30 break the unknown word into its prefix, root, and suffix, if possible, to see if the
meanings of the prefix, root, and suffix correspond to the guessed word. If the result signals no relationship, the students may recheck the guessed word, but the
students do not need to make any changes if it still seems to be the correct choice.
d. Factors Affecting Contextual Guessing
Mondria Wit-de Boer 1991 in Na 2009 clarified that whether or not a word can be guessed is determined by three factors. First, contextual factors deal
with “the redundancy of the context, the occurrence of synonyms and antonyms or words that are typically associated with the word concerned.” In other words, it
can be summarized that the more contextual clues or information are available in a context, the unknown words will be much easier to guess.
Second, learner factors are explained as individual knowledge and skills in guessing. A person’s knowledge is related to knowledge of words in his mother
tongue as well as in other foreign languages. To support Na’s statement, Drum Kanopak 1987 cited in Nation 1990 stated “…knowledge that learners already
have about particular words through having met them before, knowledge of the subject that they are reading about this may be knowledge gained through the
learner’s first language, and knowledge of the conceptual structure of the topic.” Third, Na 2009 elaborated that words factors concern with part of
speech, the related meaning of the foreign word and that in the first language, and the equivalent word in the learner’s mother tongue. Yang Na also stated that the
words like verb, noun, and adjective are much easier to be recognized because those are major word classes in English. Moreover, some high-frequency words
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31 are noticeable to guess because they frequently appear in some texts, so that the
students have been familiar with them.
B. Theoretical Framework
Vocabulary is a set of words which are studied when students want to learn a new language. Vocabulary becomes the most important aspect to support
students’ ability in understanding the language. Consequently, mastering vocabulary is very crucial for students. The lack of vocabulary mastery sometimes
becomes the barrier in learning and mastering English. In this research, the lack of vocabulary mastery among students of XII IPS
1 of SMA Stella Duce II Yogyakarta is resulted from their strategy in learning vocabulary. The students are accustomed to memorizing many isolated word lists
which have no context in which the word occurs. The researcher observes that this strategy does not bring good result for the students. The students will not be able
to recall all the words that they have learnt because naturally every person has a limited capacity in memorizing words. Furthermore, the students fail to perform
good results when they are asked to use the words in different context in both spoken and written forms. The students just recognize the single meaning of
words because they just memorize the meaning of isolated words. Knowing the vocabulary learning situation in this class, the researcher
conducted classroom action research CAR in order to improve the students’ vocabulary mastery by applying a strategy in learning vocabulary. In this CAR,
there were four stages conducted, which are called as planning, acting, observing,
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