The Importance of Regular and Irregular Verbs in Language Teaching

2.4 The Importance of Regular and Irregular Verbs in Language Teaching

The responsibility of English teacher is to develop the students’ skills in communication using English. As a consequent the teacher has responsibility to develop the students’ knowledge about vocabulary as well, because vocabulary can support a great deal to the language skills. As stated by Sukarno 1997:1, vocabulary is the basic need which is very dominant in supporting language skills. Moreover, He states that without a good mastery of vocabulary, it is impossible for someone to be able to listen, speak, read or write well. In expressing an idea or feeling, someone needs to set some words to be sentences. He may find difficulties to express his thought or feeling if he does not know what proper words that can represent his mean so what he speaks or writes about can be unclear. Unclear idea or feeling expressed by someone, may give burden to the others to understand the meaning. Therefore, it can cause a gap in the communication. Wilkins in Thornburry 2007:13 supports that without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed. If the students do not have enough vocabulary, they can not tell other people what their idea is. Thus, the more the students master vocabulary, the easier the students make communication to others, and vice versa. Hence, to enable the students improve their skills in language learning, it is important for the English teacher to teach vocabulary in effective way. As stated in 2006 Instutional Level Curriculum, recount text is taught to the eighth grade of Junior High school Depdiknas, 2006:9. Tense used in recount text is simple past tense because it tells events happened in the past. To support the students ’ understanding on recount text, the teacher should teach vocabulary in particular about regular and irregular verbs. As has been known that the form of bare infinitive is different from the past form. When the students find unfamiliar word for them in the text, they cannot understand the content of the text automatically. Moreover, it is difficult for them to express their opinion about the text. According to Allen 2006:1, the teachers should not focus on teaching the use of language only, we also feel compelled to focus on vocabulary study so that our students are able to produce language expression and understand the expression of others . Teaching vocabulary especially regular and irregular verbs in past form is as important as teaching recount text to eighth grade students of Junior High School. The students should know the different form between infinitive and past form moreover whether the verbs regular or irregular. By mastering regular and irregular verbs the students will be able to comprehend the recount text if they are familiar with the meaning of the words in the text. Moreover, the students can put forward events in the past using appropriate past verbs correctly. Accordingly, this research done to improve the eighth C students’ achievement on regular and irregular verbs. Based on the data of preliminary study done in the grade of MTs N 1 Jember , the students’ scores in diagnostic test did not reached the requirement of minimum score in that school. Moreover, most of their mistakes were in the regular and irregular verbs items. Therefore teaching regular and irregular verbs was important for them.

2.5 Regular and Irregular Verbs Achievement