Description of the Empirical Meaning of Vocabulary Learning Using

computer screen which I have never known yet. The IPALL helped me focus on that vocabulary.” Re37.G1_Pr.E.T_MF3. She found doing exercises in IPALL useful in helping her making a sentence. It is shown in Re6.G2_Pr.E.T_Bet_Voc4 in which she states, “It helps me combine words into sentences.” She mentioned that her written English got better while her spoken English was not quite developed yet. Meanwhile Rani stated about much vocabulary that she had to learn from the curriculum 2013 compulsory textbook. She mentioned, “At that time curriculum 2013 was still applied. Learning using the IPALL, alhamdulilah, made me able to improve my score.” Ra15.G1_Pr.E.T_MF1 Further, she mentioned that “It helped me a lot referring to the application. The compulsory textbook of curriculum 2013 was not distributed on time and once I got it, it turned out that the book was difficult to understand without teachers’ help.” GRa15.G1_Pr.E.T_MF1. The teachers themselves could not assist optimally because there were too many materials to be taught within limited time. They had tendency to try to finish everything. Both participants liked how each question was presented. There was one word in each slide that they had to select which was the most appropriate for the context. It helped them to be more focused and learn to find the most appropriate word. She also mentioned further that, I’m not good at memorizing, so what I have learnt from the interactive PowerPoint was sufficient for me. However, if there is more vocabulary added, it will also be fine so that I can learn more vocabulary...my knowledge about this referring to vocabulary meaning that she has learnt is getting much, so it is easier to do exercises in English. Ra20.G1_Pr.E.T_MF2-3 The more she knew the word meaning, the easier doing English exercises would be. She was just happy and she even wanted more vocabulary added in the IPALL Matching and Multiple Choice. 2 Composite Depiction Based on the Shared Emergent Empirical Themes a Better Learning Atmosphere Both students have neither used the IPALL before nor the other similar software. Using IPALL for vocabulary learning really made them feel at ease. Revalda states, “I have never used such kind of software. It was not practical to bring a laptop to school, but the use of the software itself did not make me feel nervous.” Re5.G1_Em.E.T_Bet.Lea1. Then, she further stated, “There were pictures and animation so it made the learning more enjoyable. It was like doing small quizzes.” Re7.G1_Em.E.T_Bet.Lea2. She did not feel like she was learning English in the usual classroom atmosphere. It was more like she was doing small exercises and she did not feel burdened. Learning which felt more like playing had given more fun atmosphere than the usual learning process. What usually happening in the English class was lecturing that students including the participants got bored. Rani also had the same thoughts. The vocabulary learning process also became more enjoyable to her especially because of some features in IPALL. She stated, It was in a form of PowerPoint software so some animation was able to be inserted. I did not feel bored. Usually, in English learning process, the textbook was used all the time. It was not colourful and I had to look at the printed black words. Using the interactive PowerPoint was more fun and enjoyable because of the pictures. Ra1.G1_Em.E.T_Bet.Lea1 She found the IPALL more attractive. As it attracted her, she did not feel lazy during the English learning process. It was unlike her previous experience. “She stated, “...using textbooks made me feel sleepy and lazy. My biggest fear in the learning process was laziness.” Ra1.H2_Em.E.T_Bet.Lea4 Laziness was the biggest obstacle in learning and she tried to avoid it. Laziness was a factor that came from within, so she tried to fight it. She knew the risks of being lazy. It could make her forget her responsibility as a student. It could also lead her to not care about the results that she was going to obtain at the end of the semester. She felt she could fight it with the help of the IPALL because it was more fun. It was like the software awakened her of her responsibility to learn and reminded her that she should try her best not to be lazy. b Chances to Repeat The use of IPALL and the fact that the exercises were uploaded to a website allowed students to repeat doing the exercises anytime and anywhere. Revalda told me that, “When I chose wrong answers, I still had chances to repeat it with the consequence that I lost the first score of the first trial. If I kept trying, I was then able to remember the previous wrong answer. That helped me.” Re14.G1_Em.E.T_Cha1. By repeating doing the exercises she was able to know which answers were wrong and which one was the right answer. Meanwhile, when I listened to Rani’s story, she told me that she was happy of having chances to repeat. She said, “Because it was in a form of PowerPoint, there was animation which did not make me bored...moreover, I could repeat doing the exercises again if there were wrong answers that I chose previously.” Ra2.G1_Em.E.T_Cha1. She also mentioned that she wanted to learn from her mistakes. “I did the exercise again when I still chose wrong answers. I knew where my mistakes were. I was just happy.” GRa7.G1_Em.E.T_Cha2. Chances to repeat was things which she could rarely have. In the second interview, this theme still appeared as it was mentioned by the participants. Revalda said, “Repeating doing the exercises could be...the results could be more satisfying.” Rani also mentioned that chances to repeat were the things she rarely obtained. “When I obtained a bad score in mid-term test, I actually had the second chance by taking the remedial test. However, whatever score I obtained, the result in learning report was not the score I obtained in the remedial test. Even when I got one hundred, the teacher wrote the minimum standard score in my learning report.” Ra36.H2_Em.E.T_Cha3 Using IPALL gave her more chances to learn. 3 Description of Other Empirical Theme Unshared Theme a Focus and Concentration This theme was what Revalda found in the process of meaning construction in vocabulary learning using IPALL. Unlike Rani whose laptop was incompatible with the IPALL file, she could use it both at home and at school. She mentioned that she felt the difference between vocabulary learning using the IPALL at home and at school. She told me, Time was limited when I learned at school. I felt in a hurry. It made me feel that I had to do my best in doing the exercises. When I learnt vocabulary using the software at home, I had plenty of time. I was able to do the exercises while I was drinking, eating, or even chatting. Thus, even if I only did less number of exercises than that at school, I was able to memorize and understand the vocabulary better. It lingered more. Re32.G1_Em.E.T_FocCo1 She also mentioned that at school, there was some distraction. She said, “My friends were talking and asking this and that. I was not able to concentrate on the exercises because it disturbed me.” Re33.G1_ Em.E.T_FocCo2. She disliked it because she was not able to fully concentrate on the exercises due to the noise. It distracted her that it was difficult to stay focus on what she was doing while she really wanted to fully concentrate. She felt that learning in a hurry due to time limitation forced her to give her best. She tried working not only as fast as possible, but also as careful as possible. She did not want to obtain unsatisfactory results. It was tenser compared to that at home as she had to do the exercises quickly according to the time allocation, but she had to still be careful. Even though she was still able to finally obtained good scores, she did not think that it was effective. She was able to concentrate more when she did the exercises at home. She was free to drink and to eat if she felt hungry and thirsty. She also had plenty of time to continue doing the exercises later on as there was not a strict time limitation at home.

b. Interpretation of the Empirical Meaning of Vocabulary Learning

Using IPALL to Students In this part, the texts were interpreted in order to obtain insights of the empirical meaning. The theme better knowledge of word meaning and forms was discussed in relation with the theoretical review especially vocabulary learning and its nature and types. It showed what kind of knowledge of words the participants had obtained during the process of vocabulary learning using IPALL. 1 Interpretation of the Pre-figured Empirical Theme Better Knowledge of Word Meaning and Forms Even if the teachers never stated explicitly that students had to master vocabulary, Rani and Revalda knew that vocabulary was really important. They were aware how vocabulary enabled them to understand texts in English. They knew that vocabulary was always there, as the parts of texts. Vocabulary was every word that they read, wrote, listened to, and spoke. Reading, writing, listening, and speaking without knowing much vocabulary was like they had already failed before they even did the given tasks. Richards Renandya 2002: p.255 stated, Vocabulary is a core component of language proficiency and provides much of the basis for how well learners speak, listen, read, and write. Without an extensive vocabulary and strategies for acquiring new vocabulary, learners often achieve less than their potential. They told me that knowing a great amount of vocabulary made them able to save time because they did not have to always consult the dictionary. They could do written tasks more quickly. This awareness was a thing which made them struggle hard in order to achieve the best results. The IPALL helped them to obtain more vocabulary, an aspect which was often missing in English teaching. The teachers did not use the first 1,000 or 2,000 words because the vocabulary which students had to know had been listed in the vocabulary builder parts in their textbooks. Therefore, the teachers used those words in creating IPALL exercises for the students. From the students’ score, it could be seen that students know word meaning and forms better than they did. Yet, the students’ scores were not attached in this research because there was another research conducted by Hanardi 2015 which showed the score improvement before and after the use of IPALL. It was a quasi experimental research. Thus, this research focused on interpreting the texts obtained from the interviews. Knowing a word involved knowing some aspects. The definition of what knowing a word meant according to Carter Nunan 2001: p.43 was, There is now a general measure of agreement that ‘knowing’ a word involves knowing: its spoken and written context of use; its patterns with word of related meaning as well as with its collocational partners; its syntactic, pragmatic and discoursal patterns. Carter Nunan, 2001: p.43. Another definition about knowing a word was proposed by Nation 1990. It included “the meanings of the word, the written form of the word, the spoken form of the word, the grammatical behaviour of the word, and the collocations of the word.” Nation, 1990: p.31 as quoted in Schmitt, 2000 The participants stated several times that vocabulary learning using IPALL had enriched their vocabulary. They mentioned that now, they knew vocabulary that they did not know before. This referred to the meaning of the new words that they learnt. Revalda mentioned that knowing more vocabulary helped her to do any exercises in English. It was because she knew more words which helped her understand what was being asked in the questions that she was able to answer those questions correctly. She also mentioned that she felt that she got better in writing a text in English. For example she knew the comparative and superlative form of the word ‘happy’. She knew how to write it in the correct structure because she had learnt from the examples of sentences given in IPALL. Meanwhile, Rani mentioned that she was not good at memorizing. What she meant was memorizing the meaning of the word. The IPALL helped her to memorize it well because she could focus on the vocabulary presented in each slide. She also mentioned that the IPALL mainly helped her to notice and learn the written form of the word in a certain structure. Both participants admitted that they were not good enough at speaking because the IPALL itself was not specifically develop to facilitate speaking. Based on the participants’ lived experience and based on the aspects that a person needs to know according to Nation 1990 and Carter Nunan 2001, there was one type of knowledge that the participants had mastered. It was knowing the meaning of the words. It was facilitated by IPALL matching in which they were asked to match the words with their meaning. Meanwhile, the IPALL Multiple Choice put the words into sentences which used certain structure, so they knew how to put the vocabulary which they have learnt in sentences using certain structures. Meanwhile, other types of word knowledge such as collocations and lexical patterns were not facilitated. It was because the participants were still at high school level whose Standard and Basic Competence did not focus on these types of knowledge. To reach those types of knowledge it was still a long way to go. Harmer 2007 proposed that a person should know what choice of language they had to make in communication whether they were speaking directly to someone or they communicated through E-mail or a formal letter. However, the participants did not learn this much. Other than the fact that IPALL was not develop to facilitate speaking, the participants also mentioned that the teachers sometimes used Bahasa Indonesia in the classroom that they did not give students many chances to practice speaking in English. Both IPALL Matching and Multiple Choice constituted a type of vocabulary learning known as intentional vocabulary learning. Even though Ahmad 2012 argued that “… intentional vocabulary learning based on synonyms, antonyms, word substitution, multiple choice, scrambled words and crossword puzzles, regardless of context, is not so effective, because learners are more prone to rote learning,” it was fine to do intentional vocabulary learning like what IPALL facilitated. It was because it was in line with what Cahyono Widiati 2008 that it was “...essential for beginning students whose lack vocabulary limit their reading ability.” Lacking vocabulary was what the participants claimed. They mentioned that there were many words that they did not know. This made any exercises difficult and it would disable them to develop their skills. 2 Interpretation of the Emergent Empirical Themes a Better Learning Atmosphere Both participants had never had the experience of vocabulary learning using the IPALL or other similar software. Textbooks were frequently used in their previous English class in their previous schools. Lecturing was a common practice of English teaching. Getting bored and sleepy were always the things they felt during English lesson. As the new users of the IPALL, they did not feel