Selection of Stimuli Perception and Perception Process

13 advertisement which is written with big bold letters on the board will grab someone’s interest and attention to read more than just small letters. 2 Change It is interesting to notice some changes which happened around. In many cases, changes will enable us to avoid boredom and lead us into a more comfortable situation. Therefore, change contributes to the way people select the stimuli around. 3 Repetition To build such a learning habit for the students, a teacher might need to administer weekly tests during the teaching-learning in the class. The results of weekly tests which will determine the students’ final score at the end of semester will force them to study hard in each test. This kind of repetition forces them to realize the importance of weekly tests. Furthermore, weekly tests will encourage them to have self learning habit. 4 Intensity Warga 1983: 209 acknowledged “up to a point, the louder you shout, the better you will be heard. The intensity of stimulus-your voice-makes it stand out above other stimuli, so that listeners are forced to keep their mind on you.” This statement wishes to utter that the voice people produce when speaking determines whether the listener will pay attention or not. As stated by Warga 1983, the louder voice people generate, the better the listeners take notice on them. Nevertheless, too loud voice will make the listeners ignore since they feel it is PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 14 annoying. Therefore, “it is expected that people speak not too loud but with tolerable volume, rhythm, articulation and intonation” Purnomo, et al., 2005: 19. 5 Movement It is more attractive to see moving things rather than unmoving ones. When having such a presentation in the class, students will pay more interest to slide show produced by Microsoft Power Point rather than just transparencies using OHP. The moving things attract viewer better to follow the instruction or the explanation given. It is clear that movement affects people in selecting the stimuli acquired. However, Purnomo, et al. 2005: 19 added that unimportant movement will annoy the viewer. It means that people should keep the unimportant movements away to avoid making the viewer annoyed. 6 Set According to Warga 1983: 209, set is defined as an emotional disposition which manipulates perception. Set guides someone to interpret sensation attained into a meaningful message which is based on hisher wish to perceive. For example, a university student will have TOEFL test next week, she must expect the test is long and complicated. Further, hisher time to do the tests is also limited. Therefore, she will study seriously to prepare for the TOEFL test.

b. Organization of Stimuli

After information has been screened, it must be organized so as to become meaningful. “This is the second factor influencing perception where the brain makes an effort to select certain items of information and then to put them PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 15 together in a meaningful way” Altman, et. al., 1985: 87. This is called organization. The fundamental role of organization is formulating the complexity of information becomes effortless for someone to interpret.

c. Situation

“The situation which influences someone to perceive can be in the form of someone’s familiarity with, expectations about, or his or her past experience” Altman, et al., 1985: 89. It can be concluded that situation may be the combination between someone’s past experience with his or her expectations. If someone has bad experience on something in the past, she will tend to perceive negatively when acquiring the same stimuli in advance. On the contrary, in case she has good experience towards something, she will have good expectation to achieve when similar thing happens in the future.

d. Self-Concept

Warga 1985: 90 stated “what is called self-concept is the way we feel about and perceive ourselves.” The self-concept is essential since our psychological image of ourselves determines much of what then we perceive and do. If the student sees himselfherself as a persistent student, she will likely to be persistent no matter difficulties in learning await.

2. Teaching and Learning Vocabulary

The researcher aims to investigate the students’ perceptions on the vocabulary weekly tests. Hence, discussing learning and teaching vocabulary in the section is very fundamental. Historically, in foreign language teaching,