d. Written activities should be used cautiously with younger children. However, the selected words should be relevant to the children’ world. The
teacher has to select words he or she is going to teach. The words chosen must relate to the children’s world or activities, such as animals, parts of body, family, and so
forth. The purpose is to help the children in grasping and in memorizing the words easily.
Moreover, the teacher should not punish the children when they fail to memorize or to do the teacher’s instruction. Encouragement is very important in
motivating the children to learn English vocabulary, for example by giving clues, so that finally they can perform the teacher’s instruction. Besides, reinforcement is
needed in order to build children’s self-confidence and their desire to learn.
2. Teaching Vocabulary
a. The meaning of vocabulary
The previous definition stated that vocabulary is the lexical unit of language – chiefly its words – which have a form or expression associated with a content or
meaning Lado, 1964. Fries 1952: 55-56 divides the meaning of English words into two kinds:
1 Lexical meaning
Lexical meaning refers to the words found in the dictionary. For example the word ‘boat’ means small open vessel for traveling on water.
2 Structural meaning
Structural meaning can be derived from grammatical relationship within the language or from the word order.
Kreidler 1958: 21 in his book, defined vocabulary as a stock of words in a language that can support the learners to learn the skill of the language.
Therefore, when someone wants to learn language, including English, he or she cannot separate it from learning its vocabulary. Introducing some English words
first to the kindergarten students is important as a basic step to learn English vocabulary.
b. Techniques of teaching vocabulary
There are three factors to consider in teaching vocabulary to kindergarten Suyanto 2007: 21:
1 Mother tongue
The ability to learn the mother tongue or the first language will help children in learning new language, in this case English.
2 Material
The appropriate materials influence the ability of children to learn language. Children have special attention to things that make them interested, like puppets,
football, family, and hobbies. The materials should encourage the children to be active learners.
