7 vocabulary coverage. It depends on the students’ words knowledge, which means that a
different student will use a different strategy in learning vocabulary.
C. Strategy in Teaching Vocabulary
A teacher ’s role in teaching vocabulary is to facilitate the learners in classroom
discussion through tasks in order to increase the stu dents’ words knowledge. Rather than
using intuition, it is better for the teacher to look at the vocabulary lists in the corpus McCrostie, 2007. Pikulski and Templeton 2004 stated that paying attention to the
students’ goal and vocabulary background knowledge is necessary to develop their skills. The teacher usually tends to teach vocabulary directly in classroom activities. However, the
practice is not the same as its theory. It probably will take longer time than the teacher is expected, which means the teacher will not have a sufficient time to teach only about
vocabulary and its meaning in classroom discussion. Actually, the teacher needs to provide opportunities for students on how to learn vocabulary independently. Thus, some strategies
should be taught in the classroom discussion, such as teaching vocabulary through reading, and teaching how to use dictionaries Nation, 2001; Webb Chang, 2015.
Knowing that a word can contain many different meanings, which also can be used in different kinds of sentences, the teacher needs to teach how to use a dictionary. Besides, it
can encourage the students to gain more vocabulary knowledge by learning independently. As suggested by Seal 1991, cited in Cahyono and Widiati 2008, independent learners
should become greater dictionary users and vocabulary readers. Indonesian students are usually using dictionaries for their learning support Kusumarasdyanti, 2006. Yet,
sometimes a bilingual dictionary in Indonesia does not provide an exact meaning of the word. It is better for the teacher to show the learners on how to pick up an appropriate meaning of a
particular word based on its context in a sentence. It is also suggested for the teacher to ask
8 the students to have a monolingual dictionary in order to know how exactly a word is being
used in a context. This strategy is aimed to encourage the learners to have wider vocabulary knowledge and increase the students’ interest in learning a new word in a particular sentence.
Reading can help the students to increase their vocabulary knowledge, therefore the teacher needs to teach vocabulary through reading. Pikulski and Templeton 2004 stated that
teaching vocabulary through reading was more effective rather than asking the students to memorize the written words list. That is because the students will automatically memorize the
words while reading the textbook. As the result, the students can easily follow the discussion and automatically learn new unknown words.
In short, the teacher should teach some strategies used in learning vocabulary to the students so that they can be independent learners. Reading is a good strategy to increase the
students’ words knowledge because they will automatically learn new words. Besides, the teachers need to motivate the students
by saying that “words are interesting and fun” so that they can easily follow the material discussion Pikulski Templeton, 2004. In reading, the
students are expected to know 95 vocabulary in the textbook so that they can comprehend the textbook easily. Therefore, encouraging the students is necessary for the teacher to give
them opportunity in enriching their words knowledge.
D. Previous Study
