knowledge of vocabulary involves; a knowing how to pronounce the word, b how to write and spell it, c how to use it in correct grammatical patterns along
with the words usually collocate with, d how to avoid using low frequency word too often and use it in suitable situations, e how to use the word to stand for the
meaning it represents, and f how to be able to think of suitable replacement of the word if there are any.
2. Vocabulary Coverage
This research is about vocabulary coverage and its recycling, which deals with frequency. In the topic of coverage, types, tokens, and word families are the
important terms. Thus, it is important to define what they are. a.
Types and Tokens According to Nation and Meara 2002, a token or running word is main
term if we are going to count how long a course book is. Nation and Meara 2002 also define token as all of the words that occur in the course book. For example, a
sentence He was young the way an actual young person is young contains eleven tokens. Even though the word, for example young appears three times, it should
still be counted every time it occurs again. The same words are counted as a new word each time it occurs.
In the other hand, if we are counting types, the same words are only counted once although it occurs more than once. Any occurrence of the same word is not
counted as a new word, but “as another occurrence of the same type” Nation, 1983: 10. As example before, the sentence He was young the way an actual
young person is young contains eleven tokens but only has nine types since the PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
word young appears three times, but only counted as one type. After the first occurrence, the words young are not counted again.
Based on the definition above, the same words with different meaning are counted as one type. Due to the reason of counting, which is related to vocabulary
learning, words like I’ll, I’m, and let’s are counted as having two types and two
tokens. Words like student’s and family’s possession are also counted as having
two types and two tokens. Numbers and proper nouns are also excluded. The analysis and interpretation is only limited to English words only in the material
presentation of the book. b.
Word Family Word family is crucial for systematic approach in vocabulary teaching and
deciding the vocabulary load of texts which will be used Bauer and Nation, 1993. To be able to count word family, lemma is needed to understand first. A
lemma is a set of related words which have the stem form and inflected forms that come from the same part of speech Nation and Meara, 2002. For example do,
does, did, done, doing are under the same lemma because their stems are the same, and they are all verbs.
Furthermore, affixes and suffixes whose the same stems are also included in word family. Words under the same word family do not
have to be in the same part of speech. Nation and Meara 2002 also argue that there are some groups of words
which are usually used together such as single words. Some of them are not analyzed into parts, but learned and used as complete units. Such words are called
multi-word units MWUs. One criteria of MWU is that no word in the unit can be substituted by any other word. According to Schmitt 2000:
400, a single PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
meaning is given to an MWU, such as in phrasal verbs give up, compounds freeze-dry, and idioms burn the midnight oil
’. However, in this research, MWU is counted as separate words.
c. Vocabulary for Junior High School Learners
As the target level of the course books being used in this research is the second grade of Junior High School students, we need to understand the
requirement number of vocabulary form them. Based on the guidelines of SMP Curriculum of English, graduates of Junior High School are supported to master
vocabulary in order to be able to communicate whether in spoken or written form. The graduated students of Junior High School are expected to master 1000 types
lemma after finishing their study. Although in recent curriculum, Indonesia government did not clearly
mention the exact size of vocabulary that should be mastered by Junior High students, according to Nation in David Aline 2001, the words level for Junior
High School is around 1000 words. Based on 1994 curriculum, at the Junior High level, the objective is that by the end of the program, the students will have
developed English language skills of reading, listening, speaking, and writing in thematic situations in accordance with their individual developmental levels and
interests, using 1,000 word-level and appropriate structures Depdikbud, 1994b, and the objective at the Senior High level is that by the end of the program, the
students will have developed English language skills of reading, listening, speaking, and writing in thematic situations in accordance with their individual
developmental levels and interests, using 2500 word-level and appropriate structures Depdikbud, 1994a. Therefore, it is assumed that Junior High students
in the first grade will acquire at least 500 words, 300 words in the second grade, and 200 words in the third grade.
Since the researcher focused on the second grade of Junior High School as the course book
’s user, the vocabulary requirement to be mastered for them are around 800 words. The researcher has already used sets of
West’s General Service List GSL which covers first 1,000 words GSL_1, second 1,000 words GSL_2
and academic word lists AWL for advanced learners. Each of the words is a headword representing a word family. Bauman and Culligan 1995 had already
made a version of GSL ranked in frequency order. The researcher used Bauman and Culligan’s list of frequency order in GSL_1 to figure out how far the course
books will deal with suitable vocabulary for Junior High School learners.
3. Word Frequency
