Background of the Study

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

Nowadays, teaching English is popular in Indonesia. As everybody knows, English is the first foreign language that is taught in formal school starting from the elementary school until university. So, Teaching English from the very beginning is a good choice. Many reasons promote the teachers introducing English at an early age. Firstly, the learners are keen and enthusiastic during teaching learning process. Brumfit 1995: VI states that young learners have more opportunities than adults. They are learning all time without having worries and responsibilities of adults. Their parents, friends, and teachers all help them in learning. Secondly, teaching English in early age is very useful to prepare the students in entering the secondary level. The students who begin early are usually much further along in high school and in college. They will be already familiar with English and they will understand and they can implement it as well as possible. Thirdly, it is useful to face globalization era. In globalization era, the people are demanded to use English for communication. So, it will be better if young learners can master English at an early age. In the elementary school curriculum, English is included as a local content. So, it is optional to the school to teach this subject or not as what is stated in the Elementary Education Curriculum: pelajaran bahasa Inggris tidak di commit to user 2 wajibkan di sekolah dasar, melainkan sebagai Muatan Lokal. GBPP Muatan Lokal SD Bahasa Inggris: 1995.p.1. However, most of elementary schools decide to teach it. Even in some private kindergartens, English is included in their curriculum and in some private elementary schools it is thought from the first grade. The aims of teaching English to Elementary School students are that the students are expected to have the language competence covering pronunciation, vocabulary, writing, structure and culture awareness. The students are then expected to have the skills to use the language in a simple form. Muatan pelajaran Bahasa Inggris diajarkan kepada siswa dengan harapan siswa memiliki: 1. Kemampuan language competente yang mencakup unsur-unsur tata bunyi, kosa kata, tata bahasa dan tata budaya. 2. Keterampilan menggunakan language performance unsur-unsur diatas tersebut dalam bentuk sederhana. GBPP muatan local SD Bahasa Inggris: 1995.p.2 Meanwhile, vocabulary is one of the subjects taught when students are learning a language. Dale and O’Rourke 1971 state that vocabulary development is conceptual development, a basic educational aim of any school or college. A study of vocabulary is still going on and will never stop and it is not limited on its knowledge as word and meaning but also its instruction to students from the earliest grade to the highest one. Vocabulary according to Hatch and Brown 1995:1 is the term of vocabulary refers to a list or set of words that individual speakers of language might use. It is required in all kind of language skills covering listening, speaking, commit to user 3 reading, and writing. It is also the basic step to learn English in written form as well as spoken form. The experience of most language course is vocabulary. No matter how well the students learns grammar, no matter how successful the sounds of L2 are mastered, without words to express a wide range of meanings, communication in an L2 just can not happen in any meaningful way. As everybody knows that students have difficulties when they study vocabulary, so the teachers should pay attention to find appropriate or good methods in teaching vocabulary. It is important for teachers to have a command of the knowledge based on teaching and that research is valuable resource to guide teaching practices. Furthermore, she explains that teachers can become researchers for the purpose of improving their teaching and learning environments in their classrooms. One of the techniques in teaching vocabulary is by using graphic organizers. Ellington 2006 states that graphic organizers are visual and spatial displays designed to facilitate the teaching and learning of textual material. Graphic organizers actually have the power and potential to enhance the learning ability of students in all age groups. Because the use of visual learning tools is becoming widespread, the introduction of graphic organizers from an early age has been pushed as a means of facilitating familiarity with these extremely effective tools as early as possible. Graphic organizers aid in learning across all subjects by nature, and the processes involved with them are actually applicable in a myriad of different uses. However, the true effectiveness of these graphic organizers actually lies in the commit to user 4 ability of the teachers, as it is their responsibility to show students how to efficiently make use of them. When used in effective ways, graphic organizers have a great amount of potential for fostering learning in a variety of different areas in education. The most prevalent educational areas that are positively affected by the effectiveness of graphic organizers are comprehension, reading and vocabulary knowledge. A number of studies have been conducted that indicate that graphic organizers have the ability to improve reading and vocabulary knowledge and understanding exponentially. This is because the child is not only being required to read a bunch of words, but instead is being allowed to learn the importance or lack of importance of these words in order to attain increased clarity about them. However, based on the observation, the writer found that the vocabulary test scores of the fifth grade students of Sekolah Dasar Negeri Kentingan No.79 Surakarta are still low. So, the writer assumes that the students’ vocabulary mastery needs improvement. While from the interview with the teacher, the writer knows that he seldom uses graphic organizers in his teaching. Based on the description above, the writer in her thesis decides to make an action research to improve the vocabulary mastery of the fifth grade students of Sekolah Dasar Negeri Kentingan No. 79 Surakarta by using one of the techniques in teaching vocabulary. In this case, the writer tries to use graphic organizer. The research is entitled “Improving Students’ Vocabulary Mastery through commit to user 5 Graphic Organizers An Action Research at Fifth Grade of SD Negeri Kentingan No.79 Surakarta in Academic Year 20102011.”

B. Problem Limitation