Introduction Problems in Enriching Students Vocabulary Acquisition for VII Grade

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CHAPTER III DISCUSSION

A. Introduction

In this chapter, the discussion is based on the activities done in the job training. The chapter III is divided into three main points. They are: school description, job training activities, and problems in enriching students’ vocabulary acquisition to improve students’ achievement in English for VII grade students of SMP Negeri 19 Surakarta. The three main points above will be presented in this chapter.

B. Description of SMP Negeri 19 Surakarta

1. General description SMP Negeri 19 Surakarta is one of the favorite junior high schools in Surakarta. It is located in Brondongan Street – Serengan, Surakarta. SMP Negeri 19 Surakarta was established in 1981. SMP Negeri 19 Surakata has a large area. The total area is about 2,300 m 2 and this area is divided into two parts, they are 1,700m 2 for the building and 600 m 2 for the yard, parking area and the basketball field. The building in this school is divided into several rooms, they are; a headmaster office, a teacher room, a guiding and counseling room, a school committee room, a living room, a student committee room, a school health unit, a computer and multimedia room, a library, a language xxxv laboratory, a scientific laboratory, a mosque, eighteen classrooms, six canteens, a kitchen, and ten toilets. In the middle of the building, there is a square field which is used for sport activity and ceremony. Like other junior high schools, SMP Negeri 19 Surakarta consists of three grades. They are grade VII, grade VIII, and grade IX. Those grades have different number of students. Each grade consists of six classes and thirty five up to forty students for each class. SMP Negeri 19 Surakarta has a school committee and 64 staff. They can be divided into: a headmaster, a vice headmaster, administrators, forty three teachers including subject teacher, eighteen class teachers, three guiding and counseling teachers, a librarian and a laboratory staff, a cleaning service, and a security officer.

2. Facilities

School without facilities can not reach the expected goals of the main purpose of education. There are some facilities which are owned by SMP Negeri 19 Surakarta, such as library, scientific laboratory, language laboratory, art room with supporting facilities inside. In the library the students can read and borrow some books to support their study or even to refresh their mind. Meanwhile, in the language laboratory the students can practice English skills especially listening and speaking. Besides, in the art room the students can practice how to make some handicrafts and to practice dancing. xxxvi

3. Extracurricular Activities

SMP Negeri 19 Surakarta has three extracurricular activities that could be followed and enjoyed by the students. These extracurricular activities could be divided into: a. Scout Scout is a very useful activity for students to train their creativity, teamwork, skill or facing problems. This activity can also increase their independence and their solidarity to other human being. This extracurricular is held once a week on Friday. The scout trainers only supervise the activities but the activities are conducted by the chief assistants who are taken from selected students. Scout extracurricular starts from 2 pm until 4 pm. It is a compulsory extracurricular for the VII and VIII grade students. b. Basketball Basketball is one of the units of sport. This sport is held once a week on Tuesday, starting from 2.30 pm up to 4 pm for each meeting. The students who are permitted to join this activity are the chosen students of the seventh to the eighth grades. xxxvii c. Religion activity Religion activity focuses on reading the Holy Qur’an BTA and Qira’ah. This activity is held everyday before the students begin to study in the class.

C. Job Training Activity

The job training activity was started from February 1 st 2010 up to March 17 th 2010. The writer did some activities during the job training; they were school observation, class observation, lesson plan making, teaching and learning practice. Here are some explanations of the writer about the activities during the job training period:

1. School Observation

School observation was done in January 29 th 2010 up to January 30 th 2010. The purpose of this activity was to know the school environment and to make the writer as a trainee knows the situation of SMP Negeri 19 Surakarta. During this period, the vice headmaster of curriculum system gave explanation about the job description of the writer, the rules of the job training, and the class schedule. The writer was asked to teach the VII grade or the first year of junior high school. There are six classes in this grade, VII A up to VII F. Each class has 35 up to 40 students. The school asked the writer to teach and to handle class VII D up to VII F. xxxviii

2. Class Observation

Class observation was done by the writer before conducting the job training. The class observation was aimed to observe the class room condition, the English teaching learning activity and all information needed to teach English to the students. The writer observed class VII D, VII E, and VII F. Physically, both of VII E and VII F were conducive enough for teaching, but VII D was more noisy and active. There are 18 - 20 desks and 36 – 40 chairs for 36 – 40 students. Besides, there are some facilities such as white board, black board, an attendance board, first aid kid boxes, some visual aids at the back of the class, a door and ten windows in each class. Every class has five hours for English lesson in a week based on the class schedule. An hour of the lesson is about forty minutes. The teaching and learning process of English lesson in VII D was held on Wednesday at 08.25-09.45, Friday at 08.25-09.05, and Saturday at 09.45-11.35, and for VII E was held at Monday at 08.25-09.45, Friday at 09.45-11.35, and Saturday at 09.45-10.05. While in VII F it was held on Monday at 11.35-12.10, Wednesday at 07.00-08.20 and Friday at 07.00- 08.20. During the class observation period, the writer observed the way of teacher’s teaching the students, the condition of this class, and the material which is used. The materials used by the teacher are “Let’s Talk for VII Grade Junior High School” distributed by BOS as main students’ handbook which was lent by the library and used for every meeting and also “Inovasi, Membina Kreativitas untuk Berprestasi, Kelas VII” by Pustaka Mulia as students’ worksheet. xxxix

3. Lesson plan making

As a good teacher, he or she should prepare everything well before she or he teaches the class. He or she should think carefully about what will be taught in his or her class and he or she should plan what should be reached by the students in the end of the teaching and learning activity. That is why a good teacher needs a lesson plan. A good lesson plan is a mixture of materials and activities. Therefore, both the teacher and the students will enjoy the class. Moreover, the students can be active during the teaching learning activity and can be able to achieve the goal of this activity. The function of lesson plan is actually for guiding the teacher in teaching based on the topic being discussed. The writer made the lesson plan in the first week of the job training period. One lesson plan can be presented more than one meeting. It depends on the length of time, the difficulties of the material, and the students’ ability in accepting the material. There are four stages of lesson plan, such as: Building Knowledge of the Field BKOF, Modeling of the Text, Join Construction of the Text and Independent Construction of the Text. Before making the lesson plan, the teacher should decide the topic or the material which will be discussed. All of the parts as mentioned above will be explained in details bellow: Lesson Plan Date : Friday, February 12 th 2010 Grade level : First grade of Junior High School xl Skill : Listening, reading, and writing Number of students : 40 students Duration : 90 minutes Material : Hobbies concern in gardening Goals : Students can mention and write kind of hobbies Students have knowledge about hobbies especially gardening BKOF Building Knowledge of the Field The first was BKOF Building Knowledge of the Field. In the BKOF, they were greeting, brainstorming, reviewing last material and introducing new material. In this step, the writer made a few conversations with the students to make them interested in this class. For example: Greeting : Good morning students How are you today? Nice to meet you again Who is absent today? Reviewing last material : Ok, students do you still remember our last material? What did you learn in the last meeting? Discus it for a minute to remind students’ memorizing Introducing new material : What do you do in your spare time? What kind of activity do you like? Do you know the meaning of hobby? What is your hobby Donny? Etc xli Modeling body Here the writer started to give and explained the whole of the new material. When explaining the material, the writer gave both of oral and written explanation. The writer explained the material clearly including the difficult words, the pronunciation, the preference and the tense used. The writer asked the students to guess the meaning of the difficult words through the context or by giving the clues of these words. The writer maked some conversations questions and answers with the students to make them interested and to create their enthusiasm in studying English. For example: Ok students now we will study about hobby Do you know what is hobby? Well, can you mention kinds of hobby? Good, Radit, what is your hobby? What about you Nadia? Why you like…? And When do you usually do your hobby? Etc. Ok students now we will study more about gardening. Do you like gardening? Gardening Mrs. Yulianti is my mother. She is a housewife. Her hobby is gardening. She has a garden behind the house. It is not wide but it is clean. xlii In her spare time, she always works in the garden. She plants some flowers such as roses, jasmine, orchid, sun flowers, and some other beautiful plants. She grows and waters them everyday. Joint Construction of the Text After presenting the material, the writer gave exercises to the students. The exercises are as follow: Gardening Mrs. Yulianti is my mother. She is a housewife. Her hobby is gardening. She has a garden behind the house. It is not wide but it is clean. In her spare time, she always works in the garden. She plants some flowers such as roses, jasmine, orchid, sun flowers, and some other beautiful plants. She grows and waters them everyday. Task 1 Answer the question based on the text above 1. Does Mrs. Yulanti like gardening? 2. When does she like doing her hobby? 3. How is her garden? 4. What flowers does she plant? 5. What does the word “them” last line in paragraph 2 refer to? Task 2 Arrange these jumbled phrases or words into good sentence 1. hobby – is – my sister’s – gardening xliii 2. I – water – flowers – always – the 3. Diana – a flower – pick – wants – to 4. gardener – is – your – a – father 5. garden – she – a – has – her – behind – house Task 3 Here the writer modified the task, for example playing game to make students interested in studying English. This game would be focused on listening skill and the theme is hobby. The role of this game was that the teacher would give some clues that were related to the subject, and the students had to guess or answer the names of hobby which the teacher means. For example: The clues : By doing my hobby I can get information and knowledge I usually do my hobby at the library I like novel I have many books in my house Question : What is my hobby? The answer : Reading Independent Construction of the Text The students had to be able to make a short text that was related with this material hobby in this stage. Here the teacher still had to guide the students to do this task; the teacher would give them some questions to encourage students’ ability xliv to make a short text. The students had to answer these questions and then arranged them into a good paragraph or text. For example: 1. What is your name? 2. What is your hobby? 3. Why do you like it? 4. When do you usually do your hobby? 5. Where do you do your hobby? 6. How do you do your hobby? Etc Closing The last stage was closing. After the students finished the task, the teacher evaluated the students’ work and then the teacher ended this class. Besides, the teacher had to check the students’ understanding first to measure the students’ ability. For example: Ok class, we have studied about hobbies. What are they? When do we usually do this? Wonderful Well, I think that’s all for today, thank you for your attention and see you xlv 4. Teaching learning process After making a lesson plan, the writer started to practice teaching English in a real condition. The writer handled 3 classes; there were VII D, VIIE, and VII F. the teaching learning process that the writer had done can be described as follows: The writer began the class by praying and greeting the students. These activities would train the students to apply their English orally. After that, the writer checked the students’ attendance. The next step is BKOF. In this step, the writer reviewed the last material that has been discussed. After that, the writer started to introduce the new topic or material which would be discussed. The writer tried to give a simple description about the material by asking some questions related to this topic which would be discussed. Besides, it was also used to increase the students’ interests about the lesson. Then, the writer told the objective of the lesson to the students, the purpose was to make the students understand about the goal expected after they learned the lesson. In modeling of the text, the writer started to explain the whole of the material. The writer explained the material clearly including the difficult words and sometimes the writer made a short dialogue with the students to make them interested to the lesson and to create their enthusiasm in studying English. The writer tried to make the students accept her explanation easily. Therefore, the writer used some aids, such as classroom media, pictures from a magazine or a picture dictionary New Oxford Picture Dictionary, synonym or paraphrased verbal explanations, and drawing the xlvi students’ attention to the aids wherever they exist. By using these strategies, the writer hoped that the students would memorize the vocabulary easily. Considering that English is the new language for the students, the writer used both of Indonesian and English in presenting the lesson. She also repeated her explanation more than once because the students’ ability is different, that is why all of the students would understand the explanation. After presenting the lesson, the writer continued the lesson by giving exercise to measure the students’ comprehension about the materials given. The exercises were divided into two stages. First, the exercise which was done with their partner, and then they had to do the next task individually. The exercises were taken from the students’ hand books and sometimes the writer created other exercises which were not provided in these books. At the last stages, the writer checked and evaluated the students’ exercises and then closed the meeting. Before closing the meeting, the writer also gave opportunity to the students to ask some questions if they do not understand any materials. Besides, the writer also summarized the materials that had been discussed and asked some questions to the students to check the students’ comprehension whether they understood or not. xlvii

D. Problems in Enriching Students Vocabulary Acquisition for VII Grade

Students of SMP N 19 Surakarta During the teaching learning activity, the writer got some difficulties in enriching students’ vocabulary acquisition. These difficulties came from both of the students and the teacher. The students got difficulties to pronoun the words correctly; they have already Javanese and Indonesian language as their native language. Besides, the students also got difficulties to memorize the vocabularies. Another problem from the students was their interests in learning English that influence their attentions much to the teacher’s explanation. On the other hand, the writer as the teacher actually often got some problems, such as the limitation of teaching media and resources to support the teaching learning activity. SMP N 19 Surakarta has only limited resources and teaching media. Most of the materials came from the students’ hand books and BOS program. Besides, there is no variation in teaching English activity. The teachers only use the material from the students’ books. xlviii

CHAPTER IV CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

A. Conclusion

Based on the discussion in chapter II, some points could be drawn and arranged as follows: 1. For the first time, the English teaching and learning process of VII grade students in SMP N 19 Surakarta was difficult enough because the students of the school were mostly passive. Besides, this institution had limited material resources to support English teaching learning activity and there was no variation of English teaching method. For the writer, it was also the first experience for her to be an English teacher there. However, when the writer could adapt and created a good atmosphere in the class, the teaching and learning activity could run well. In English teaching learning activity, the writer used both of English and Indonesian language. The writer used English for simple command and explanation, while Indonesian language for explaining the difficult words. 2. The English teaching process of VII grade students in SMP N 19 Surakarta is started by the English teacher of this institution. She delivered the materials to the students without any variation in the teaching method. The writer continued by changing and giving a variation method. She started the class by brainstorming first to encourage students’ attention. Then, she tried to deliver