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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
This chapter consists of background of the study, reasons for choosing the topic, research problem, purposes of the study, significance of the study, limitation of
the study, hypotheses and outline of the study.
1.1 Background of the Study
The concern and interest in learning vocabulary have increased since learning vocabulary is important in language learning. The importance of learning
vocabulary is related to the development of students‟ language skills. The languageskills of the students who have greater vocabulary knowledge are better
than those who lack of vocabulary knowledge. It is necessary for the students to keep improving their vocabulary mastery. Whenthey get higher level of education,
they should have better improvement in their vocabulary mastery. For example, the vocabulary knowledge of Senior High School students should be better than
Junior High Sch ool students‟ vocabulary knowledge.
Students in each level of school are expected to achieve a particular level of literacy. Students of Senior High School should achieve informational level on
their language acquisition. In this level, students are expected to be able to use their language acquisition to access the knowledge by reading academic texts or
other references from the internet. In these sources of learning, the words, phrases, or technical terms related to the content of the particular subject which
belong to tier 2 and 3 of vocabulary are frequently found and used. Because of that necessity, it is important for the students to learn academic vocabulary. It is
also importantneed especially for the students of Senior High School grade eleventh because they learn about report text and its linguistic features in the first
semester. One of the linguistic features in report text is the use of technical terms or technical language. Therefore, in order to access the academic texts or other
references and achieve one of the learning objectives in basic competence of factual report, the eleventh grade of Senior High School students need greater
vocabulary knowledge and they have to develop their academic vocabulary knowledge.
Learning and teaching academic vocabulary is important and challenging for both the students and the teachers, but it can not be conducted specifically and
intensively because of some problems. Thecommon problemsin learning and teaching academic vocabulary
are such as the time allocation, the teachers‟ competence, and the supported learning media which are neeeded. The learning
and teaching academic vocabulary is integrated into reading activities by the teachers. They oftenapply conventional method such as memorizing and
translating, butthe students only memorize those words for a moment and can not recall those words in other times.
In order to minimize these students‟ problems, the writer intends to apply
other strategies which can be integrated into reading activities in learning academic vocabulary. The strategy is List-Group-Label LGL strategy with its
three part steps. The three steps in List-Group-Label LGL are listing, grouping,
and follow-up.This strategy leads the students to brainstorm words which are related to the topic, classify the words into appropriate labels, and justify the
labels for group of words. This strategy is designed to improve students‟
vocabulary by brainstorming all possible words that are related to the topic, so the students can activate their prior knowledge. In addition, List-Group-Label LGL
strategy also allows the students to work in groups and actively engage with vocabulary instruction in the classroom which can enhance vocabulary learning.
In the previous study, it is presented that this strategy also can be used in developing the tier 1 of vocabulary.
Based on the phenomena and reasons above, the writer is challenged to conduct a quasi-experimental research focusing on to what extent List-Group-
Label LGL strategy contributesto the development of students‟ academic
vocabulary mastery.
1.2 Reasons for Choosing the Topic
