The definition of vocabulary Materials

In the reading process students also learn about vocabulary words which exist in the reading passage. It helps the students to learn vocabulary words from the reading passage and below is the explanation about vocabulary learning and strategies.

B. Vocabulary

1. The definition of vocabulary

Vocabulary is the words used in a language or a text. Vocabulary plays an important role for the learners in studying English. If the learners do not know a certain vocabulary, then they will have difficulties to understand a certain sentence or word. Vocabulary is very important to communicate, especially to understand someone’s language. Biemiller 2001 states that reading comprehension and vocabulary knowledge are strongly correlated. Students have read to understand the meanings of new words like understanding words from context. Limited vocabulary prevents the students from understanding the text. Poor readers often read less, because reading is difficult and frustrating for them. This means they don’t read enough to improve their vocabulary, which could, in turn, help them comprehend more. Learners need to learn vocabulary, especially if they want to communicate or interact with other people. Beside that it is also important to understand text in English. In the process of acquiring vocabulary will include the process in learning vocabulary, below the explanation about learning vocabulary.

2. Learning vocabulary

Carter and McCarthy 1988 state that there are three kinds of words that people should learn. They are sight words, which are learnt automatically, personal words, which come from students’ experience, and basal words, which go along with the text that students read. Narrow reading, hence, fits into the intention of acquiring basal words in relation to vocabulary teaching, Baker 1989 mentions two types of vocabulary instructions. They are direct vocabulary instruction and indirect vocabulary instruction. The direct vocabulary instruction occurs when the students learn or taught both individual word and word learning strategies explicitly or directly. On the other hand, the indirect vocabulary instruction occurs when the students learn vocabulary when they hear or see the words in many different contexts. For example, they learn new vocabulary when they talk with other people, hear from the electronic media, or read an article which contains new vocabulary words It is important for the students to acquire vocabulary not only in the direct teaching which the students learn directly from the teacher’s explanation in the classroom. The students need to improve their vocabulary by learning from the context of the reading passage.

a. Definition and Context

According to Waring 2001, traditionally, vocabulary instruction has focused on having students look up word meaning and memorize them. Students who simply memorize new word meaning frequently have trouble applying the information in definitions and often make mistakes about the meaning. To know a word meaning, students need to see it in context and learn how its meaning relates to the words around it Waring, 2001. Most of the words acquired through incidental reading are learned through context. Students learn from context by making connection between the new words and the context in which they appear Nation, 1990. They also learn words through repeated exposure, gaining more comprehension of a word’s meaning and function by seeing it several times in different contexts. The researcher like Krashen also shows that teaching students how to identify and use contextual clues is an effective technique for increasing vocabulary acquisition. When students are given several sentences that use a word in different ways, they begin to see how a word’s meaning can change and shift depending on its context. For example, consider the changes in the word got, as it appears in the following sentences: John got a cold John got rich John got a note from Jenny John got into trouble Although in most of these examples got convey the idea of receiving, the meaning is slightly different for each one. Students need to see the word in different contexts in order to learn them thoroughly.

b. Multiple Exposures to a Word in Different Contexts

Students get benefits from seeing the same words for several times. Word meanings are accumulated gradually. According to Andrew 2001, a word that is encountered has about 10 percents chance of being learned from context. When students see a word repeatedly, they gather more and more information about it until they acquire an idea of what it means. Andrew 2001 has summarized the four stages of word knowledge as follows: 1. I never saw it before 2. I’ve heard about it, but I don’t know what it means 3. I recognize it in context – it has something to do with… 4. I know it The more exposure students have to a word, the more likely it is that they would be able to define, comprehend, and remember it. Good vocabulary instruction builds repetition into the learning process, so that students can learn words more quickly. Using and applying several examples of a word in different context reinforce word knowledge. Students will encounter new vocabulary words unfamiliar words multiple times in multiple and varied contexts during the reading processes. Arguably, this results resulted the ‘incidental learning’ when students learn the new vocabulary words Garder, 2008. It shows that students get helped from the multiple exposure during they read various texts with one certain topic or a certain author. Then, the theory of multiple exposures in different contexts is very suitable with the theory of narrow reading. The readers will have the same experience when they read several texts with the same topic and they will get the multiple exposures in acquiring the new vocabulary words.

C. Review of Previous Studies on Narrow Reading

Based on Krashen 2004 two things that must be considered in doing narrow reading is, first multiple exposure to structure and vocabulary from many comprehensible reading texts with the same topic or the same author. Learners should read various texts with the same topic or the same author because in the same topic will come up several words which unfamiliar for the students and the words come multiple times in the texts so, students get multiple exposure in learning vocabulary. Second, students’ background knowledge about the topic or the author whether they have heard helps them to understand the structure and the message in the texts. Krashen, Cho, and Ahn 2000 wrote their findings in learning vocabulary through narrow reading. Krashen and Cho 1994, 1995 especially had done it before and reported it that they got a significant result when learners experienced narrow reading. They took 12 weeks to do this research, they asked the students to read about the book series of ‘Clifford’. This story had been filmed in the drama television so students had known the characters in the book and they quite understand the main story. It shows that students’ background knowledge is one main role in narrow reading. Both of them also gave pre-test to students and in the end of the treatment they gave post-test to the students then, they compared the results. The results gave them satisfactory that students showed high achievement, students got good point in answering the questions that being given by Cho and Krashen. In the next chapter will explain how I collect the data to investigate the use of narrow reading in acquiring the new vocabulary words. Chapter III Methodology

A. Type of Research

This study was a pre-experimental design which used pre-test and post-test for the first and last meeting. http:allpsych.comresearchmethodspreexperimentaldesign.html Pre-experimental designs follow basic experimental steps but fail to include a control group. In other words, there was only a single group studied and there was no comparison between equivalent non-treatments. The Pre-experimental designs include: - Case study design I used case study research method in this research because I wanted to investigate whether the use of narrow reading in learning vocabulary for students in Reading Across Genre gave beneficial effect. I would choose the subject and facilitated them to read several texts how to learn vocabulary using the new method, which was using narrow reading. - One group pre-testpost-test design. This design would show the students’ score before and after taking the treatment. In this present study, there was only one group having a treatment of reading ‘narrowly’. The goal of this study was to know the effectiveness of using narrow reading in acquiring new vocabulary words in several reading texts. Therefore, the result of this study only referred to the particular participants of this study and might not be applicable to other studies. The data used in this study are directly collected from the students’ result of the pre-test and post-test.

B. Participants

The participants who participate in this research were two 2 students from the Reading Across Genres course. I took the participants from the course, because it was a required course before the students took the Academic Reading course which had more complex vocabulary. It was also chosen, because the activities in the Reading Across Genres course required the students to read the article in the newspaper so, they got used to reading newspaper articles. There were only two participants who participated on this research, because it was not possible to observe many participants considering the limit of this semester. Therefore, I decided to use a pre-experimental study in a case study design which allowed two participants in this research. It was easier for me to check the participant’s progress in learning if the participants’ were only two students. Both students were chosen from the same class and the same teacher to make sure that the students had the same level of knowledge and input in reading and vocabulary. Both participants had different genders. They were of the same age and both participants were in average students that their GPA was between 2.00-2.50.

C. Instrument

Below is some information about the instrument used in this study.

1. Materials

The materials in this study were taken from the newspaper of The Jakarta Post and the topic was the case of Antasari Azhar. Here, the reading passages which were taken from the newspaper contained a lot of law discourse. In the reading activity I gave them 12 newspaper articles. The news taken from several dates see Table 1 Table 1. The list of newspaper articles used in this study. No. Title Date 1. Death Demanded for Antasari January, 20 th 2010 2. Antasari Pleads Not Guilty, Maintains Claim of Conspiracy January, 29 th 2010 3. Antasari Behind Bars for 18 Years February, 12 th 2010 4. Editorial: Questioning Justice February, 13 th 2010 5. Text Your Say: ‘Verdict Against Antasari’ February, 16 th 2010 6. Text Your Say: ‘Verdict Against Antasari’ February, 17 th 2010 7. Text Your Say: Verdict Against Antasari February, 18 th 2010 8. KPK in Jeopardy Again as Court Rules in Favor of Anggodo April, 20 th 2010 9. KPK – New Leadership on The Way May, 3 rd 2010 10. Editorial: Wanted: KPK Chief June, 4 th 2010 11. Editorial: Legal unCertainty October, 13 th 2010 12. Antasari to be Transferred to Cipinang After Supreme Court Verdict January, 2 nd 2011 Those articles could be divided into three categories, Text your say, Headlines, and Editorial. Text your say came from the readers’ comments or readers’ forum so, the words choices were simpler than in Headlines or Editorial. Headlines discussed the recent news that happened to Antasari Azhar and Editorial discussed in greater detail Antasari Azhar’s case. Total words in those articles are 5,287 words.

2. Tests