1. Importance of Vocabulary in Learning English Language - VOCABULARY TEACHING TECHNIQUES USED BY THE TEACHERS IN JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL (A Case Study Research of Vocabulary Teaching Techniques Used by the Teachers in SMP Muhammadiyah 3 Purwokerto) - reposito

CHAPTER II THEORITICAL REVIEW A. Vocabulary This section deals with some theoretical background to lexis since the main focus of the study is vocabulary.

1. Importance of Vocabulary in Learning English Language

  For many years vocabulary has been undervalued in the field of second language teaching and learning, but the last decades have seen a change of attitude towards vocabulary. Laufer (1997, p. 147) says: ―vocabulary is no longer a victim of discrimination in second language learning research, or in language teaching. After decades of neglect lexis is now recognized as central to any language acquisition process, native or non native. What many language teachers might have intuitively known for a long time, that a solid vocabulary is necessary in every stage of language learning, is now being ope nly stated by some language researchers‖.

  Jordens et al. (1996, p. 359) believe that vocabulary is more important than grammar because people generally use vocabulary and reduce grammar particularly when getting a message across quickly and precisely and is of the utmost importance; like telegrams, panic situations or times when emotions are very high. Moreover, the number of ungrammatical sentences people speak and write is enormous, unless they need to convey complex messages precisely. It is clear that vocabulary has

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  6 been recognized as a key area of language knowledge. Hatch1978 believes that the foreign language learner needs for lexical elements in early stage as well as in later stage of the learning process, is often far greater than the need for grammatical rules, this why travelers take dictionaries not grammar books when going abroad. Vocabulary is central to English language teaching because without sufficient vocabulary students cannot understand or express their own ideas Wilkins (1972, p. 111) states: While without grammar very little can be conveyed without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed‖.

  2. What Does It Mean to Know a Word?

  Writers such as McCarthy (1990), Medani (1994) and Taylor (1990) have discussed many aspects of this question. It seems to be clear for the learner for the first time but it involves different ideas and points of view. (Taylor, 1990; Finegan, 1994; Mc Carthy, 1990). Others stated that knowledge of a word exists on various levels. The answer to this question is not as easy as it seems. Medani (1994, p. 39) states that knowing a word is know the lexical information or aspects that is related to it, and involves questions of whether the information about a particular lexical item, is available (easy accessible) for both comprehension and production or whether it is only available for comprehension.

  3. Type of Vocabulary

  A distinction is usually made between active and passive vocabulary. Doff (1988, p. 19) says ―words which we want student to understand‖ (e.g. When reading a text) but which they will not need to use themselves, call them ―passive vocabulary‖, words which students will need to understand and also use themselves, we call them

  ―active vocabulary‖. Fromkin (2011, p. 11) States that ―in English‖, nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverb makes the largest part of vocabulary. They are ―open classes‖, because we can and regularly do add new words to these classes. The other syntactic categories are for the most part ―closed set‖ As the personal pronouns (I, me, mine, he, she, it). Finegan (1994, p. 84) stated that ―morphemes‖ that can stand alone as words are called (freemorphemes). such as boy, lend, motion, etc, Morphemes, which cannot stand alone are called ―Boundmorphemes‖ Such as, Tele, in, non, and, er. Nation (1990, p. 4) classifies vocabulary into three groups high frequency words, low frequency words and specialized vocabulary. What is important here is that learners should know the criteria of how to choose, and understand words. This will be achieved when they are able to differentiate between types of vocabulary. They are not in need to know every word which confronts them.

4. Aspect in learning vocabulary

  There are five aspects in learning vocabulary those are:

  a. Meaning In learning vocabulary, the meaning of each word is very important. Every word has a meaning so the students have to learn the meaning and remember it because when they know the meaning of word they can classify the word well.

  b. Word classes All words belong to categories called(or parts of speech) according to the part they play in a sentence. The main word classes in English are listed below. 1)

  A noun is a word thata person (woman, boy, doctor,

  neighbor ): a thing (dog, building, tree, and country): an idea, or state (truth, danger, birth, happiness).

  2) A vewhat a person or thing does or what happens. For example, verbs describe: an action

• – jump, stop: explore an event – snow, happen: a
• – be, seem, have: a change – evolve, shrink, widen .

  3) An adjective is a word that describes a noun, giving extraabout it. For example: an exciting adventure,

  a green apple , a tidy room.

  4) An adverb is a word that’s used to give information about a verb, adjective, or other adverb. They can make the meaning of a verb, adjective, or other adverb stronger or weaker, and often appear betwee everything.) 5)

  Pronouns are used in place of a noun that is already known or has already been This is often done in order toith him.

  That is the only option left. Something will have to change.

  6) A preposition is a word such as after, in, to, on, and with.

  Prepositions are usually used in front of nouns or pronouns and they show the relationship between the noun or pronoun and other words in a sentence. They describe, for example, the position of something, the time when something happens, or the way in which something is done. 7)

  A conjunction (also called ais a word such as and,

  

because, but, for, if, or, and when. Conjunctions are used to

  connectThe two main kinds are known as coordinating conjunctions and subordinating conjunctions.

  8) A determiner is a word that introduces a noun, such as a/an, the, every, this, those, or many (as in a dog, the dog,

  this dog, those dogs, every dog, many dogs ). The determiner the, is

  sometimes known as the definite article and the determiner a (or an) as the indefinite article.

  9) An exclamation (also called anpleasure, or anger.

  Exclamations often stand on their own, in writing they are usually followed by an exclamation mark rather than a full stop.

  c. Spelling Spelling is a spoken word or form of words held to have magic power. In learning vocabulary, the students have to know how to spell the word that they have already learnt.

  d. Pronunciation Pronunciation is the way a word or ais spoken, or the manner in which someone utters a word. If one is said to have "correct pronunciation", then it refers to both within a particular

  e. Word use The students have to learn about how to use the word either in the sentence or phrase because when they do not know how to use the word it will difficult for them to make or create the sentence with the right rule and the sentence will be wrong.

5. Techniques of Teaching New Lexis

  In teaching vocabulary, there are some techniques that used by the teachers. The writer took the theory from the journal ―Teaching

  Vocabulary: The Relationship between Techniques of Teaching and Strategies of Learning New Vocabulary Items

  ‖ (Tariq Elyas and Ibrahim Alfaki). The following techniques are the most common techniques which are adopted by Sudanese teachers of English as a foreign language.

  a. Translation One of the most common techniques is translation that is to translate the word in question into a learner’s native language. Some experts however do not recommend this technique (Doff, 1988, p. 12) ―if we only give a direct translation, the students cannot see how the word is used in an English sentence‖. Translation is simple, clear and quick for reaching the goal; particularly when teachers give examples then students give the word translation. Sometimes the word itself may be unknown for students since it was translated into different variety of the same language, for example the word ―suppress‖ which can be translated in to Arabic language /yustabid/,(study

  —learn) and so many other words. In addition to that translation causes students to organize reality according to their own first language. It is asserted that when students formulate their ideas in their native language and then translate it into the target language, enormous problems arise because some words cannot be translated easily and some language items do not have structural equivalent in the two languages. As the word (is) in (He is working hard). Nation (1990, p. 52) thinks that the value of translation depends on how and when we use it.

  Translation into them other tongue presents the same processes as translation into a picture, a description in English. Hill (1965, p.23) criticizes translation into mother tongue as a way of communication or teaching meaning. They believe that generally there is usually no exact correspondence between one language and another. Translation into the learner’s native language is indirect. The use of the mother tongue takes time which could better be spent in using English. But Harmer (1985, p. 86) thinks that it seems silly not to translate if by doing so a lot of time can be saved. If the student does not understand a word and the teachers cannot think how to explain it, he can quickly translate it. But this should be well controlled as Wallace (1987, p. 48) states that ―translation of vocabulary into the mother tongue should be kept under light control‖.

  b. Giving Examples Giving examples is another way (technique) of showing the meaning of a new word, these examples should contain the meant lexical item McCarthy (1990, p. 108) believes that new vocabulary knowledge is most efficiently absorbed when it is assimilated to the already known words by using it in a context, Complex explanation of a vocabulary item will lead to a narrow scale understanding, for the case that a meaning can be shown with very simple sentences. The example sentences used to explain meaning should obviously teach the meaning of the new word. Showing meaning of words via context is very fruitful specially, when the word in question is from the list-of abstract lexis like, hate, hesitate, think and possible.

  c. Realia It is obvious that a new item can be taught by presenting the real object in question into the classroom, a process which is called using

  ―realia‖ by which teachers mean the real object. Although a type of this teaching technique will enable teacher to teach a quite limited set of vocabulary. For example an object, this can easily be brought into the classroom, such as: pen, cup, book, hand, desk, ruler, etc. But it is one of the most beneficial techniques.

  d. Concept A new item can be taught by concept, as a word may be distinguished from special uses of the word, as to say that our concept of the word (body) is not the same as particular bodies. Our concept of (body) is generalization and abstraction from our experience of many bodies. Color of skin, the size of the body and length of the body are not critical features of body. So if teachers want their students to know a concept of a particular new item (body) they should help them ignore these features. In the case of (body) this is easily done by presenting the learners with several examples of bodies and helping them to see what is the same is all these examples. According to Carroll (1964, p. 34) there are several conditions, which help the establishment of concept Firstly, they should be positive examples of the concept, secondly, there should be negative examples. That is to say the learners are shown things that are not (bodies). They are told that these are not (bodies), thirdly, these positive and negative examples need to be arranged in the best way of learning.

  e. Description and Definition Providing definitions or descriptions of new words is also a way of teaching meaning. Bright (1970, p. 40) states that ―the ability to produce short, clear relevant definitions of words is important to the teacher‖. The teacher thinks about the feature that he should capture and what contrast to make. According to Nation (1990, p. 56) to define a word is to show or explain its meaning. An adequate definition of a word shows its meaning as distinct from the meaning of others words and nothing but its meaning. In other words it aims to the characteristics which belong to this concept as distinct from others, it makes the boundaries of a concept as clear by given some indications of the range of situation to which the symbol can refer. Nation (1990, p. 65) an adequate definition indicates the grammatical function or the category of the word, a noun, verb, an adjective, it also indicates the typical sentence pattern in which the word enters and finally it indicates other formal aspects of the word. f. Pictures and Mime Pictures and mimes can be used to teach the meaning of new vocabulary items. By pictures we mean photos, blackboard drawing, wall pictures, chart and flash card. If the teacher is intended to teach words like vegetables, clothes and markets the used of pictures will be very important because it will be very difficult and time-consuming to explain them. Pictures can also be used to create a situation or context (Harmer, 1985, p. 85).In this situation; teachers can use e.g. a city map, school map and then try to introduce the item in question. The usage of mimes in teaching new words is also considered of great value, especially with actions such as jumping, running, writing and smoking.

  A type of these concepts is easily explained if the teacher pretends to do them before the class

B. Learning vocabulary

  Learning vocabulary is a very important part of learning a language. The more words you know, the more you will be able to understand what you hear and read; and the better you will be able to say what you want to when speaking or writing.

  There are five essential steps in vocabulary learning. The teachers have always been naturally interested in how learners go about learning vocabulary. If we know more about learner strategies and what work and what does not work well, we can help learners acquire more profitable strategies (Hatch and Brown, p. 372). The five processes are described in more detail below.

  a. Encountering new words The first essential step for vocabulary learning is encountering new words, that is, having a source of word. The student strategies here included ―learning new words by reading books,‖ ―listening to TV and radio,‖ and ―reading newspaper and magazines‖ (Payne, 1998, p. 33).

  b. Getting the word form This step was shown in comments such as ―associating new words with words that sound similar in my native language,‖ ―writing the sounds of words using sound symbols from my native language,‖ ―associating words that are similar to words in other language I have studied,‖ ―associating a word with a similar sounding English word I know,‖ and ―seeing a word that looks like another word I already know‖ in this step. The important of getting form of the word also appears when students are asked to give definitions for words.

  c. Getting the word meaning This step includes such strategies as ―asking people who speak my native language the m eaning of new words,‖ making pictures of word meanings in my mind,‖ and ―explaining what I mean and asking someone to tell me the English word.‖ d. Consolidating word form and meaning in memory Many kinds of vocabulary learning drills, such as flash cards, matching exercises, crossword puzzles, etc., strengthen the form- meaning connection. Oxford divides these strategies into four general categories: (1) creating mental linkages, (2) applying images and sounds, (3) reviewing well, (4) employing actions. Many of these strategies specially mention vocabulary, expressions, or words. Those that do not mention vocabulary explicitly still can be applied to vocabulary study, for example, reviewing at carefully spaced intervals.

  e. Using the word The final step in learning words is using words. Some would argue that this step is not necessary if all that is desired is a receptive knowledge of the word. However, if the goal is to help learners move as far along the continuum of word knowledge as they can, word use is essential.

  In addition, to increasing confidence and receptive knowledge, use of words seems to be necessary for students to test their knowledge of collocations, syntactic restrictions, and register appropriateness. Crow and Quigley (1985) have suggested that learners may not know such things when they have only a receptive knowledge of vocabulary.

C. Problems of Learning Vocabulary

  Learning vocabulary seems to be one of the easiest things about learning a language, but it is also one of the hardest things to do, especially when you have reached a certain level. Learning vocabulary needs practice and time and in our days time is a problem.

  The basic problems of learning vocabulary for the beginners are pronunciation, spelling, memorizing and also words using in sentences or in oral communication too. This is briefly described below:

  1. Pronunciation Problem Actually, students want to be able to speak English fluently, with understand pronunciation. So that, they can communicate without scare as good pronunciation make receiver easier to understand. The following aspect, which cause pronunciation problem is: similar sound in two words into language which have different variants, sequences of sound in one word, classification of sound.

  2. Spelling Problem Besides learning pronunciation, learning spelling is also important, because it can improve the learners’ ability of language skills especially writing and reading.

  The following are some of spelling problem; understanding between speaker and hearer and the students do not know the spelling of words.

  3. Memorizing Problem It is a fact that students target is to remember all the vocabularies that they have learned. The students have the problem to memorize several new words was given. They have difficult to recall the word when the teacher asks them.

  4. Meaning Problem It is reasonable that the Indonesian learners are difficult to understand the meaning of English words. Sometimes the meaning of words changes because of the function in sentences.

D. Basic Assumption

  Vocabularies are the basic one for students to learn English as a foreign language. It makes the students understand the language.

  Vocabularies will make the students know how to use the word and the techniques of teaching vocabulary is the important part to help the students in using the words and complete them into sentence correctly.

  With the importance of learning vocabulary in mind, it is good to know that it is comparatively easy to learn words. Second/Foreign language learners usually do not have to learn the concepts behind words from scratch, which makes it relatively easy to teach words than grammar especially at lower-level classes. It seems that the benefits of learning vocabulary come faster too because individuals words alone can make successful communications in some circumstances, which doesn’t hold true for grammar. In order to elicit the benefits associated with learning vocabulary, teachers should design their vocabulary teaching with the purpose of making words retain longer in students’ minds and helping them produce words in different contexts.

  In teaching vocabulary, there are some techniques such as: translation, giving example, relia, concept, description and definition, pictures and mime. These all are the techniques that common used by the teachers in teaching vocabulary.

  The most common used is Translation. Translation is simple, clear and quick for reaching the goal; particularly when teachers give examples then students give the word translation. In addition to that translation causes students to organize reality according to their own first language.