guessing strategy in learning vocabulary that would have been learned before. They would complete worksheets containing a number of tasks on finding the
meaning of unknown words through guessing from the context. The whole-class discussion led by the teacher would be very necessary after the accomplishment of
the tasks since clarification would be obviously needed by the students. In discussing the tasks, the teacher would point several students to show and read
their work to the class. The other students were expected to pay attention and comment it. They could give their opinion whether the answer was correct or
incorrect, etc. Student-student interaction method would be carried out in the teaching and
learning practices through small-group work activity. In the student-student interaction method, the students would work in groups of four to solve problems
together. By conducting a student-student interaction, it was expected that every student would gain deeper and better understanding on the theories of contextual
guessing strategy and on how to apply it to find unknown words’ meaning. Thus, all members of the group should work together to solve the faced problems.
The students would be divided into groups which would consist of four students. Since there were thirty-six students in the class, then there would be nine
groups. The teacher would provide eighteen cards where a paragraph and an unknown word to be guessed were written in each card. The teacher would deliver
two cards to each group. When they would have finished finding the meaning of the unknown words in those two cards, they would have to exchange the cards
with those possessed by other groups. Therefore, they would have eighteen answers in total.
The closing activity would be carried out through the activity of asking and answering questions and giving homework. The teacher would provide several
times for the students to ask anything related to the strategy of contextual guessing. In order to make sure whether the students still had problems with
guessing unknown words’ meaning from context or not, the teacher would also deliver questions to be answered by the students.
The last activity planned would be giving homework. The teacher would
give a copy of a short story titled “Pinocchio”. At home, they should read the
story; decide what words they had not known in the story; and try to infer the words meaning by applying contextual guessing strategy. The teacher would not
provide the students the target words to be learnt. They would select the target words to be learnt from the reading passage based on their own. The homework
would be collected in the next meeting. At last, the class would be closed by asking the students to fill out observation sheets. The observation sheets would
contain several statements and questions on the teaching practice meeting 1 and 2 table 3.2.
Since every cycle of the classroom action research employed in this research consisted of two meetings, this teaching and learning activities plan would be
accomplished in two meetings. The detailed elaboration of the teaching and learning activities of the classroom action research cycle 1 was presented in the
lesson plan of classroom action research cycle 1 provided in the appendix 4.
b. Acting
The second phase of the classroom action research cycle was acting. In the teaching and learning practices, the action had been performed based on the
planning that had been formulated and discussed previously. The action performed will be elaborated in the following.
At first, the students were asked to think about contextual guessing strategy in learning vocabulary without being explained first by the teacher. The students
had to think anything about the discussed strategy including the definition, steps to perform it, etc. After several minutes, the students were asked to come in front
of the class and write down in the blackboard about what they had thought about contextual guessing strategy one by one. The result of the students’ brainstorming
that had been written in the blackboard was utilized by the teacher to determine what should be explained in the lecturing activity.
The main activity of the teaching and learning practices cycle 1 was divided into three types of activities. Those were group presentation, individualized
learning, and student-student interaction. Elaboration to each type of activity executed was presented in the following.
The teaching and learning activity of group presentation was carried out in the teaching and learning practices through lecturing, asking and answering
questions, and trying out. 1 Lecturing
In this activity, the teacher explained about contextual guessing strategy in front of the students. In the activity of lecturing, the teacher employed
transparencies as the teaching media. The teacher explained about principles of contextual guessing strategy and the steps the students could follow to be able to
guess unknown words’ meaning. The lecturing activity also covered the clarification and discussion to the result of the students’ brainstorming written in
the blackboard. 2 Asking and answering questions
At first, the teacher delivered handouts containing the summary of the materials discussed and gave times to think about the topic they had just learned.
Then, they were given chances to ask anything they had not understood yet about contextual guessing strategy in learning vocabulary. Next, the teacher asked
whether any of them could answer the questions. Because there was no one who was willing to try to explain, the teacher answered it by herself.
3 Trying out In the activity of trying out, the teacher demonstrated the students how to
find the word’s meaning by guessing. Then the teacher presented other paragraphs containing unknown words that should be guessed. The teacher also invited the
whole students to discuss them together. In the individualized learning method, the students by themselves learned
how to apply the information, concepts, and principles of contextual guessing strategy in learning vocabulary that had been learned before. They completed
worksheets containing a number of tasks on finding the meaning of unknown words through guessing from the context. The whole-class discussion led by the
teacher was conducted after the accomplishment of the tasks. In discussing the
tasks, the teacher pointed several students to show and read their works to the class. The other students should pay attention and comment it. They could give
their opinion whether the answer was correct or incorrect, etc. Student-student interaction method was carried out in the teaching and
learning practices through small-group work. The students were divided into groups which consisted of four students. Since there were thirty-six students in the
class, then there were nine groups. The teacher delivered two cards to each group. When they have finished finding the meaning of the unknown words in those two
cards, they had to exchange the cards with those possessed by other groups. Therefore, they had eighteen answers in maximum.
The closing activity would be carried out through the activity of asking and answering questions and giving homework. The teacher provided several times for
the students to ask anything related to the strategy of contextual guessing. The last activity of the classroom action research cycle 1 was giving homework. The
teacher delivered a copy of a short story titled “Pinocchio”. At home, they should read the story; decide what words they had not known in the story; and try to infer
the words meaning by applying contextual guessing strategy. The teacher did not provide the students the target words to be learnt. They should select the target
words to be learnt from the reading passage based on their own. The homework was to be collected in the next meeting. The class was closed by asking the
students to fill out observation sheets. The observation sheets contained several statements and questions on the teaching and learning practices meeting 1 and 2
table 3.2.
c. Observing
The observation was carried out at the end of the teaching practice meeting 2. There were two types of observation administered; those were students’
observation and self-observation. Students’ observation referred to the observation performed by the students, while self-observation referred to the observation
performed by the teacher, in this context was the researcher. The elaboration on the result of the observation was divided according to
the points included in the observation sheets. Those points were observation on the students’ activities, the teacher’s or the researcher’s activities, the strategy
employed in the research and the learning materials adopted, and the observer’s opinion upon the strategy employed which covered the strengths, weaknesses,
difficulties, and suggestion table 3.2. First, the result of the observation to the students’ activities in the classroom
showed that their activities basically were good. As it can be seen in the observation sheets, most of them expressed that they were ready to study when the
teacher came in the classroom. A big amount of students also said that they paid much attention to the lesson, listened to the teacher’s explanation carefully; wrote
important things about the lesson, and accomplished the assignments given. It was also supported by the result of the teacher’s observation that she found many
students tried hard to understand the materials by paying attention to the lesson, asking questions to the teacher, making notes, and trying to accomplish the
assignments as well as they could. As not all students showed their good performance, there were a number of students who were considered to have bad
performance. Several students were busy with their own business when the teacher either explained something or asked the students to do the exercises on
guessing words meaning. Because they did not pay attention to the lesson, when the teacher asked questions they could not answer it.
Second, from the observation performed by the students, it was found that the teacher’s activities such as in opening the lesson; explaining the materials;
using the learning media; involving students in the teaching and learning process; asking questions to the students; answering questions from the students; giving
attention to all students; giving assignments, summary, or homework to the students were also good. Generally, most students commented that several things
above were performed well by the teacher, in this case was the researcher. Meanwhile, as it was documented in the self-observation sheets, the researcher
recognized that some of the actions mentioned had not been carried out well. There were several things that were not performed well such as the teacher’s
explaining ability, the loudness and the clearness of the voice, the using of the learning media, and the answering-question ability.
Third, the result of the observation on the strategy employed and the materials adopted showed that nearly all participants had neither known nor used
this strategy previously. However, their response towards this strategy was good although they had never known and used it. They argued that, after two meetings
learning vocabulary by employing contextual guessing, they found that employing contextual guessing strategy in learning new vocabulary was quite interesting.
Another good thing found was that they felt happy and satisfied because they
