Limitation of the Problem Formulation of the Problem

Moreover, Thornbury 2002: 14 asserts that, “vocabulary means a large collection of items”. The items that he means are words. With a good knowledge of words the learners will have a better understanding of a text. Vocabulary is a core component of language proficiency that becomes the basis knowledge for how the learners listen, speak, read and write Richard Renandya: 2002. He adds that extensive vocabulary and strategies for acquiring new vocabulary learners will get their true potential to use the language such as for listening, speaking reading or writing. Therefore having a good knowledge on vocabulary will help the learners to achieve a better result in learning language since they are able and importantly have courage to use the language in different context. Furthermore, Hiebert Kamil 2005: 3 define vocabulary as “the knowledge of meanings of words”. He adds that this definition makes vocabulary comes into oral vocabulary which is used in daily communication and print vocabulary which is not used in daily communication but in certain text. Besides, there are also receptive vocabulary which can be understood or recognized and productive vocabulary which can be used to write or speak. In conclusion, vocabulary is the list of words and its meaning that serve as basic knowledge needed by the people in order to understand the words and how to use the words appropriately depend on the purpose of the words, whether to use them to express ideas or to grasp meaning from texts.

b. The Importance of Vocabulary

To be able to comprehend a text, learners need to have knowledge of vocabulary. According to Whipple in Hiebert and Kamil, 2005: 1, vocabulary is an important aspect in reading comprehension, he says that Growth in reading power means, therefore, continuous enriching and enlarging of the reading vocabulary and increasing clarity of discrimination in appreciation of word values. The vocabulary knowledge is so important that it will affect in the learners’ comprehension in reading text. Davis in Hiebert and Kamil, 2005:1 described comprehension as comprised of two skills: word knowledge or vocabulary, and reasoning. Vocabulary is a list of words and its meaning. In accordance with the words, Hayes, Wolfer, Wolfe in Hiebert and Kamil 2005: 1 argue that, the complexity and the multiple meaning of the words are needed to be understood according to the context in the texts. The learners expected to understand the words in texts and also to understand many new words. Besides, Wilkins in Thornbury 2002: 13 states that “without grammar very little can be conveyed, and without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed”. Vocabulary is the main aspect in using language. With grammar, language users may only use language a little but with vocabulary language users are able to learn more about words and expression and therefore they can say almost anything. The relation between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension is so tight. Biemiller in Hiebert and Kamil eds, 2005: 223 found that the correlation of written vocabulary test to reading comprehension test is so high and