Background of Study INTRODUCTION

1

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of Study

In Indonesia national curriculum, English is a compulsory subject. It is taught from elementary up to university level. English has some skills that should be learned by students which one of them is writing. Through writing, students can produce a message in a form of written text. As Richard says that writing is one of activeproductive skill, writing requires writers to encode messages or ideas in the form of written language. 1 In order to successfully deliver the messages, many knowledge and comprehension is needed. Some of the knowledge needed are grammar, spelling, and vocabulary. As it requires some knowledge and comprehension, this skill is considered complex and difficult. If the writer fails to deliver the message, they also fail in writing. The complexity of composing writing emerges some problems. Regarding to Sealey that vocabulary is closely related to written language, lack of vocabulary can be one of factors of difficulty appears in composing writing. 2 Vocabulary is a crucial component in acquiring and understanding language. When students compose writing, their vocabulary mastery will help them in expressing ideas or messages they have so they can write fluently. Vocabulary is the stock of words used in a language. 3 The more students have stock of words used in a language, the better their writing performance will be. Mastering vocabulary is the ability to get or to receive lots of words. By mastering vocabulary students will be able to deliver ideas and messages in written form effectively. Vocabulary is classified into noun, verb, adjective, preposition, synonym, antonym, etc. The variety of vocabulary can be found in many English sources 1 Jack C. Richards and Richard Schmidt, Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, 4 th Ed., London: Pearson Education Limited, 2010, p. 322. 2 Brian Richard ed., Vocabulary Studies in First and Second Language Acquisition, New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2009, p. 40. 3 Nobert Schimitt and Michael McCarthey, Vocabulary in Language Teaching, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 40. such as newspapers, magazines, televisions and radio programs, or even movies. Reading and listening to those sources of English vocabulary are the main activity in enriching language learners’ vocabulary. Besides giving the input by asking students to read and listen to English sources, teachers also need to ask students to speak and write in English so they will not only memorize the words, but also be able to use them. Based on the writer ’s observation in Writing 4 class, some of the students have difficulties in composing essay. One of the obstacles that obstruct them in composing an essay is their lack of English vocabulary. Students who lack of vocabulary have difficulties in composing an essay which leads to getting low score in Writing subject. Whenever they have an idea about what they want to write, in their mind, the idea was still in Bahasa Indonesia. Therefore, to turn it into English essay, they need many English vocabularies. Moreover, when they try to compose an essay, they often open up dictionary to find the English word they need. In other words, having a lot of stocks of English words is needed in composing a text. So if the stock of words mastered by students related to the ability of composing writing, there should be relation to their writing achievement which can be seen in a form of writing score. Based on some problems above, the writer assumes that there is a relationship between students’ vocabulary mastery and their writing achievement. The writer’s assumption is in line with Saadian and Bagheri who in their research had revealed that grammar and vocabulary have a positive effect on the quality of EFL learners’ writing performance. 4 Students with better vocabulary knowledge will have better writing performance. It happens because students with better linguistic knowledge are able to write better, longer, and various sentences. In other words it can be said that student whose vocabulary mastery will also have better writing achievement. So, to prove the assumption, the writer would like to conduct a study with the title: The Relationship between Students’ Vocabulary Mastery and 4 Hamideh Saadian and Mohammad Sadegh Bahgeri, The Relationship between Grammar and Vocabulary Knowledge and Iranian EFL Learners’ Writing Performance TOEFL PBT Essay, International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World, Vol. 7 1, 2014, p. 12. Their Writing Achievement A Correlational Study at the Seventh Semester Students of Department of English Education Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University of Jakarta in Academic Year 20162017.

B. Identification of the Problems