14 According Scott and Ytreberg 1990: 4, young learners develop quickly in
learning a new language. Their learning comes from the five body senses. They watch, listen, and imitate their teacher. They are enthusiastic in using their imagination.
Therefore using look and say technique may be appropriate for them in learning a new language. Flash cards with pictures that are used in look and say technique will help
young learners to understand meaning much easily. This technique may cheer up the class’ situation in which it later lengthens and strengthens their attention and
concentration span. Therefore, it may help students to be successful in learning English.
2.5 The Look and Say Technique
Using look and say technique may be one of the best ways in introducing a new language to children because language learning is a hard task which can be sometimes
frustrating. Learning English is not easy for Indonesian children. Therefore, using this technique may be the right choice.
2.5.1 General Concept of Look and Say Technique
According to Scott and Ytreberg 1990: 50, this technique is based on words and phrases, and makes a lot of use of flashcards.
It is usual to start by teaching everyday words which are already familiar to the children. The teacher shows the children the word and says it while pointing to the
object. The children repeat the word. This happens several times with each word. The introduction of the words only takes a short time, and goes quite quickly, so the teacher
may spend five minutes of a thirty minute lesson on four new words. There are a lot of word recognition games which can be done at this stage – matching words and pictures,
15 pointing to the object on the card, guessing which card Teddy has picked out of the hat
– and so this technique encourages recognition of a range of words and phrases before reading a text Scott and Ytreberg, 1990
2.5.2 The Actions of Look and Say Technique
According to Scott and Ytreberg 1990: 51, with the look and say technique children learn to recognize whole words or sentences rather than individual sounds. Students
will look at a word which teacher sound, and in turn will repeat the sound the word. Flashcards with individual words written on them are used for this technique often
accompanied with a related picture. If teacher doesnt use a picture with the word the child will probably make a wild
guess as to what it says trying to remember what sound teacher made previously. This is not a good technique if teacher dont include pictures.
It is also recommended with this technique to use whole short sentences rather than individual words. Teacher writes a short sentence representing the picture
displayed. Then teacher says the sentence and ask the child to repeat it while pointing and looking at each individual word as heshe repeats what teacher said.
By making word cards teacher can create different sentences again and again. Teacher can use each word card first to learn individual words and then laying the word
cards together to form a sentence. The look and say approach was developed by modern psychologists and denies the students the tools used in the Phonics system but teaches
them to learn through rote memorization. Students could become poorer readers due to being forced to learn to read with the look-see methods, but if you have the teaching
16 skills to combine both it would benefit your students enormously Scott and Ytreberg,
1990.
2.6 Look and Say as a Technique in Teaching Reading
