General Concept of Vocabulary

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2.2.3 General Concept of Vocabulary

2.2.3.1 Learning Vocabulary for Older Children Language was built from the ideas, emotions, and needs to produce symbols. The symbol itself can be defined into a lot of things. It can be the things that can make communication, interaction or cooperation with others. Thornburry 2002:1 states “language emerges first as words, both historically, and in terms of the way each of us learned our first and any subsequent languages.” That is why learning words is the first step to improve our language, even it is our first language in our life. In learning English as the foreign language, learners will face the difficulties in expressing their feelings, or maybe confessing their ideas. Those difficulties are happened because they didn’t know any words to produce the structure of English language. So, it also impacts the students’ motivation. Thornburry 2002 : 13 says, “if you spend most of your life studying grammar, your English will not improve very much. You will see most improvements if you learn more words and expression.” Based on Thornburry statement, it is known that if we want to understand the target language in this case English, the learners need to enrich and enhance their vocabulary understanding. They need to enlarge their vocabulary if they want to master other skills as well, for the example: learning grammar. It is like Cameron statement 2001:72 “vocabulary learning can serve as a stepping stone to learning and using grammar.” Learning vocabulary is very important in children development. It is very useful for them to develop this thing as the central attention in their learning process. If they 16 understand the English vocabulary, their motivation is also improved. It can affect their achievement in learning English too. However, some people say that enhancing vocabulary understanding is not enough. We need to master it as well. Hiebert and Kamil 2005:2 state “vocabulary is not a developmental skill or one that can ever be seen as fully mastered. The writer thinks the same way that vocabulary is the fundamental element in learning the unknown language, but the words are very large. Everyday, the new words are appearing without any notification and mastering the whole vocabulary items are impossible. So, enhancement and enrichment are the best options in teaching vocabulary. 2.2.3.2 Teaching Vocabulary Teaching English in Indonesia is not an easy task. It is very difficult because English is not the mother language in this country, because it is not the mother language, people will lose their motivation when it comes to learn this language. English has been taught as foreign language and some people in Indonesia know nothing about this language.The curriculum itself places this English subject as one of the subjects which is listed in national examination. That is why English teachers are demanded to bear fruit in teaching English to their students. An effective and exciting teaching is the fundamental factor in achieving good improvement and motivation in teaching and learning process. To prepare the proper teaching, teachers need to understand the theories and strategies before they do the teaching process. They need to know the principle in teaching, especially teaching vocabulary. 17 Teaching vocabulary for older children can also bring its own difficulty to teacher. As we know that children especially older children are still in the stage which has great development in their lives. They are quick learners, and they can easily understand to the material which teacher gives to them. As stated by Cameron 2001:74 “we can think of words as rather like growing flower in the soil. All we can see above ground is the flower, but that flower is kept alive and growing by roots that spread underneath it.” It means that vocabulary learning is the precious thing in building the knowledge to master the foreign language. Vocabulary is the root; vocabulary is the source, and understanding vocabulary is useful in learning new foreign language. Students who know nothing about vocabulary in learning newforeign language will face the difficulty in it. This thing is the fundamental element in language. That is why students who improve their vocabulary become more understand about the target language which they want to learn. Their motivation is also improved if they can understand this fundamental element in English. It is like Rider 2003:5 states “when students improve their vocabularies, they feel smarter. They find themselves understanding more of what they read and what they hear. They find it easier to express themselves because they have a better command of their language.” It indicates that teaching vocabulary to the students is not a trivial thing and the ignorance in developing this skill is prohibited. It also indicates that by learning vocabulary, the students’ feel more confident with their way in learning English. That confidence is prove of the motivation improvement in learning this language. 18 Teaching vocabulary to children is very important. Children are fragile in learning. When teachers teach them something, they will easily think that what teachers say and do are always right. They will imitate it without any hesitation. The problem arises if the teachers do some errors and mistakes, especially in teaching vocabulary, and they teach words to their students with inaccurate explanation, wrong meaning, wrong pronunciation, or maybe wrong intonation. It can be fossilized into their mind, hardly crafted into their head, and for their entire life they will do their teacher’s errormistake repeatedly. According to Thornburry 2002:15, “knowing the meaning of a word is not just knowing its dictionary meaning. It is also knowing the word commonly associated with it its collocation as well as its connotations, including its register and its cultural accretions.” Based on that, we can conclude that if we want to teach vocabulary to our students, we need to be more careful and need more attentive with the words before we teach it to our students. Using good pronunciation, good meaning, and good intonation can help them in fossilizing the things in many positive ways.

2.2.4 General Concept of Narrative Text