64 The use of discussion in groups, group work, and pair works is good activities
both in teaching language and in other subjects. It can increase the students’ participation in the lesson. Group activities are the major mode of learning and a
part of a comprehensive theory. In groups activities, planning can maximize student’s interaction to others
7. Vocabulary Problem and Selected Text
Vocabulary is a core component of language proficiency and provides much of the basis for how well learners speak, listen, read, and write Richards and
Renandya, 2002: 255. It means that without vocabulary learners cannot achieve their goals to get some information or to express their idea. Besides, learners may be
discouraged from making use of language learning opportunities around them such as listening to radio, listening to native speakers, using language in different
contexts, reading, or watching television. Nunan states
Learners see vocabulary as being a very important part of language learning and one of the difficulties in planning the vocabulary component of a course
is making sure that it does not everwhelm other essential parts of the course. the best way to avoid this is the teacher and course designer to have a set of
guiding priciples that can be applied in a variety of teaching and learning situations. These can be then be applied in courses where there are parts of
the course deliberately set aside for vocabulary development, or in course where vocabulary is dealt with as it occurs in skill-focused or content-
focused lessons 2003: 1350.
It means that vocabulary is a crucial one for the learners. The improving of their vocabulary depends not only on the learners but also teacher.
One of the problems which makes students lazy to read is the lack of vocabulary. Vocabulary is the biggest problem for students to read something. They
65 don’t understand what they read because they don’t know the meaning of the text.
Increasing students’ vocabulary is one of teacher’s responsibilities. Nuttal states that teacher can teach students to use dictionary properly, and can organize a programme
of vocabulary building, but greatly increasing the amount of material they read is the best way of all 1998: 65. Carter and McCarthy state that vocabulary is the
most important and has the strongest effect. Furthermore, they state that causal links probably do exist between vocabulary and comprehension and that vocabulary is
likely the predominant causal factor 1997: 98. They also state that the low frequency of vocabulary in a text has a negative effect on comprehension 1997:
98. Hunt and Beglar discuss three approaches to vocabulary teaching and learning: 1 incidental learning i.e. learning vocabulary as by a product of doing other things
such as reading or listening, 2 explicit instruction, and 3 independent strategy development. Further they state that the major source of incidental learning is
extensive reading, explicit instruction involves diagnosing the words learners need to know, presenting words for the first time, elaborating word knowledge, and
developing fluency with known words, and independent strategy development involves practicing guessing from context and training learners to use dictionaries
Richards and Renandya, 2002: 256-258. Emphasizing explicit instruction is probably best for beginning and intermediate students who have limited vocabulary.
Coady states that the role of graded readers is to build up the students’ vocabulary and structures until they can graduate to more authentic materials. Low proficiency
learners can benefit from graded readers because they will repeatedly expose the high frequency vocabulary Richards and Renendy, 2002: 259.
66 Moulton gives foreign-language students three practical recommendations
for acquiring vocabulary: “First, never ‘look a word up’ until you have read the whole context in which it occurs – at least an entire sentence ... Second,
don’t be afraid of making ‘intelligent guesses’ ...Third, make a specialist list of your ‘nuisance words’ – the ones you find yourself looking up over and
over again. Put them down on paper and memorize them. These recommendations may well be passed on to students as an essential form of
personal discipline. Going beyond this, however, the teacher may develop exercise to help students to “increase their word power” in English through
focusing on form, focusing on meaning, expanding by association, and recirculating the vocabulary they have acquired Nunan, 2003: 251.
It means that students can improve their vocabulary through text. They can learn vocabulary through context. Understanding the context of text students can
guess it. Because their vocabulary has improved, they have the desire to read more. When we read for meaning, we do not need to read every letter or every word, nor
every word in each sentences. This is because provided text makes sense, we can guess much of what it says as we read it
One of the reasons why text is called a good text is text must be readable. Readability means that a text should be at the right level of difficulty for the
students. The difficulties are not only vocabulary which contains in the text but also the context which relates to the reader. Carter and Mc Carthy state that in measuring
of readability of a text, vocabulary difficulty has consistently been found to be the most significant predictor of overall readability 1998: 97. Jenkins, Stein, and
Wysocki point out that Learning from context is still a default explanation; evidence that
individuals actually learn word meanings from contextual experiences is notabley lacking. Indeed the very redundancy or richness of information in a
given context which enables a reader to guess an unknown word successfully could also predict that that same reader is less likely to learn the
word because he or she was able to comprehend the text without knowing word Carter and Mc Carthy, 1997: 101.
67 It means that learners will know the meaning of the text or can comprehend
the text by guessing. In other word, that is to say that the readers samples the clues in the text and reconstruct a mental representation of what he or she thinks the text
says. It is important to note that studies on learning words from context have not shown the large amounts of learning we might expect, considering the rates at which
first-language learners seem to increase their vocabulary Carter and Mc Carthy, 1997: 103. A strategy for guessing from text presupposes two things; firstly that
the learners are able to follow the ideas in the text they are reading, that is, that they have sufficient command of vocabulary, grammar and reading skill in order to
achieve basic comprehension of the text, and secondly that the learners bring some relevant background knowledge to the text Carter and Mc Carthy, 1997: 103.
B. Rationale
Reading is one of the foreign language skills that can be learned by students. Teaching reading means teaching students to understand written language. To make
students understand written language easily needs certain techniques. Communicative Language Teaching accepts any device that helps the learner in
studying foreign language, and the device varies according to their ages and interest. To make the learners interested in reading, enjoyable situation should be created. To
create enjoyable situation, interesting reading should also be chosen. By choosing the reading texts themselves the students can find out any kinds
of texts that can fulfill their interest. By reading self-selected texts learners will encourage themselves to understand the texts well. At least they will try to
