Background of the Study

commit to user

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

English as a local content has already been applied in Kalam Kudus Christian Primary School since 2006. Before that, English had just been taught as an extracurricular material. The importance of English language and the increase of competitors, in this case the growing number of international primary school in Surakarta, have motivated Kalam Kudus to increase its quality, especially in English language teaching and learning. Based on Depdiknas 2006: 402-403, the purposes of teaching English in the primary school are to develop students’ communicative competence orally in school context and to raise students’ consciousness about the importance of English. It means that to be good in English, primary school students should be able to use English orally to interact with the others in school context. Students should know about the English vocabulary in order to use it in communicating with the others. Notion and Waring in Cameron 2001: 72 state that vocabulary is central to the learning of a foreign language at primary level. Gower, et al. 1995:142 also states that vocabulary is important to students, and that it is more important than grammar for communication purposes, particularly in the early stages when students are motivated to learn the basic words they need to get by in the commit to user language. It means that learning vocabulary takes the important role in teaching foreign language especially in the early stage. Realizing the importance of vocabulary in teaching English, the English teaching in the first and second grades in Kalam Kudus primary school has been emphasized on vocabulary mastery. The vocabulary teaching is focused to help the students build up the knowledge of words in ways that will enable them to use language efficiently and successfully. According to Ur 2010, the students should master at least 1000 items of vocabulary by the end of the sixth grade. Whereas Notion and Waring 2001: 75 give higher qualification about students’ vocabulary mastery in a year. They state that a realistic target for children learning a foreign language might be around 500 words a year. Mastering vocabulary itself, as stated by Thornbury 2002: 15, means mastering both its form and its meaning. Furthermore, Cameron 2001: 78 states that knowing about word involves knowing about its form how it sound, how it is spelt, the grammatical changes that can be made to it, its meaning its conceptual content and how it relates to other concepts and words and its use its patterns of occurrence with other words, and it particular types of language use. From that statement above, it can be concluded that the ideal condition of the vocabulary mastery of the first graders is they are able to spell, to pronounce, to understand the meanings of words, and to use the words in sentences. The students should get, at least 60, the passing grade. To cover the ideal condition that has been stated above, the English teachers in Kalam Kudus Primary school had applied some techniques and used media such as song and pictures, in teaching vocabulary. Unfortunately, some commit to user problems still occurred, especially in Class I E. They did not know how to pronounce and write the word correctly and sometimes they forgot about the meaning. They also had difficulties in using the words they had learnt to construct a simple, basic sentence. Those problems always arose and made them get low scores in doing the test. Below is the result of their pre-test based on the indicators. Table 1.1 The Students Score Viewed from the Skills Indicator Highest Lowest Average Pronunciation 83.33 16.67 46.53 Spelling 80 34.17 Word meaning 80 35 59.17 The use of word 100 15.625 There were some factors causing these problems. The first factor came from the students. The students had difficulties in memorizing the words and their meanings. The students found the process of teaching and learning boring and uninteresting that made them not serious in doing the process. The students also felt unconfident to say the words because they were afraid of mispronouncing the words. They needed to be motivated. The second factor came from the teachers. The teachers themselves sometimes only reviewed the words that had been taught to the students twice. Of course, this is not enough. Webb in Ur 2010 gives the evidence that the learners need, at least, ten or may be more meaningful encounters in order to acquire a new item. It means that the teachers need more commit to user than ten times to review a new item. Besides, the teachers should equip themselves with various interesting media in order to make the teaching-learning process more interesting. The third factor came from the condition of the class. There were 24 students in the class. This number was actually quite big. The teacher in fact found difficulties in controlling the class. The result was the class became so noisy. This condition made the process of the teaching and learning ineffective because the teacher spent too much time to manage the class and calm the students. Sometimes her efforts did not work. Based on the problems stated above, in this research the writer proposes to teach English vocabulary using Play School DVD as a media. Play School is Australias most successful regular television program for pre-school children. Play School aims to extend the childs interest and encourages participation. Each program contains a story, some songs both traditional and new and a variety of play ideas with things to make and do. The use of Play School DVD can be the solution to the problems because Play School DVD provides pictures of the language-in-use. It can make impossible experiences possible for its viewers and provides stimulation through its dominant sense. According to Harmer 2001:38, children understanding comes from what they see and hear, and, crucially when they have a chance to touch and interact with. It means that listening to some words is not enough. The children also need to see and interact with the words that are learnt to make a good understanding about them. commit to user Based on the background above, it is believed that the use of Play School DVD as the media in teaching English is an effective solution to overcome the problem of improving students’ vocabulary mastery. Play School DVD consists of some interesting sequences that can attract the students’ attention and make them interesting to learn English. The DVD has colorful and clear pictures of the words that are going to be learnt. It helps the students to have clear understanding about the meaning of the words that are going to be learnt and also helps the students easier in memorizing the word. The players in the DVD are native speakers. They will help the students in having a good and correct pronunciation and spelling. The students also learn how the words are constructed into sentences through the conversation in the DVD. Therefore, the writer would like to conduct a research about teaching vocabulary by using Play School DVD in Kalam Kudus Christian Primary School under the title “Improving Students’ Vocabulary Mastery by Using Play School DVD A Classroom Action Research to the First Grader of Kalam Kudus Christian Primary School in the 20102011 Academic Year”.

B. Problem Statement