The Student The Results of the Implementation of Clarke and Nation’s Guessing

Looking at Table 4.5, it is obvious that the second step of Clarke and Nation’s procedure for guessing from context proved the most difficult stage for the research subjects for as many as 91 mistakes were found in this step. This number represents 46.43 of all the mistakes found in the research subjects’ posttest results. At this step, the participants were expected to restructure the sentences in order for them to easily understand the sentences if the sentences were either too long or complicated to understand. In Teaching and Learning Vocabulary, Nation 1990 gives an example of how the second step of the procedure should be done. The following is the context in which the word “bestowed” is found. [Chinese spectacles] were regarded as objects of reverence because the rims of tortoise-shell cane from a sacred and symbolic animal, and the lenses were made from sacred stones. People wore them at first not so much to aid eyesight, or for curing eye-ailments, as for good luck, or for the dignity which they bestowed on the wearer. Sometimes even empty frames were worn as a mark of distinction p. 163. In the next page, Nation sets an example of how learners can guess the meaning of the word step by step and at the second step he restructures the sentence in which the word “bestowed” is found into “Spectacles bestow dignity on the wearer” p. 164. The posttest items, as well as the practice items, were taken from the official websites of a number of newspapers, such as The Jakarta Post and BBC. In order to make it easier for the research subjects to understand the contexts, the researcher only included a maximum of two sentences for each practice and posttest item. The researcher also gave them a copy of the page in Nation’s book on which the example of how step two of the procedure should be done is found. However, instead of restructuring the sentences, the majority of the research subjects only copied parts of the sentences and wrote it down without making them any more understandable or giving themselves some useful clues by doing so to be able to make well-informed guesses. An example of this is the mistake committed by research subject number one who merely wrote down a part of posttest item number two without any changes. The posttest item reads “The UK Government can decide to suspend an overseas student who does not have a visa and refuse permissio n for the student to return.” The student’s answer reads “refuse permission for the student to return”, which apparently does not seem any different from the posttest item. In this instance, the student could have, if the posttest item was too complicated for her to understand, restructured the sentence into “An overseas student cannot return if the UK Government suspends him.” Another possibility would be “If someone is suspended, he cannot return.” Another example of these mistakes was found in research subject number 10’s answer to posttest item number six, which reads “”A battery consumes the energy stored in it, and when it’s finished, it’s finished. A biofuel cell in theory can work without limits because it consumes substances that come from physiological fluids, and are constantly being replenished ,” said Dr Cosnier.” The participant did exactly what research subject number one did in the previous example by copying and writing down a part of the posttest item, which reads “work without limit and constantly being replenished”. In addition to this type of error, the students also committed mistakes in which they restructured the sentences without actually making the restructured sentences any more helpful than the original sentences. In her answer to posttest item number 9, participant number 8 wrote “Jack carries the wine glasses gingerly.” Although this is completely different from the original context, which was “Contrary to his usual careless behavior, Jack carries the expensive wine glasses gingerly from the kitchen.”, it did not seem to give her a clue. The clue in the context was supposed to be the word “contrary”, which indicates opposition. Instead of restructuring the sentence into the one she wrote, she could have written “Jack carries the glasses gingerly, not carelessly.” The word “not” could have been added to indicate that the word “gingerly” has the opposite meaning of the word “carelessly”. 53

CHAPTER V CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

The last chapter of the thesis reveals the conclusions and suggestions. The conclusions are gained through the analyses of both the pre-test and posttest results and the questionnaire completed by research subjects. Meanwhile, the suggestions include the researcher’s personal insights which may help future researchers who take interest in the field of vocabulary teaching and English teachers andor lecturers who may want to implement Clarke and Nation’s guessing from context procedure in their classrooms.

A. Conclusions

In this part of the chapter, the researcher guides the reader to take a brief, comprehensive look at the results of the study. The research aims to answer the two research questions posed in the first chapter of the thesis. The two research questions are how Clarke and Nation’s guessing from context procedure is implemented in vocabulary learning to the first semester students of the English Extension Course of Sanata Dharma University and the results of the implementation of Clarke and Nation’s guessing from context procedure. In order to answer these questions, the researcher deployed two types of data gathering techniques, which were a set of tests, consisting of a pretest and posttest, and questionnaire, which was filled out by the research subjects at the end of the semester, after they finished their Vocabulary I final test.

1. The Results of the Experiment

The result of the test suggests that Clarke and Nation’s procedure for guessing from context is not an effective technique to use for the first semester students of English Extension Course. Based on the questionnaire results and the researcher’s observation, it can be concluded that there are two major factors which can be held responsible for the failure of the experimentation. The first major factor is time-related. First of all, the research subjects did not have sufficient time to familiarize themselves with the completely new vocabulary learning technique. Most of them were students of other study programs at Sanata Dharma University. Some others were even students of other universities in Yogyakarta and had already had jobs. Additionally, they only had two classroom meetings, which approximately equaled 220 minutes, before the posttest. In orde r for the students to understand Clarke and Nation’s guessing from context procedure better, the researcher assigned homework to the research subjects. However, due to the fact that English Extension Course was not their primary focus, they had to prioritize other things which were of their main interests, such as work and college. Another reason was the insufficient time of exposure set by the researcher before the experiment took place. The researcher believed that two weeks’ time of exposure would have sufficed for the research subjects to completely understand the guessing procedure. Another thing that the researcher bore in mind when considering how many meetings it would take for the students to comprehend the procedure was the syllabus arranged by Vo cabulary I class’ lecturer. The researcher did not want to take too many meetings for the sake of the research because it would have changed the original syllabus. The last possible aspect which may have caused the research subjects to fail to make the intended leap of scores was their reluctance to ask questions. The posttest results suggest that the research subjects had not completely got a good grasp on the vocabulary learning technique. As far as the researcher was concerned, there were very few of the students who asked questions regarding which parts of the procedure they thought were difficult to execute.

2. The Questionnaire Results

There are several points worth noting from the questionnaire filled out by the research subjects after the completion of their Vocabulary I final test, particularly from the open-ended part of the questionnaire. These talking points are addressed over the next few paragraphs. a. The students’ results of the posttest and their responses to questionnaire item number two seem to be contradicting. It reads “I am now able to use the guessing from context technique after learning it for two weeks. ” As many as 60 of the total research subjects agreed with the statement. However, the t-test result indicates that the mean of the posttest scores is not significantly higher than that of the pretest scores. This means that the students did not perform significantly better on the posttest while they claimed they had been able to use Clarke and Nation’s procedure for guessing from context after two weeks. b. Despite their posttest results, the students found the guessing from context procedure helpful in their attempts to figure out the meanings of the words they