19 items they are attaining, especially if the students want to apply the words in their
own speech and writing. Accordingly, it can be concluded that the vocabulary mastery is dealing with the ability of knowing the meaning of a word as well as
using the word in the real context. Bachman Palmer 1996 as cited by Read 2000 added, “language
ability is made up not only of multiple areas of knowledge but also strategic competence.” From this view, it can be seen that in acquiring vocabulary mastery,
the students are required to not only know the meaning of a word in their first language, but also apply the word in everyday communication. Related theory of
vocabulary mastery was also proposed by Chapelle 1994. He declared that vocabulary ability involves “both knowledge of language and the ability to put
language to use in context.” From this point, the vocabulary mastery was also defined by the ability in knowing the meaning of the word itself as well as in
using the word in the real context. In this research, the aspects of vocabulary mastery are based on three components of vocabulary ability which was defined
by Chapelle 1994 as cited in Read 2000. They are as follows.
a. The Context of Vocabulary Use
Read 2000 pointed out that the term context refers to the sentences or utterances in which the target word occurs. Read 2000 also gave an example that
in the vocabulary cloze test, the students could fill the missing blanks by looking at the contextual clues in the other sentences or paragraphs. In other words, it
could be said that the students would be able to draw the meaning of an unknown
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20 word by analyzing the context clues surrounding. The context clues here could be
the surrounding words, sentences, or paragraphs. Besides having ability in analyzing the context clues, the ability of using
vocabulary in context also referred to “how the students understand the pragmatic knowledge” Read, 2000: 29. Read 2000 defined the pragmatic knowledge as
“the social and cultural situation in which lexical items are used significantly influence the meaning.” Thus, it can be said that the meaning of a word may be
different from one another or a word may have more than one meaning depends on the context in which the word occurs.
b. Vocabulary Knowledge and Fundamental Processes
Vocabulary knowledge is dealing with vocabulary size and knowledge of word characteristics. Chapelle 1994 as cited in Read 2000 explained that
vocabulary size referred to “the number of words that a person knows.” In other words, it can be said that the improvement of vocabulary mastery can be indicated
by the increasing someone’s vocabulary size. Besides, vocabulary knowledge also deals with knowledge of word characteristics. It is related with how well the
students in recognizing some words, as pointed out by Laufer 1990 in Read 2000, “learners are likely to be confused about some of the words which share
certain common features, e.g. affect, effect; quite, quiet; simulate, stimulate; embrace, embarrass.” In other words, vocabulary mastery can be described as the
ability to distinguish the meaning of words which have similar features by analyzing the surrounding context. Still dealing with vocabulary knowledge
aspect, Ali 2000 suggested that the students should also pay attention more on a
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21 word which shares similar features, for example accept vs except. Also, it is
crucial to concern more on a word which can be used as a verb as well as a noun, for instance advise vs advice. He also said that those kinds of words often confuse
the students in both speaking and writing. Read 2000 said that fundamental process is dealing with how the
students utilize the mastered words in both receptive and productive knowledge. By mastering the vocabulary, the students are able to understand the ideas when
they listen to someone’s speaking or when they read the texts. Moreover, by mastering the vocabulary, it enables the students to apply the mastered words in
conveying their own idea in both spoken and written forms
c. Metacognitive Strategies for Vocabulary Use
