TEACHING VOCABULARY TO YOUNG LEARNERS USING SCATTERGORIES (An Experimental Research at the VII Grade Students of SMP Negeri 7 Cilacap in the Academic Year 2012/2013) - repository perpustakaan

CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW A. Vocabulary 1. The Definitions of Vocabulary The definition of vocabulary can be found in

  several experts‟ statement. The definitions of vocabulary are as follows: Hatch and Brown (1995: 1) define vocabulary as a list or set of words for a particular language or a list or set of word that an individual speaker of language might use. It can be said that the vocabulary is the words for a particular language that have been known by an individual speaker for communication.

  Wu (2009: 5) states that vocabulary is a list of words, usually in alphabetical order and with explanations of their meanings. A word, in most linguistic analysis, is described as a set of properties, or features, each word is the combination of its meaning, register, association, collocation, grammatical behavior, written form (spelling), spoken form (pronunciation), and frequency.

  Vossoughi (2009: 1) states that vocabulary is the tool that is used to think, to express ideas and feelings, and to learn about the world.

  Because vocabulary is the very foundation of learning, improving students‟ vocabulary knowledge has become an educational priority.

  Student ‟s vocabulary knowledge is strongly linked to academic accomplishment, because a rich vocabulary is essential to successful reading comprehension.

  6 From the definitions mentioned before, it can be concluded that vocabulary is a list of words with their meanings for a particular language which is used by speakers to think, to express ideas and feelings, and to learn about the world.

2. The Importance of Vocabulary

  Vocabulary is an important element of language learning. It includes many words, not only as individual word but also as a group of word that have meaning. Rivers in Nunan (1983: 117) states that the acquisition of an adequate vocabulary is essential for successful second language use because without an extensive vocabulary, learners will be unable to use the structures and functions they may have learned for comprehensible communication. In fact, Rivers argues that vocabulary augmentation seems to become easier as one matures, probably because one has a richer knowledge of the world on which to draw. It forms an opinion that the development of a rich vocabulary is an important element in learning a second language like English. Recently, the consensus to be development of a rich vocabulary is an important element in the acquisition of second language.

  The earlier the learners learn the vocabulary the more words they will get and understand. One who masters enough vocabulary will find fewer difficulties than those who have fewer vocabularies. When they read a certain text, they will easily get the information from it since they can understand every word in the text. On the other hand, those who lack of vocabulary will face many problems. Mastery of vocabulary will be useful for the process of achieving language-teaching objectives. That is the mastery of language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing).

  In order to communicate with others in a certain language, everybody must master the language or at least know enough vocabulary of the language. Zhihong in Leny (2006: 10) states that vocabulary is the basic unit of language from supports it and having a limited vocabulary is also a barrier. Without vocabulary, one cannot communicate to effectively express ideas.

3. The Aspects of vocabulary

  The selection of vocabulary , which is taught to the students, is a very important procedure in the language learning process. However, the vocabulary selection process does not mean that the students will be fluent in expressing themselves in English upon learning list. There are some aspects of vocabulary that teacher should convey to the students.

  Based on Lado (1972: 1) as cited in Mardianawati (2012: 11-14), there are several ways that the learners can learn English vocabulary such as:

  a. Spelling Spelling is very important in learning vocabulary because it helps readers in reading. It can help the readers to explain the connection that is shared between sounds and letters. Learning high frequency form of words also has been shown to help with both reading and writing. This is why students learn word forms during their early years. Spelling in reading also has common factors, proficiency with language.

  In playing the Scattergories, the learners would be encouraged indirectly to spell the vocabulary that had been learnt before in filling the blank columns of category in a Scattergories paper starting with a given letter of rolling paper.

  b. Pronunciation Pronunciation of a word is what is heard when someone says the word. Most word has only one pronunciation. English pronunciation tends to be not easy to be learnt because it is not related to the spelling of words.

  Many other learners want to be able to speak English well with understandable pronunciation so that they can communicate without hindrance, because a right pronunciation make listeners easier to understand. Pronouncing the word enables the students to remember vocabulary longer and identify it more readily.

  In playing Scattergories, the learners would be encouraged to pronounce the vocabulary when discussing the appropriate answer of each category in the Scattergories paper. Then, the teacher would correct every missing pronouncing.

  c. Meaning The most important aspect of vocabulary teaching for students is to foster students‟ independence so that they will be able to deal with new lexis and expand their vocabulary beyond the end of the lesson. When conveying the meaning to the students, teachers should teach their students that a word may have more than one meaning when is used in different context (Kareem, 2003: 5). Therefore, guided discovery, contextual guesswork and using dictionaries should be the main way to deal with discovering meaning.

  Guided discovery involves asking question or offering example that guided students to guess meaning correctly. The meaning of words can be communicated in different ways. Nations as cited in Kareem (2003: 6) suggests that teachers can convey meaning to their students by demonstration or pictures (using object, using a cut out figure, using gesture, blackboard drawing, or diagrams and pictures of book) and by verbal explanation (analytical definition, putting the new words in a defining context, and translating into another language). When the students are involved in discovering meaning, they will never forget those meanings easily and they will be able to express themselves more fluently.

  In playing Scattergories, the learners would be demanded to find the meaning of the vocabulary after deciding the right answer of each category.

  d. Word classes Word classes are categories of word. Word class is an important feature in semantic feature analysis. There are grammatical patterns should be practiced fluently to the students such as nouns

  (countable and uncountable), verbs, complement, phrasal verbs, adjectives, and adverbs (Kareem, 2003: 7). The classification of the words of a language in this way depends on their function in communication. Nouns can occur in certain parts of sentences and serve certain functions. Verbs also occur in certain places and have a special function, so word class membership is an important lexical feature.

  In playing Scattergories, the learners would be encouraged to classify all of the vocabulary answered in each category into among nouns, verbs, and adjectives.

  e. Word use Word use is how a word, phrase, or concept is used in a language. Lexicographers gather samples of written or spoken instance where a word is used and analyzed them to determine patterns of regional or social usage as well as meaning. Word use can also be involved by grammar and thus be the subject of analysis.

  Aspects of vocabulary that were taught towards the students were meaning, spelling, pronunciation, and word classes. It was very important for the students to know the meaning of a word because after they knew the meaning they would be able to differentiate the category of the words belong to. The students were asked to find the meaning of words by their own creativity. Meanwhile, the word classes, which were taught, were nouns (countable and uncountable), adjectives, and verbs. In short, aspects of vocabulary are very important to be taught, especially for spelling pronunciation, meaning, and word classes ‟ aspects.

  4. The Types of Vocabulary

  Hatch and Brown (1995: 370) mention that vocabulary can be divided into two types. They are receptive vocabulary and productive vocabulary or passive and active vocabulary. Haycraft (1978) in Hatch and Brown (1995: 370) defines that receptive vocabulary is words that the student recognizes and understands when they occur in a context, but which he cannot produce correctly. Then, productive vocabulary is words which the student understands, can pronounce correctly and use constructively in speaking and writing.

  In this research, the type of vocabulary, which was investigated, was receptive vocabulary. Gairns R & Redman S (1998: 64) define receptive vocabulary as language items which can only be recognized and comprehended in the context of reading and listening material, and productive vocabulary to be language items which the learners can review and use appropriately in speech and writing.

  5. The Classification of Vocabulary

  The classification of the vocabulary of a language depends on their function in communication. Therefore, the vocabulary class membership is an important lexical feature. Hatch and Brown (1995: 218) mention that vocabulary can be classified based on their functional categories are called parts of speech, which include nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.

  a. Nouns Nouns are names of people and physical objects, and entities that exist in time and space. In this research is focused on concrete, tangible, physical objects because for young learners, it is learned more successfully than other types of nouns. The young learners acquire the names of concrete items before abstract nouns, and they use more concrete nouns in their talk than adults do. For example: Diane (name of a person), table (a physical object), apple (name of fruit), etc.

  b. Verbs Verbs are words that donate action, such as run, walk, write, and etc.

  c. Adjectives Adjective are used to highlight qualities or attributes. Certain adjectives are typically used to describe particular nouns. For example,

  light, dark, bright, and dull are used with color names.

  d. Adverbs Adverbs are similar to adjectives in many ways although they typically assign attribute to verbs, to clauses, or to entire sentences rather than to nouns. Adverb is divided into two kinds of adverb. They are locative adverbs (like here, there, and etc) and time adverbs (like now, then,

  yesterday, and etc).

  In this research, it was focused on nouns, verbs, and adjectives. It was because those three classes of vocabulary are most suitable in playing Scattergories. The topics of the vocabulary that were investigated are family members, personal characteristics, parts of body, hobbies, daily activities, places, shopping, ingredients, things at home, and things in the kitchen.

B. Teaching and Learning Vocabulary 1. Teaching Vocabulary

  Teaching vocabulary is not just conveying the meaning to the students and asking them to learn those words by heart. If teachers believe that the words are worth explaining and learning, then it is important that they should do this efficiently. Teachers should use different techniques and activities in teaching English vocabulary to motivate the learners, enrich their vocabulary and enable them to speak English properly.

  Teachers can employ and use many techniques and activities in teaching vocabulary, such as presentation, discovery techniques, and practice. Doff in Tuan (2012: 1) states that there are four stages in teaching vocabulary, namely presentation, practice, production, and review.

  a. Presentation Presentation is one of the most important stages in teaching vocabulary. It is the introducing new lexical items to learners. As suggested by Thornbury in Tuan (2012: 2) learners need to learn both the meaning and the form of a new word. He also emphasizes that there are some major factors that have to be paid attention by the teacher such as:

  1) The learners‟ level (beginner, intermediate, or advanced)

  2) Learners‟ likely familiarity with the words

  3) The difficulty of the items 4) Whether items are being learned for production (in speaking and writing) or for recognition (in listening and reading).

  There are three techniques used in presentation of new vocabulary items (Grains and Redman in Tuan, 2012: 2). They are visual techniques, verbal techniques, translation. First, visual techniques include mime, gesture, and visual. Second, verbal techniques: (1) use of illustrative situation, (2) use of synonym and definition, (3) contrast and opposite, (4) scales, and (5) examples of type. The last, translation is considered as a quick, easy, and effective way of conveying the meaning of vocabulary.

  b. Practice If the teacher just presents the meaning of the new words, the students may easily forget them and do not know how to use them properly. As Thornbury in Tuan (2012: 2) says that “practice makes perfect”, so the teacher should provide vocabulary exercises in order to give students an opportunity to practice the new words.

  c. Production In this stage, the students are advised to complete high-level tasks namely production tasks (Thornbury in Tuan, 2012: 2). The students should produce something as a product of their own. In this way, the students will turn words from receptive to productive and put them into long-term memory. For production tasks, there are two major types that teachers may have used very often: completion and creation.

  d. Review Davies and Pearse in Tuan (2012: 2) mention that reviewing is

  “new work on old language”, “a challenge, requiring ingenuity and creativity”. It produces better results for teaching and learning vocabulary. In the reviewing stage, students have more opportunities to use language and receive feedback. Methodologists agree that games and communicative activities are the best ways to help students to review vocabulary. Besides, visual aids can make vocabulary revision more interesting and effective. Revision can be done in both individuals and collaboration. Doff in Tuan (2012: 2) expresses that vocabulary is mainly reviewed through the warm-up step. That means teachers review vocabulary learnt in an earlier lesson. It aims at refreshing students‟ memories or as a preparation for a new presentation.

2. Learning Vocabulary

  According to Hatch and brown (1995: 372) there are five essential steps in learning vocabulary; they are as follows: a. Encountering new words.

  The first essential step for vocabulary learning is encountering new words, that is having a source for words. The students strategies here included “learning new words by reading books,” “listening to TV and radio,” and “ reading newspapers and magazines” (Payne in brown, 1995: 372).

  b. Getting the word form.

  The second step essential to vocabulary learning appears to be the getting of a clear image

• – visual or auditory or both - of the form of the vocabulary item. The important of having a clear image of the “form” of a word becomes apparent when students think about what happens when they try to retrieve words.

  c. Getting the word meaning.

  The third essential step in the learners reported strategies is the one which is most often associated with the idea of vocabulary learning getting the word meaning.

  d. Consolidating word form and meaning memory.

  The fourth necessary step revealed by brow n and Payne‟s analysis requires the consolidation of form and meaning in memory. Many kinds of vocabulary learning drills, such as flash cards, matching exercises, crossword puzzle, etc., strengthen the form meaning connection.

  e. Using the word The final step in learning words is using the words. Some would argue that this step is not necessary if all that is a receptive knowledge of the word, such an argument can apply to many of the other processes is well, since a great amount can be comprehended in context even if a leader or listener knows nothing about many of the words being used.

C. Testing Vocabulary

  The knowledge of vocabulary is essential to the development and demonstration of linguistic skills. The knowledge of vocabulary can be shown by vocabulary achievement test. That is needed to look for some general indication of the adequacy of student‟s vocabulary. One alternative is to use a vocabulary test. Hughes (2003: 148) mentions that items for testing vocabulary involve a number of different operations, which are mentioned below:

  1. Item Writing

  a. Synonyms The example is:

  Choose the alternative (A, B, C, D) which is the closest meaning to the word on the left page. fee

  A. expense B. coast

  C. free D. change

  This item has probably chosen the first alternative because of the word free. The third choice may have been chosen because of the similarity of its sound to that of fee. Then, coast replaced cost, recognizing that it is one of the closest meanings of fee on which they are being tested, would dismiss cost immediately. It is noted that all of the options are words which candidates are expected to know. Whether these distracters would work as intended and would only be discovered through pretesting. b. Definitions The example is:

  Gardening means A. becoming a garden

  B. growing a garden

  C. looking likes a garden

  D. searching a garden

  It is noted that all of the options are about the same length. It is said that test-takers who are uncertain of which option is correct will tend to choose the one, which is noticeably different from the others. If

  

growing a garden is to be used as the definition, then the distracters

  should be made to resemble it. In this case, the item has included some notions of intensity in all of the options. In addition, the difficult word could be one of the options. The example:

  One word that means to growing a garden is

  A. growling

  B. gardening

  C. planning

  D. investing

  c. Gap filling (multiple choice) Context, rather than a definition or a synonym, can be used to test knowledge of a lexical item. The example is:

  The flour is …………… together with eggs and milk to make the dough.

  A. Baked

  C. Added

  B. Mixed

  D. Filled

  It is noted that the context should not itself contain words which the candidates are unlikely to know.

  2. Production The testing of vocabulary productively is so difficult that is practically never attempted in proficiency tests. Information on receptive ability is regarded as sufficient. The suggestions presented below are intended only for possible use in achievement tests.

  a. Pictures The example is:

  Each of the objects drawn below has a letter against it. Write down the names of the objects: A ……………………………………… B ……………………………………… C ……………………………………… D ………………………………………

  b. Definitions This may work for a range of lexical items. The example is:

  A …………………… is a person who looks after our teeth.

  …………………… is frozen water. …………………… is the second month of the year.

  c. Gap filling This can take the form of one or more sentences with a single word missing. The example is:

  Because of the snow, the football match was …………………… until the following week. I …………………… to have to tell you this, Mrs. Jones, but your husband has had an accident.

  In this research, the kind of item that was used for testing vocabulary is the item writing. Among the three types of the item writing, it was chosen the two of them: definitions and synonyms. That was because the items of definitions and synonyms were most suitable for testing vocabulary to young learners.

D. Scattergories 1. The Definition of Scattergories

  There are several definitions of Scattergories from several experts, which can complement the definition from one to another definition.

  Those definitions are described as follows: Danna (2010: 4) states that Scattergories is a party game in which players compete for points by naming unique items in various categories.

  Mendham (2006: 1) says that Scattergories requires a good vocabulary and a quick mind. Personalized Scattergories variants can easily be made with lists of categories adapted to the interests and knowledge of a particular group of friends.

  Rasinski and Padak (2004: 92) mention in their book that Scattergories is one of the popular word games that uses the skill of categorization to build vocabulary. This works especially well as a partner or team activity. In creating the Scattergories matrix, it can be put several letters along one dimension of the matrix and a list of four or five categories at least that can generate many words (e.g., vegetables, countries, animals). The categories can be general or developed from themes or content areas.

  For example: Letters Fruits Animals Names

  A apple Ant Anna D durian Dog Diana

  M melon Monkey Maria 2.

   The purpose of Scattergories

  Rasinski and Padak (2004: 92) mention that the purpose of Scattergories is to broaden students‟ conceptual knowledge by connecting vocabulary words to specific categories.

3. The Procedures of teaching vocabulary using Scattergories

  Scattergories is easy to learn because it is a simple game to play and the rules are short. This game is played by players aged 12 and up in large classes (students play in teams) or small classes (students play individually).

  There are international rules for this game, but the teacher can use their own rule makes the students are comfort in following the game without ignoring the main rule of Scattergories.

  Danna (2010: 4) states that Scattergories is divided into three rounds. The procedures of teaching vocabulary using Scattergories in class are described as follows:

  a. Teacher gives a paper, which contains columns with 12 different categories for each student.

  b. Teacher provides a bottle, which contains 20 rolling alphabet papers and then decides a student who will shake the bottle. The first rolling alphabet paper which come out from the bottle is decided the letter to be used.

  c. The teacher set the time that is three minutes for students to write down a word, name, or phrase to fit each category in their paper. The students must use the die letter to be the first letter in their answer. E.g. if the die letter is 'M' and the category is the names of fruit, the students may guess mango, melon, mangosteen, and etc.

  d. When the time is up the students stop writing and then the answers are compared and each student corrects their own answers by circling any reasonable answers that do not match any of the other students‟ answers. Zero point are given for duplicate answers and 1 point for any reasonable non-duplicate answer.

  e. The second round is started by rolling the bottle again; if the letter is the same as the first round then the dice is re-rolled.

  f. After the second round, a third round is played. g. The totals of all the rounds are added up and the winner is the student with the highest score. If there is a tie, an extra round is played to decide the winner.

  In this research, there were several considerations to adapt to young learners. The considerations were described as follows: a. It was considered that the paper which contains columns with 4 up to 6 different categories for each group of learners.

  b. It was considered that the point for duplicate answers is 1 point and the points for any reasonable non-duplicate answer are 2 points. It is to avoid of getting 0 point if all answers of learners are the same as other learners. In addition, there is nobody who gets 0 point.

4. The Rules of Scattergories

  Danna (2010: 7) mentions the rules of Scattergories in his book, which are described as follows: a. The first (or only) word of players‟ answer must begin with the given starting letter.

  b. If there is hesitant answer then all the players must vote to wheather the answer is accepted or not. If the vote is tied then the word is disallowed.

  c. The 20 alphabets which are written on the rolling paper that comes with Hasbro‟s Scattergories game includes 20 different letters of alphabet. Q, U, V, X, Y, and Z are excluded because each one is hard to use as a starting letter for all of the categories on any one list. d. A player cannot use the same word for two different categories in a single round of scattegories.

  e. Double points can be scored can be used for using two words for an answer that begin with the same letter, for example in the actresses category if a player gave Susan Sarandon as the answer, two points would be awarded to him or her, unless another player had thought of the same answer.

  f. 'A', 'An' and 'The' cannot be used as the start of an answer.

  g. If the answer is a person ‟s name, then the first or last name can be used. e.g. Sophia Loren can equally be used in the category for

  Celebrities as 'L' or 'S' - 'Loren, Sophia' or 'Sophia Loren' h. Creative answers are acceptable, as long as the group decides it is ok.

5. The Adaptations of Scattergories

  Rasinski and Padak (2004: 92) mention the adaptations of Scattergories, which are described as follows: a. Alphaboxes (Hoyt: 1999) is a variation of Scattergories that can be played in teams or as a whole group. In this version, students brainstorm a word for every letter of the alphabet. The words are related to a topic or a text that has been read. (If the topic is “animals,” for example, students might brainstorm ant, bear, cat, dog, elephant, etc.) Students can generate as many topic-related words as they can think of for each letter. b. Players can develop a Scattergories or Alphaboxes matrix for a bulletin board. Leaving it up to students for a week and asking them to add words as they think of them.

  c. Students can develop their own Scattergories matrices for others to solve.

6. The Advantages of Scattergories

  There are several advantages of Scattergories, which can be taken to teach vocabulary. Those advantages are described as follows: a. Scattergories is a game that is able to help students to recycle their existing vocabulary (Koprowski, 2006: 1). When the students play

  Scattergories, it means that they have to recall their vocabulary so that they can guess correctly based on the category of vocabulary list.

  b. Mendham (2006: 1) says that Scattergories is extremely easy to learn and if it is played in the right spirit can provide plenty of laughter.

  c. This game provides a great challenge that can make students have to think of an answer harder and use vocabulary creatively within time limits to win the game and also win a better lexicon in the process. During this process, it can make the students to learn vocabulary cooperatively and competitively. In this game the students have to work together and compete with other teams.

  d. It encourages the students to manage time well. In playing this game, the students have to manage time well because the time that is provided is limited. By managing time well, there is a chance to be the winner.

7. The Disadvantages of Scattergories

  The disadvantages of Scattergories are as follows:

  a. Getting nervousness when students have to think of vocabulary creatively that fits the category which is possible that anyone else will think of; and

  b. Getting stressful when they cannot find any word starting a certain letter until the times is up.

E. The Previous Relevant Studies There are several previous relevant studies of using Scattergories.

  They are described as follows:

  1. Koprowski (2006: 79) states that Categories (Scattergories or The Alphabet Game) is a solution for forgetting shortly after the lesson through the expanding rehearsal so that it decreases the rate of forgetting.

  2. Mulquiney, et al. (2007: 37) concludes that there was more improvement of the language that has already known by learners after introducing and practicing Scattergories as one of exam strategies and techniques. Besides that, it was found that students were extremely motivated when they saw that they were improving, but the biggest surprise was the fun they got out of using the techniques themselves.

  3. Talak-Kiryk (2010: 7) states that Scattergories is a kind of game which can be used in foreign language classroom for teenagers who are learning to talk, just as they do for toddlers (children). They need to be challenged to think independently and creatively so that Scattergories was used to make them work collaboratively and communicate effectively in order to be successful.

  F. Basic Assumption

  In teaching-learning vocabulary, it is important to retain and to remember the vocabulary that has been acquired before in students ‟ mind or it can be said that the vocabulary has to be recycled. By recycling the vocabulary, students can be helped to memorize the vocabulary longer.

  Having a long term memory about the vocabulary makes them easily to retrieve it when they need it. By implementing Scattergories, the students will recycle their vocabulary. The recycling process is when they have to think harder and use vocabulary creatively to win the game and also win a better lexicon. Then, the unforgettable moments when they play this game will help students to memorize them easily within fun way. In this case, it is assumed that teaching vocabulary using Scattergories is effective and then, this game will be implemented as a technique to teach vocabulary.

  G. Hypothesis

  Based on the explanation previously, it was hypothesized that teaching vocabulary using Scattergories game is effective.