2. Making Learning Easier
Sometimes in learning process, the students try to learn too much material at the same time. It can make the learning process ineffective. By using this media, it
can help the students to be more focused on the most important element of what they learn.
2.5.2 The Disadvantages of Using Flashcards
Besides some advantages of teaching vocabulary by using flashcards, there are also some disadvantages in teaching vocabulary by using flashcards. According to
Leny 2006:26 there are some disadvantages of using flashcards in teaching and learning process as follows.
1. Students can pay attention on the flashcards more than on material learned.
2. Small and unclear flashcards may arouse problems in the teaching learning
process since the students may misunderstand about pictures. However, there are some possible ways that can be used to overcome the
problems as follows Leny, 2006:26. 1.
The teacher should control the students’ activities including their attention during the teaching learning process.
2. The teacher should make or choose big and clear enough pictures in order to
avoid misunderstanding about the pictures.
2.6 The Use of Flashcards to Improve the Students’ Vocabulary Achievement
People can master English if they have sufficient vocabulary because vocabulary is one of the language components that play a key role in four language
skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing Fardhani, 2005:30. Therefore, without vocabulary, we cannot master English.
Nowadays, the 2013 curriculum and the 2006 curriculum KTSP 2006 have been implemented by some schools in Indonesia. In Jember, SMPN 9 Jember does
not choose to apply curriculum 2013, instead, it applies the 2006 curriculum KTSP
2006 in 20152016 academic year. According to the 2006 curriculum in English for junior high school, there are four language skills that should be taught to the students
namely listening, speaking, reading, and writing and three language components such as grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary. Then, vocabulary is taught integratedly
with the four language skills. Therefore, an English teacher should be creative to teach English to students and use the appropriate and interesting media in order to
make students easy to master the vocabulary. One of media that can be used is flashcards.
Flashcards are very beneficial to be used for teaching vocabulary. As explained in the previous section flashcards can help students improve their
vocabulary. This supports the previous researches Wang, 2010 that flashcards can stimulate visual memory that means that the students will remember what they see
while studying this way. According to Schmitt Schmitt, in Komachali 2012:2, flashcards can help learners in acquiring vocabulary more effectively than word lists.
In this case, Nugroho 2013:6 states that flashcards which consists of some pictures attract the students to know and learn vocabulary so that their vocabulary mastery
develop and improve. This supports the previous research Ervin, in Komachali, 2012:2 that showed the use of flashcards was effective in learning English as a
foreign language.
2.7 The Research Hypothesis
