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courses such as prose, extensive reading, drama, and play performance, so that they have more opportunity to learn English from context and reach fuller
development stage of L2 lexical development.
2. Cases of Wrong Meaning Mapping
Swan 1997 cited in Mukarto, 1999: 34 holds the view that mapping L2 words onto L1 is a basic and indispensable strategy, but also inevitably leads to
errors. The errors come from the learners’ inability to define the semantics boundaries of L2 words that results in the mismatch of meaning features
contained within L1 and L2 words. The error on the meaning mapping of L2 words seemed to be a general phenomenon in the L2 learning context. Ijaz 1986
holds a similar view that second language learners tend to transfer concepts in the L1 to the L2 and mapped onto new linguistics labels regardless of differences in
the semantics boundaries of corresponding words. However, very rarely do L2 words have one to one correspondence with L1 words so that the mapping L2
onto L1 words would be prone to error Mukarto, 1998: 28. One case showed that there was one respondent who wrongly associate the
verb SEE with the verb synthesize. This is the case of wrong L2L2 words association or L2L2 mapping. In this case the verb see is mapped to meaning of
the word synthesize whereas the meaning synthesize share very few meaning features of the verb SEE. According to CCED, the word synthesize means: 1 to
produce a substance by means of chemical or biological reactors and 2 to combine different ideas, facts, experiences to form a single idea or impression.
Those meaning are outside the meaning boundary of the verb see see appendix,
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dictionary entry for the verb SEE. It is obvious that mapping the meaning of the
verb see to the meaning of the word synthesize is inaccurate.
Inaccurate L2L2 meaning mapping may be caused by a lack of exposure as well as opportunity to use English vocabularies. In this case, it is possible that
the student does not have enough knowledge on one of the words either see or synthesize or maybe the students’ knowledge on the meaning of both words is
partial in nature, or some of the semantic features of the words are known while the others are not. This results in the failure of the students to identify the
semantic boundary of both words which may lead to the inaccurate meaning mapping.
The second case is the inaccurate meaning mapping of L2 to L1. In this
case, the verb make is mapped or associated with the Indonesian translation berlari and meminta. The meaning of Indonesian verbs berlari and meminta
share very few meaning features of the verb make. In other words, the meaning of Indonesian verb berlari and meminta are mostly outside the meaning boundary of
the verb make.
Those inaccurate words meaning mapping may cause lexical choice error
as well as fossilization. The student possibly will misuse the word synthesize in place of the word see in L2 production, or, perhaps, use the verb SEE but with
intended meaning synthesize in the L2 production because he or she thinks that
both words are overlapping in their meaning. However, they are not. It may also
happen to the inaccurate meaning mapping of the Indonesian translation berlari and meminta for the meaning of the verb make. The inaccurate words meaning
mapping might be fossilized in the advanced stage of L2 learning. It is possible to
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happen because of lack of negative feedback signaling that they are inaccurate in the mapping process or because the students have only little opportunity to use
English that makes them unable to know whether they are right or wrong in using the words in the L2 production. Jiang 2000 suggests that continuous transfer of
L1 concept to L2 is the major cause of fossilization. Teacher should be aware in this kind of error because as Jiang 2000 explains once L1 semantic information
has entered L2 lexical entries it will continuously stay and mediate L2 word use even with continued exposure to the L2. If such error does not get appropriate
treatment such as negative feedback, it would not be surprising that we can still find some advanced students misuse L2 words in the L2 production and even
highly proficient L2 users produce errors in L2 words use because they still use L2
on the
basis of
their L1
semantic specification.
48 CHAPTER V
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
This chapter presents the conclusions and the recommendations related to the study. The conclusions are drawn from the discussion on the result of the
study presented in the chapter IV. The recommendations are intended for the
lectures, the learners and the following researchers conducting similar study.
A. Conclusions
