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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
This chapter is aimed to justify the research project, relevance and feasibility of language teaching and learning in the role of vocabulary, and some
previous research on vocabulary. In general, this chapter covers the background of the research, problem identification, problem limitation, problem formulation,
research goals, and research benefits.
A. BACKGROUND OF THE RESEARCH
Today, teaching English using course books become the most common method throughout schools and courses in every part of the world. Hutchinson
and Torres 1994: 315 say that a course book is “an almost universal element of
ELT English Language Teaching”. Course books become the most powerful
device for spreading new ideas in language teaching, besides conferences, journals, and workshops Andrew Littlejohn as in Tomlinson, 1998:190. Byrd
2001 also states that a course book serves as a content and teachinglearning activities provider, which determines what happens in a classroom. Therefore,
students are required to use English course book as a vital support for their learning activity.
One of the biggest components of English learning activity is vocabulary. It means that when learning English, students must know the vocabulary that will be
used in speaking English. As course books become the powerful device in PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
learning English, vocabulary also become the most essential to the English learning and the foundation of all English skills.
There are some reasons why vocabulary is important. Wilkins 1972 stated that vocabulary knowledge is crucial to successful communication because
vocabulary plays an important role in delivering meaning. It means, vocabulary is needed to make us able to understand the meaning of we are spoken or listen
about. It’s the key of successful communication in using two different language. As Ruply, Logan and Nichols 1999 state, vocabulary is the glue that hold
stories, ideas, and content together and it makes comprehension accessible. The second reason is students understand the importance of vocabulary and they are
eager to learn new vocabulary items Leki and Carson, 1994. The last one, vocabulary
acquisition affects language skill’s development. According to Schonell, Meddleton, and Shaw 1956, a vocabulary of around 2,000 word
family needs to be mastered to provide 95 coverage of informal conversations. In other words, vocabulary is the key element in second language English skills.
Due to some reasons of the importance of vocabulary in learning English skills, vocabulary expansion is essential for learners to gain proficiency in
English. In second language learning and teaching, vocabulary knowledge is central to communicative competence and to the acquisition of a second language.
Students learn vocabulary through course books; and the size of their vocabulary determines their language performance. Vocabulary is the most important element
to build their English knowledge and has strong effect on their future language learning progress. Therefore, knowing vocabulary is considered necessary for
language learners Schmit and McCarthy, 1997. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
Using English course book, students will be helped to learn more vocabulary. In other words, learning vocabulary can be from course book.
Indirectly, English course book will influence students’ vocabulary level. Students
might be helped by their teachers in selecting many texts to read in language learning tasks. Those texts can be news articles, short stories, blog entries, and
materials specifically written for students. The appropriate level in selecting texts is essential for reading tasks to be effective due to students
’ proficiency in English will go higher according to the increasing level of difficulty in vocabulary terms.
Some researchers have paid attention to vocabulary. According to Read 2004, studies on second language vocabulary reached a peak in the 1990s and
2000s. Different issues on vocabulary have been the focus of the studies such as vocabulary size, learning vocabulary and word repetition. A set of research reports
was given by different researchers. Research on vocabulary coverage and vocabulary recycled also conducted by Mutiara 2014 and Kusumaningrum
2014. The difference between this research and both Mutiara’s and
Kusumaningrum’s research is that Mutiara analyzed the vocabulary coverage and word recycling in a Junior High School course book curriculum 2013;
Kusumaningrum analyzed the vocabulary coverage and word recycling in a Junior High School course book curriculum 2006; while this research analyzed the word
frequency distribution throughout several course books provided for Junior High School in order to find out whether vocabulary coverage in the course books will
significantly increase or not during the development of English learning through many curriculums changing and its instability in Indonesia.
One of the ways to validate vocabulary coverage and its recycling in the course book is by comparing the vocabulary with English corpus GSL, BNC,
AWL, etc. The corpus words were selected to represent the most frequent words of English and were taken from a corpus of written English. As the research
justification, corpus become the most trustworthy reference in order to measure the suitability between vocabulary being learned and the level of learners.
Matsuoka and Hirsh 2010 also did research toward analysis of an ELT course book. Their Research findings suggested that it only provided minimal
opportunities for students to develop vocabulary knowledge beyond frequency and academic words. It shows a need to supplement the course book with an
extensive reading program and other programs with rich input to promote vocabulary development. Another research on vocabulary coverage by Hsu 2009
also finds that vocabulary levels of the course books he examined did not seem to be in line with the one claimed by the publishers. This finding, then, results in
suggestion for teachers to raise their awareness of considering vocabulary level when choosing an English course book.
Considering some previous research in the field of vocabulary coverage, this research also discusses vocabulary coverage and how the words are recycled. In
this research, the researcher will discuss vocabulary coverage in random four Junior High School course books used in Yogyakarta.
From the explanation above, it is clearly seen that vocabulary takes an important role in studying English especially for students. It is because they
cannot avoid English although they have graduated from Junior High School or even from university. Facing English all the time, students are familiar with
vocabulary. It means that they should always improve their size of vocabulary in order to follow their English need. If they could not improve their vocabulary
size, they would not be able to follow their English lesson well. Related to certain problem above, the researcher is going to look at several
vocabularies of English Junior High School course books. This research is based on a corpus study. This study does not attempt to judge of course book quality,
but to find the vocabulary coverage used in the course book, with the hope that future studies will improve on the methodology used. This research can also be
used as a way to help in analyzing the overall quality of course books and help to create better English material for students.
Another area of study relating to vocabulary coverage is the issue of word frequency. It is often stated that learner should focus on learning the most
common 2,000 or so words of a language since these account for 80 or so of most contexts. Nation, 2002. Paul Nation also calculated that learner need 3,000
word families to feel even somewhat comfortable reading, and 5,000 to be comfortable in most situations. This is based on the assumption that we should be
reading texts with 98 known words. It is considered as the standard of comfortable reading for students to be achieved in order to make them able to
maximize their vocabulary learning. Words can be difficult because of factors like frequency Chen Truscott,
2010. Therefore, discovering how far the frequency of certain words may occur in the course book becomes necessary to identify the factors that make words
difficult. It is important because it will estimate the difficulty level of an individual word for effective learning of vocabulary acquisition.
B. PROBLEM LIMITATION
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