ready to do the test.

When the time was over, she closed the lesson and said goodbye.

4) The fourth meeting (Wednesday, 25th November 2009)

a. Opening

The day’s program was having a test. IA greeted the

students and asked their condition. They answered eagerly. IA

explained about the day’s program that she would have a test like

that she had announced before.


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b. Main Activity

In this activity, post-test 2 was conducted to know the

students’ achievement in learning vocabulary after the action of

cycle 2 was revised.

c. Closing

Having finished the test, IA ended the class. Before ending

the class IA gave general review about the whole activities that she

had done during the research. IA hoped that they could maintain

their participation in English class especially learning vocabulary.

She ended the lesson by saying goodbye.

4. Observing the Action

When the teacher (IA) implemented teaching vocabulary

using experiential learning, the process was observed and the result

could be explained as follows:

a) The first meeting

In the first meeting, the teaching learning process became

more effective than in the first cycle. The teaching and learning

process ran well. The students followed the teaching learning

process enthusiastically. There was no serious problem faced by the

teacher. The students were easily controlled.


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In this meeting, IA used game in teaching learning process.

IA saw that the students paid more attention and wanted to take part

to the lesson. When the teacher gave the questions, almost all

students in the classroom tried to answer by raises their hand. The

students discussed the name of each thing about public places

without being asked. Then, IA asked to students some questions

dealing with the topic and saying “what is a place for saving

money?” some students raised their hand in order that IA would give

them chance to answer. She gave the praises when the student could

answer the question. She said “good job” or “great”. When there

were some wrong answers, the other students were competing to

answer the question by raising their hand and the others directly

gave comment and told the right answer. They gave answer

enthusiastically. Some students, who seemed unconfident in the

cycle 1 began to speak up in the teaching and learning process of

cycle 2. The number of passive students was fewer than before. The

teacher used game in teaching learning process.

The students enjoyed the experiential learning activity. They

could pronounce and spell the words well. They could grasp and

memorize the vocabulary and they could write in correct grammar.

The students seemed to fully learn the lesson. When IA asked

to do the task individually, they could do the task well. They could

answer the questions well without seeing the notes anymore. The


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students knew well their assignment. The class situation in doing

individual task was so quiet.

b) The second meeting

In the second meeting, the teaching and learning process ran

well. The students were very enthusiastic. When the teacher entered

the classroom with her collaborator the students screamed

“Hooray…”. The students enjoyed every single activity in this

meeting.

In the meeting, they also participated in teaching and

learning process. They were very enthusiastic to involve in teaching

and learning process, especially when they were told by their teacher

that they would learn outside the classroom. The teacher gave a

game model. They listened to the teacher’s explanation carefully.

Then she asked the students to choose a piece of paper from the

teacher. Then, they started actively to discuss and practice by

themselves while the teacher walked around checking the students’

activity.

Most of the students were enthusiastic in practicing the

“topic card”. They asked the teacher to check their conversation. The

students felt proud of their ability in vocabulary, so that they did the

activity well.


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c) The third meeting

In the third meeting, the teaching learning process became

more more effective than in the first cycle. The teacher still used

game in teaching learning process by practicing spelling of the

words. The teaching and learning process ran very well. The

students followed the teaching learning process enthusiastically.

There was no serious problem faced by the teacher. The students

were easily controlled.

In this meeting, IA asked that the students to pay more

attention and wanted to take part to the lesson. When the teacher

gave the questions, almost all students in the classroom tried to

answer by raising their hand. The students discussed the name of

each thing about public places and giving direction and location.

The students enjoyed the experiential learning activity.

They could pronounce the words well. They could grasp and

memorize the vocabulary and they could write in correct grammar.

The students seemed to fully learn the lesson. When IA asked

to do the task individually, they could do the task well. They could

answer the questions well without seeing the notes anymore. The

students knew well their assignment. The class situation in doing

individual task was so quiet.


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d) The fourth meeting

In this meeting, post-test 2 was conducted. The result of post-

test 2 showed the improvement of students’ mean score. The mean

score increased from 67.29 in post-test 1 to 75.43 in post-test 2.

5. Reflecting and Evaluating the Action

A great improvement was taken from the action in cycle 2. The

class activity had also started to be more conducive and enjoyable to the

students. The teaching and learning process was better than cycle 1.

They became enthusiastic than before. They responded to the class

activity well. Most of them began to be active, not only in paying

attention but also in answering the teachers’ questions.

In this cycle, they liked working together and to have

competition with the other students or groups in doing tasks. Although

the class was noisy, the noise was the students’ interaction with their

friends talking about the lesson or the students’ errors.

The researcher saw that the students could do the task well

without seeing the books. The students still remembered the vocabulary

taught by the teacher. They could answer the teacher’s question

correctly. They could also do experiential learning activity well. They

are encouraged to show up their ability. They had courage to correct

their friends, give advice or debate about the answer or tasks. It seemed


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that they have self-confident to share their knowledge. It indicates that

they were able to grasp and remember the vocabulary and its meaning.

To support the data, in the end of cycle 2, the researcher

conducted the post-test. The mean of the pre-test scores was 56.79 and

the mean of the post-test scores 75.43. There was an improvement of the

students’ vocabulary mastery after cycle 2.

By analyzing the result of observation and the scores, the

researcher concluded that experiential learning was actually appropriate

to be used to teach English to elementary school students. Experiential

learning could help students in memorizing, pronouncing, spelling,

using the words and also made students pay attention to the lesson. The

summary result of cycle 2 can be seen on the table below:

Table 4.2 The Summary Result of Cycle 2

Class condition based on the result data from Observation

Cycle 1 Cycle 2

1. There were some who were still forget vocabulary.

2. There were some who were still incorrect in writing down words.

3. There were some who still mispronounced the word(s)

4. There were some still misused the structure of the sentence(s)

5. There were some who still shy, afraid .

1. They could remember vocabulary.

2. They could write the word(s) correctly.

3. They could pronounce words correctly.

4. They could use vocabulary in a sentence.

5. Brave, not shy. 6. self-confident.


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6. There were some who still felt doubt.

7. There were some who still having little vocabulary.

8. Innovative teacher.

7. Having much vocabulary. 8. Using various methods.

Students’ vocabulary Mastery

Cycle 1 Cycle 2

1. Pronunciation : fair

2. Spelling : fair

3. Words usage : fair

4. Meaning : fair

5. Pronunciation : good

6. Spelling : good

7. Words usage : good

8. Meaning : good

Students’ vocabulary Mastery (Based on the post-test)

Post-test (Cycle 1) Post-test (Cycle 2)

Mean : 67.29

Mean: 75.43


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E. Discussion

1. The Strength

The research which is applying action research to use the

experiential learning activity in improving students’ vocabulary mastery

brought satisfying results both in term of the improvement of students’

vocabulary mastery and classroom situation. The findings then can be

theorized in two major points as follows: (1) Experiential Learning can

improve students’ vocabulary mastery; and (2) Experiential Learning

can improve classroom situation. There are some weaknesses in

applying experiential learning. The discussion of the theories is

presented in the following section.

a. Experiential Learning can improve students’ vocabulary mastery

As vocabulary is basis for Elementary students to be able to

learn more about English, the four aspects of knowing vocabulary is

given: aspect of meaning, aspect of spelling, aspect of pronunciation,

and aspect of using words. It equips them a comprehension about

new vocabularies. In fact, the findings of the study showed that the

use of experiential learning in the class I mproved students’

vocabulary mastery. The improvement could be achieved because

experiential learning helped learners involved actively in the

learning process. It is supported by Brown (2000: p.239) who stated

that experiential learning focuses on the learning process. The


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improvement of the students’ vocabulary mastery could be

recognized from the ability to answer the teacher’s question, the

ability to grasp and memorize the vocabulary and its meaning, the

ability to spell correctly, the ability to pronounce the words and the

ability to use of grammatical form. The improvement of each aspect

was explained in the following:

1) The improvement of meaning

Another finding of the research showed that there is an

improvement of the way to grasp and memorize the words and

their meaning. For aspect of meaning, they learnt the words

about hobby, public places and imperative sentences. They

acted based on the instructions. The correct movement indicates

that they know the meaning of particular words. The students

seemed like this aspect as they could move and act. They learnt

quite fast in this aspect because they learnt by doing. Ur (1998:

p.2) states there are some aspects of vocabulary, namely;

meaning relationship can also be useful in teaching. There are

various relationships, such as synonym, antonym, co-hyponyms;

super-ordinates and translation. The students could give the

meaning of some vocabularies in English and Indonesian and

vice versa.


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2) The improvement of spelling

For aspect of spelling, they spelled the words. For this

aspect, most of students needed more time to spell. They often

inferred from alphabets of Bahasa Indonesia by saying i for i, ei

for e, ai for a. Besides some vowels, they got difficulties in

spelling consonant p, j, g, h and r. Yet, this problem can be

solved in the cycle 2. In cycle 2, the words were written on the

board then the students wrote the phonetic transcription and

spelled afterward. The teacher always asked them to practice

the dialogue and play the game in order to recall the correct

spelling and to avoid boringness. This is in line with the idea

stated by Kwong & Varnhagen (2005: p.22) that children need

continued experiences with a spelling in order to hold it in

memory for later retrieval. Then, there is knowledge of spelling

and pronunciation, of derivate forms and of different shades of

meaning.

3) The improvement of pronunciation

For the aspect of pronunciation, it was as difficult as

aspect of spelling. Sometimes the students were confused to

differentiate between the ways to spell and to pronounce. For

example: bank (bi-ai-n-kei). They spelled bi for b. Yet, they

had to omit bi in pronunciation. Some of them said [beŋk].


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Meanwhile, the correct pronunciation was [bæŋk]. It took more

time to give them understanding about the difference between

spelling and pronunciation in English. The other case, the way

to pronounce throw became a problem. They get used to say t

for th. Actually, there were many other difficulties in changing

the way the students pronounce the words. So, the teacher gave

them an understanding that the pronunciation did not have any

relation with spelling and kept asking them to pronounce the

words. In Experiential Learning activity there is wide

opportunity for the teacher to develop students’ pronunciation.

Ur (1998: p.62) categorized the mastery of vocabulary involves

the mastery on pronunciation and spelling. Pronunciation,

together with grammar is mechanic knowledge in vocabulary

mastery.

4) The improvement of using the words

The last aspect of vocabulary is aspect of using words.

In this aspect, the students seemed to be hard to create new

sentences by connecting one word to the other words they have

learnt before. In this aspect it can be seen that less students

could use new words they have learnt. For those who could,

they created a simple sentence that was slightly different from

the sentences they have learnt, for example: clean the

blackboard, come to school early, finish your homework


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tomorrow, be careful on the way, be diligent at school, etc. This

is in relation with the idea stated by Thornburry (2002: p.130)

that some characteristics of what is called as “knowing a word”.

He says: knowing a words means knowing: the word’s form, the

word’s meaning, any connotations, the word’s grammatical, the

word’s collocations and the word’s derivation.

Before the study, IA found that the students had low vocabulary

achievement. The improvement of the vocabulary mastery could be

seen from the improvement of students’ achievement from cycle to

cycle. The vocabulary achievement was increased significantly. It can

be seen from the mean score of the pre-test, 56.79, the mean score of

Cycle 1, 67.29, and the mean score of Cycle 2, 75.43.

After Computing the mean scores between the pre-test and the

post-test of Cycle 1 and between the post-test in Cycle 1 and the post-

test in Cycle 2, using non independent t-test, the results were ot = 5.575

in Cycle 1, ot = 6.592 in Cycle 2, respectively. The t-table at level of

significance =a 0.05 with N – 1(13) was 2.160. It could be said that

to tt > . It meant that the students’ achievement increased significantly.

It can also prove that conducting Experiential Learning improve the

students’ English vocabulary mastery.


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b. Experiential Learning can improve classroom atmosphere

1). Experiential Learning makes the classroom situation more

alive

The findings of teaching and learning process showed that

there was a change of classroom atmosphere before and after the

Experiential Learning was implemented in the class. It is

supported by Brown (2000: p.238 stated that experiential learning

includes activities that engage both left and right – brain

processing, that contextualize language, that integrated skills, and

that point toward authentic, real world process. The teaching and

learning process using Experiential Learning was more alive.

Most of the activities were fun and real communication. The

authentic material in the students’ life was more interesting for

them so that they felt more motivated to do the work. The

students are active, constructing their own knowledge. Working

in a group collaboratively also supported the students’ interest to

study harder. The activities were conducted individually, in pairs

and in groups.

2) The improvement of students’ confidence, motivation and

involvement in English class.

Experiential Learning motivates students to learn English

especially vocabulary. This method enables them to learn


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vocabulary by acting and moving. Because Experiential Learning

was fun and enjoyable, the students were free to act and move

without being ashamed. Acting and moving made them more

confident to learn English. The use of various methods also

motivates them to be involved during the lesson. Students showed

high participation in vocabulary class. They were eager to

conduct the activities with high spirit. They were not afraid of

making mistakes, they became more self confident. The class was

full of enjoyment, the group work was colored with students’

laugh. It showed the eagerness of the students in learning

vocabulary in a relax atmosphere.

Experiential learning can motivate the students, make them

pay attention and take part in teaching learning process. Teaching

vocabulary using experiential learning can attract students’

interest in learning English and help them to grasp and remember

the vocabulary meaning. This is in relation with the idea stated by

Ur (1996: p.274) that “motivated” learner is the one who is

willing or eager to invest effort in learning activities and to

progress.

2. The Weaknesses

The application of experiential learning in Cycle 1 and 2 had

weaknesses: (1) for the elementary students, it is not easy to


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encourage the students who do not like English to involve in this

activity; (2) the discussion in group work makes noisy; (3) monitoring

students will be difficult if the activity is done outside the classroom;

(4) for the elementary students, it needs time and patience including a

good approach to lead and support their better study because they are

usually too shy to spell.


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CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION, IMPLICATION, AND

SUGGESTIONS

A. Conclusion

Based on the research, teaching vocabulary using experiential

learning can improve the students’ vocabulary mastery. It can be concluded

that:

1. Experiential learning can improve the students’ English vocabulary

mastery.

The improvement of te students’ vocabulary mastery can be identified in

four aspects namely: the improvement of meaning, the improvement of

spelling, the improvement of pronunciation, the improvement of using

the words.

Their achievement improved, as shown by the mean score of the post-

test of Cycle 1 (67.29) and post test of Cycle 2 (75.43) that is an increase

of the students’ achievement from the pre-test (56.79).

2. Experiential learning can improve classroom atmosphere when it was

implemented in teaching learning process.

During the implementation of the action, the classroom situation became

more alive with various interesting activities, the students were more

confidence, motivated and enjoyed the learning. The students were

actively involved in teaching and learning activities. The improvement


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of the students’ vocabulary mastery could also be seen from their

attitudes iinside and outside the class during the English teaching

learning process. They became more intensive in following and paid

attention to the lesson. Besides, they were more active, excited and

responsive to the presented materials. Before usiing experiential learning

in teaching vocabulary, the classroom situation was boring, the students

seemed to be not interested in English and of course unmotivated to

learn English. It caused them to have a chat with their friends and often

did any other activities. Surely, they neglected the tachers’ explanation.

They seemed to listen, but actually they did not. In addition they were

afraid of making mistakes. They were shy to do exercise on the board.

By applying Experiential Learning, the students were more enthusiatic

in joining the lesson so the lesson became more effective than before.

They paid more attention to the teacher’s explanation and when they had

difficulties to understand the lesson, they would ask the teacher without

being ashamed and afraid.

B. Implication

In teaching vocabulary to the children, it is necessary to use

appropriate method which is suitable with children’s characteristics. This

would bring the students into good participation in the lesson. The use of

experiential learning in teaching vocabulary for children is effective in

improving their vocabulary mastery. Using experiential learning combined


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with fun activities in creating a good atmosphere, refreshes students’ mind

which supports teaching and learning process and make students feel at

ease.

It is worth to note that presenting vocabulary using experiential

learning combining with group work is not only attracting the students or

improving their motivation toward the lesson, but also facilitating the

students in achieving the teaching objectives.

Teaching vocabulary uses experiential learning is a suitable

technique to improve students’ vocabulary mastery. The effective steps in

teaching vocabulary using experiential learning are as follows:

a. Leading them to pronounce the difficulty word(s) many times, give

some more exercise.

b. Explain the right structure of the grammar and give them more exercise

b. Supporting them to say more loudly, remind not to be afraid to make

mistakes.

c. Help them actively in teaching learning.

d. Give a high motivation, fairly approach to support their spirit.

e. Create the class atmosphere as well as possible.

f. Give the instructions as clearly as possible.

C. Suggestions

Based on the research findings, the researcher would like to propose

some suggestions related to this research. She hopes that the suggestions


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will be useful for the English teachers, the institutions, and other

researchers.

1. To teachers

The teacher should know how to enhance their ability and to develop

a good atmosphere in the class, so that the students learn easily and

comfortably in their class.

It is necessary for the teachers to use interesting method, such as

experiential learning in teaching vocabulary to children, so that they will

be interested in joining the lesson and will pay more attention to the

teacher’s explanation.

2. To the institutions

An institution of education is a formal place to get knowledge and

education. It is hoped that Sebelas Maret University can arrange the

program of teacher improvement dealing with the teaching and learning

vocabulary and the use of Experiential Learning, the English teacher can

have a better skill in teaching English especially for Elementary students.

3. To other researchers

This research studies the implementation of teaching vocabulary

using experiential learning in improving the students’ vocabulary

mastery. It is hope that the result of the study can be used as additional

reference for further research in different context that will give

contribution to teaching English for children.


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