96 metacognitive strategies for vocabulary use. Moreover, so as to ensure the
students’ responses in each statement, the researcher conducted interview with four students of XII IPS 1 as the representatives of the whole students.
1. The Context of Vocabulary Use
The first two statements were about the context of vocabulary use. The first statement asked whether contextual guessing strategy helped the students in
drawing the meaning of an unknown word. Responding to the statement, twenty six students 92.85 agreed that the strategy helped them a lot in guessing the
unknown words’ meanings, even though just came to the closest ones.
“menganalisis konteks sangat membantu ya, kita tidak sepenuhnya betul dalam menebak, tapi mendekati arti yang dimaksud, misalnya, kita cari
dulu kata kunci dari kalimat sebelumnya, trus dari kalimat sesudahnya. Nanti dihubung-hubungin semuanya.” R1
Analyzing the context was very helpful. Although we might not be able to guess the exact meaning of a word, but we might be close enough to attain
the meaning of it. It could be done, for example, by finding the clues from the previous and the next sentences. Afterwards, they were connected each
other.
On the contrary, two students 7.15 disagreed with the statement. There was no reason from the students being interviewed. However, from the
observation form, field notes and journal the researcher could conclude that those students might assume that the steps of guessing procedure were complicated to
learn. Consequently, they had no motivation from the first time. Besides, those two students might consider that memorization was still powerful strategy in
learning vocabulary, instead of guessing.
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
97 The second statement confirmed about the students’ ability in recognizing
a word with multiple meanings. Twenty students 71.43 agreed that by having a clear context, they were able to decide the particular meaning of a word which
has multiple meanings. From the interview, the researcher found that a student stated that she was able to guess the meaning of the word “swallow” as menelan,
after analyzing the context, finding as many clues as possible, and drawing a red line from each clue. At first, she just recognized that “swallow” meant burung
layang-layang. However, after applying the steps of guessing procedure, in which they had to decide the part of speech first, she found that “swallow” in its context
was a verb, not a noun. From that experience, she learnt that a word could have several meanings and could be used as a verb as well as a noun depending on the
context in which a word occurred Ali, 2000.
“awalnya saya tahunya kalo “swallow” itu kan burung, soalnya pas bahas cerita narrative kemarin kan artinya burung. Tapi pas ngerjain
worksheet, kok bisa jadi dua gitu. Ada yang verb, ada yang noun, berarti artinya mungkin beda. Nah, saat itu saya pake strategy menebak.
Akhirnya saya tahu kalo “swallow” punya beberapa arti, bisa diartikan menelan juga. Kesimpulannya, kita dapat membedakan arti sebuah kata
kalo ada konteks yang jelas.” R3 At first, I thought that “swallow” meant “burung.” It was because when
discussing the previous narrative text, I found it as “burung.” However, when I did the worksheet, I found that its part of speech was a verb. So,
this word could be as a noun and a verb; it might indicate the different meaning from a single word. From that moment, I understood that the
word “swallow” had multiple meanings; it could also be interpreted as “menelan.” To sum up, we could distinguish several meanings of a word,
if there was a clear context.
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
98 In contrast, eight students 28.75 showed their disagreement towards
the statement. When being interviewed, one of them stated that in fact she did not know that some words might have multiple meanings since she was accustomed
to memorizing vocabulary list which had no context. Consequently, she found difficulty to infer the meaning of the word concerned, even though the context
was provided.
“kebanyakan ga tahu, soalnya dari awal ya belajar vocabulary yang keluar di pelajaran aja. Biasanya kata-kata yang sering keluar diapalain,
tapi cuman ada satu arti. Jadi sekarang baru tahu.” R4 Mostly, I did not know [the words which have multiple meanings]. It was
because I just memorized the vocabulary which occurred in the lesson, but there was only a single meaning for each vocabulary. So, I have just
known right now.
Overall, 82.14 students agreed that there was improvement on the aspect of the context of vocabulary use. Most of the students agreed that the strategy
given helped them a lot in inferring the meaning of a new word. However, many students felt difficult in recognizing a word which has multiple meanings, even
though the context was provided.
2. Vocabulary Knowledge
