Vocabulary Learning Theoretical Description

15 information to form a cohesive, plausible whole; and to relate new information to previous knowledge. Thus, both the specific contexts of words and individual abilities are thought to contribute to the incidental learning of new words. In order to help language teachers easily transfer this vocabulary learning technique to the students, some experts have formulated their own steps of how one can guess a word‟s meaning from the context in which the word is embedded. The guessing meaning from context procedure comprises only five steps. In guessing meaning from context procedure occurs at a later stage after students have gained sufficient information needed to guess the meaning of an unknown word. Table 2.1 displays the steps of guessing from context procedure. Table 2.1. Guessing Meaning from Context Procedure Step 1 Determine the part of speech of the unknown word. Step 2 Pay attention to the sentence in which the unknown word is embedded and see if there are other words modifying the word or going with it. Step 3 Observe the relationship of the sentence with other sentences or paragraphs as it can help determine the meaning of the unknown. Punctuations and conjunctions may also serve as a clue. Step 4 Guess the meaning of the unknown word using the information gained from steps 1-3. Step 5 Check whether the guessing is correct by: a. Seeing the parts of speech that is guess and the unknown word. If they are of the same part of speech, the meaning is probably correct. b. Substituting the unknown word with your guess. The guessing is probably correct if the sentence makes sense c. Breaking the unknown word into its prefix, root, and suffix. Although one might conclude that guessing meaning from context is a vocabulary learning technique that does not require the use of dictionary, it 16 actually does. By using this technique, one‟s dependence on the use of dictionary may be reduced. Nation 1990 argues that “unless the learners already have a reasonable idea of what a word means, they will be unable to choose the most suitable meaning from those given in the dictionary” p. 165. The learners may use a dictionary as another means of checking whether or not their guessing is correct p. 165. Another noteworthy part that teacher should bear in mind when teaching this technique of vocabulary learning to the students, despite which procedure being employed, is that they must not tell the students the meaning of the unknown words. The main idea of teaching this technique is that the students may someday become independent learners or users of the technique who know how to deal with unknown words. McGregor 1970 strongly argues that every time a teacher tells their student what a word means they take away the opportunity to practice the skill from the student as cited in Nation, 1990, p. 164. Before having this research, the researcher gathered the information related with this research. There is one research from Laurensius Bretya Anindito, 2014 who had same research but in different subject in university level. The result of the research was the procedure can be taught to the first semester students of university level. Even though, there were difficulties during the process of implementation. From this information then the researcher conducted the research in different subject level.