ENGLISH VOCABULARY MASTERY OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL STUDENT OF SDN 2 KRANGGANHARJO

Aprilia, Deri (2009)

Abstract
This study is aimed to describe the students’ ability of vocabulary mastery in SDN 2. The result of the study is expected to contribute to the teaching learning of vocabulary. The study was located in SDN 2 Krangganharjo, especially class VI. The researcher took 38 students as the subject of the research. The object of the research was English vocabulary mastery in SDN 2 Krangganharjo. The researcher gets the data of this research from the scores and informant. The techniques of collecting data are test, score and interview. The result of the research shows that the vocabulary mastery is 42.11% or 16 students have very good score, 50% or 19 students have good score, and 7.89% or 3 students have fair score.

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. Background of the Study
Teaching English at elementary school is regarded as one way to teach
English as early as possible to make students more familiar with it. In
Indonesia, the teaching of English to children is developed based on School-
based Curriculum.
Based on School-based Curriculum, the goals of teaching English to
elementary school students are to make the students memorize the names of
public places and direction, understand activity in holiday and the equipment
used, describe people and the object, the names of shopping places and the
name of the daily needs. In addition, the students can use ownership and use
that in dialog, and can understand and retell the story in simple sentences and
good pronunciation.
Vocabulary is a list of words and words themselves mean any unit of
language used in writing and appear between space and hyphen. Meanwhile,
Hornby (1983: 419) defines vocabulary as”the total number of words in
language that are used by a person.” Learners must have access to the
meanings of words that teachers, or their surrogates (e.g., other adults, books,
films, etc.), use to guide them into ontemplating known concepts in novel
ways (i.e. to learn something new). Thus, when we want to understand more
we must have Vocabulary mastery.
In mastering vocabulary, a learner should understand several aspects as the
requirements, namely: apply it in its spoken and written form, know about the
meaning of word and the using of grammar in appropriate forms, pronounce in
recognizable way and spelling correctly. In addition, the learner should
understand the ways to combine one word with other words. Besides, they
should know the relation among words to know the connotations and
associations in order to use it on the appropriate level and situation (Palmberg,
1986: 20). Thus, it is very important to master vocabulary.
In the first observation in the SDN 2 Krangganharjo, the students of
SDN 2 Krangganharjo understand English language in some aspects, which
mean that some of them understand the meaning of words but they can not
write this word. Sometimes they can speak but they can not write what they
speak. Because of the reason, the writer wants to know deeply about the
achievement of the students of SDN 2 Krangganharjo in mastering
vocabulary. The reason why the writer chooses SDN 2 Krangganharjo
especially the sixth year because the students have been taught English from
the fourth grade. The writer wants to know the number of vocabulary they
have after three years they learned English. The writer did not choose the
students of the fourth or fifth year because they still have less vocabulary than
the sixth grade. Although it teaches begin at fourth because English is not a
subject that gives from central government it is just the subject from the local
government.
Finally, based on the above reason in this research paper, the writer
takes a title “ENGLISH VOCABULARY MASTERY OF ELEMENTARY
SCHOOL STUDENT OF SDN 2 KRANGGANHARJO.” Hopefully the result
of this research will give benefit for education in the country.
B. Problem of the Study
Based on the research background, the writer is going to discuss the
general question “How is the vocabulary mastery of the students?” This
question specified is into three questions as follows.
1. How is the students’ understanding of the meaning of the words?
2. How is the students’ ability to spell the words?
3. How is the students’ ability to pronounce the words?
C. Limitation of the Study
The research focuses only on the English vocabulary mastery of SDN 2
Krangganharjo especially the students’ ability in meaning, spelling, and
pronunciation of the vocabulary. And the subject of this research is the
students of elementary school especially the sixth year students, consisting of
38 students; 20 girls and 18 boys.
D. Objective of the Study
The general objective of this research is to know the English vocabulary
mastery of the students’ of SDN 2 Krangganharjo. Based on the problem
statement the specific objectives of the research are to:
1.find out the students’ understanding of the meaning of words.
2. find out spelling the students ability to the words.
3. find out the students’ ability to pronounce the words.
E. Benefit of the Study
There are two benefits of these study; they are theoretical benefit and
practical benefit:
1. Practically, for the teacher, the result of the study will give general picture
about the success and the effectiveness of their method in teaching English
vocabulary.
2. Theoretically, this research will enrich the theory of the students’
vocabulary mastery.
F. Research Paper Organization
In writing this paper, the writer divides it into five chapters and the
organization is as follows.
Chapter I is introduction that presents background of the study, problem
of the study, objective of the study, limitation of the study, benefit of the
study, and research paper organization.
Chapter II concerns review of the related literature that covers previous
study, general concept of vocabulary, kinds of vocabulary, vocabulary
mastery, vocabulary limitation, types of vocabulary, the importance of
vocabulary, vocabulary test, spelling, pronunciation, and young learners.
Chapter III is research method. It discusses type of research, place and
time of research, subject of research, object of research, method of collecting
data, scoring system and technique for analyzing data.
Chapter IV presents research finding and discussion.
Chapter V is conclusion and suggestion