Identification of the Problem

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B. Identification of the Problem

Based on the preliminary observation and interview done on August 5 th 2016, there were some problems found in the grade eight students’ vocabulary mastery. The problems were as follows. The first problem was the students already had the stereotype that learning English was difficult because they did not know the vocabulary. Since they already had the mindset that English was a difficult subject due to their lack of words knowledge, it made them unresponsive or passive everytime the teacher asked them questions. They were too afraid to make mistakes. They reasoned that they did not respond to the teacher’s questions because they did not know how to deliver their ideas in English, eventhough sometimes they knew the answer for the questions. Furthermore, the students prefer to use Bahasa Indonesia or Javanese to communicate in English class. Moreover, when they learnt new texts or materials, the students often did not understand the meaning of most words in it because they were not common for them. They relied on their teacher to translate the unknown words for them without any effort to know it autonomously. Moreover, the teacher did not really give the students vocabulary buiding during the lesson. Often, the teacher repeated over and over of his explanation or told the students the mearning of the words that they did not know everytime the students asked him. Furthermore, although having dictionary could help the students to learn the vocabulary independently, they rarely brought dictionary into the English class. It made them rely on the English teacher all the time when they encountered the 4 words that they did not know. When the researcher asked the students why they did not bring dictionary to the English class, they said they were too lazy because it is heavy. Then, the researcher asked them why they did not borrow it from the school library. They said that if they went to the library it would cost a lot of time because the school library is located in the different building from the school main building. The next probem was the lack of media use in the classroom activity. Since the school already provided the LCDs in every class, the teacher often used Power Point as the media in the teaching and learning process. However, the teacher still needed to take the remote also the HDMI cable at the administration office which took a lot of time to set it up. It took some time to get the Power Point ready. Aside from Power Point, there were rarely other supporting media used in the classroom to help the students understand the lesson better.

C. Delimitation of the Problem