English Productive Skills: Speaking and Writing

In learning vocabulary, the learners’ mastery of vocabulary need to be assessed in order to know the students’ mastery of vocabulary in which the vocabulary can support the students’ ability in communication Dale and O’Rourke, 1971. Mastery in this research means knowing the word meanings, i.e. the Indonesian equivalences. The aim of the assessment is to find out whether the learners can do the test and answer the questions correctly or not. In measuring vocabulary mastery of the students in senior high school level, the teachers can apply two types of test. They are multiple choice and matching. The tests can measure the learners’ mastery through the score given after the tests are done. Multiple choice and matching are the easy types to be scored. The students will be tested by using matching test to assess the students’ mastery of academic words in this research. The score is found through the correct answers and those are the vocabulary that the learners master. In teaching vocabulary, the teachers need many strategies and facilities to make the teaching learning process work well. The teachers can use context-based approach to teach vocabulary using dictionary as the escort of the learning process. In learning vocabulary, the teachers can provide the kinds of dictionary, like book dictionary and E-dictioanary. Those two kinds of dictionary can help the learners become easier in learning vocabulary. The teachers can also combine those two strategies to achieve the goals of vocabulary learning. Context-based approach helped by the exsistance of dictionary will produce better result of vocabulary mastery. The teacher can apply one of the principles in teaching vocabulary that is focus on the most vocabulary first. Therefore, the teachers PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI should teach the most frequent words occurred in academic study, for example Academic Word List from Coxhead 2000. If this principle is applied in teaching learning process, it can help the learners understand the words and word meanings in mastering academic vocabulary and it is included in explicit learning of vocabulary. Vocabulary mastery of senior high school students is one of the supporting factors in learning English as a foreign language. By having substantial vocabulary mastery, the learners will easily follow the lesson, even communicate by using English well. The learners will be easier in improving their skills in English, such as: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Vocabulary mastery of the learners will be obviously seen in those four skills, especially in listening and reading. Nation 1990 says that there is close connection between vocabulary mastery, coverage of the vocabulary in a text, and the ease a learner will have in coping with the language of the text. The theories about vocabulary assessment by Read 2000 and Palmer 1925 can support the research about the vocabulary mastery of the students in senior high school. The theories talk about the definition of vocabulary and how to assess vocabulary to the learners. The theories of assessing vocabulary also give explanation about the appropriate strategies of assessing vocabulary. There are two types of test that are usually implemented in senior high school level. They are multiple choice type and matching type. Those are included in the easiest test to assess vocabulary since they are easy to be scored by the scorer.