SKRIPSI BAHASA INGGRIS THE CORRELATION BETWEEN STUDENTS' ACHIEVEMENT IN VOCABULARY AND READING ABILITY

loading...

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

A. Background of Study

English is an international language. Almost all countries have adapted English used as a compulsory subject at schools. The national education has decided that English as a foreign language taught in Indonesian schools. It learned started from primary schools up to university. People realize that teaching English at this level becomes very important and need much concern. As an English teacher, he or she demands to explore effective techniques, method, and approaches.

The students have to master the four basic language skills. They are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Beside such basic skill, the student has to master some vocabularies as well as possible.

Vocabulary is one important aspect in learning a foreign language. With a limited vocabulary anyone will also has a limited understanding in terms of speaking, reading, listening, and writing. It is true that it might be impossible to learn a language without mastering vocabulary. Vocabulary is one of the problems confronted by English language learners. Because of the limited vocabulary, the learners cannot communicate to others clearly. Sometimes it is difficult to group the idea transmitted to them. The acquisition of a large number of vocabularies can help the students read, speak, listen, and write. A good

vocabulary and ability to use words correctly and effectively can help the students make school work easier and more rewarding, and also many tests that they take in school include vocabulary questions. The more vocabularies they know the better their chance to do well on an English test.

According to H. G. Tarigan, "Kualitas keterampilan berbahasa seseorang jelas tergantung pada kuantitas dan kualitas yang dimilikinya maka semakin besar kosakata yang kita miliki maka semakin besar pula kemungkinan kita terampil berbahasa".¹ (The quality of language skill depends on the quantity and quality of vocabulary. The more vocabulary we have, the bigger possibility to have a skill to use the language).

Mastering vocabulary is the ability to get or to receive a lot of words. By having and mastering vocabulary we will know the meaning of vocabulary in the context. Measuring vocabulary helps to avoid making mistakes in understanding.

On the other hand, foreign students learning English reading text, one lack of vocabulary, whereas in fact vocabulary is the most important thing in reading skill.

Nowadays, the ability to comprehend English is necessary for peoplean also to understanding English, people have to able to communicate English and also able to read many kinds of English text. The ability to read is crucial in contemporary society. People find many texts written in English, from holiday

¹ Henry Guntur Tarigan, Pengajaran Kosakata (Bandung: Angkasa, 1986) p.2

3

brochures to academic books, newspaper, advertisements, etc. therefore, the ability to read English text in any form will give a great deal of advantages in our lives.

Harry Madox said that "reading is the most important single in study".² And the curriculum stated that out of the four skills, listening, speaking, reading, and writing, the main emphasis is on reading skill because it is believed that acquisition of reading in a second or foreign language is priority.³

Reading is good thing in life because it is a factor of great importance in the individual development and the most important activity in school. It is needed in every level of field of study. Particularly in cases when students have to read English materials for their own special subject.

Being able to read in English is very important as it is known that success in reading is the most necessary because it is a basic tool of education. All the subjects in Elementary School such as mathematics, science, language, and others depend on the ability to read. In high school and college reading ability becomes even more important. Through reading we acquire new ideas, obtain needed information, seek support for our ideas and broaden our interest. We can also get the message that the writer had expressed. The ability to read helps to distinguish human being from other animal.

² Harry Madox, How to Study (Greenwich: Fawcet Premier. 1963) p.76

³ Depdikbud, Kurikulum 1994, GBPP SMU (Jakarta: Depdikbud, 1994) p.1

And one of the purposes of teaching English of a foreign language to Indonesian people is that they can read, grasp the idea and understand the book written in English. To achieve those purposes, students need a lot of words of English to master. As Norbert said " vocabulary is one of the most important skills in a language".⁴ So to achieve the success in language teaching learning process especially English, vocabulary is one of important factors in all language teaching.

Based on the description of vocabulary and reading above, it shows that they have close relation. To get empirical data about it the writer will organize the test result to prove the influence of student's achievement in vocabulary and reading. By getting the grades, the writer tries to find an answer that student's achievement in vocabulary influencing reading.

B. Limitation and Formulation of the Problem

To make the problem clear, it is necessary for the writer to limit the problem. The limitation of the problem as the follows: The correlation between students' achievement in vocabulary and reading ability.

Based on the statement above, he writer formulates the problem: is "Whether students' vocabulary has a correlation with reading in Second year students of MAN II Bekasi?

5

C. Objective of the Study

The objectives of the study as below:

a.       The writer wants to know how far vocabulary supports the students in reading.

b.      The writer wants to know whether students who have a good result in vocabulary test also have a good result in reading.

D. Methodology of Research

This work is based on field research. In the field research, the writer carries out the observation at MAN II Bekasi, and gives some test of vocabulary and reading, and then the test calculated. At the same time the writer also does an interview to they are English teacher of that of the second year. Library research applied through reading some books and theories relevant to the topics.

After scoring of such test, the writer will calculate Coefficient Correlation. Then the writer will have some concerning with the students' score vocabulary and reading. The writer tries to determine that are there any correlation between students' achievement in vocabulary and reading? These scores will use the formula of Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient.⁵

E. Organization of the Study

This "skripsi" consist of four chapters. Chapter one is introduction, consisting of background of the study, limitation and formulation of the problem, the objective of the study, methodology of research and organization of he study.

Chapter two is theoretical framework. That is explains vocabulary, definition of vocabulary, kinds of vocabulary, teaching vocabulary. And also explains reading, definition of reading, aims of reading, types of reading, reading comprehension, factors affecting comprehensions, correlation between vocabulary and reading.

Chapter three is research methodology finding. It involves the purpose of study, place and time of study, method of study, the technique of sample taking, the technique of data collecting, the research Instrument, technique of data analysis. In research finding involves the description of data, the analysis of data, and test of hypothesis.

Chapter four is conclusion and suggestion.

CHAPTER II
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

A. Vocabulary

1. Definition of Vocabulary

In this chapter the writer wants to explain definition of vocabulary in order to understand a language the learners have to understand the definition of vocabulary first. It is difficult to make one definition of vocabulary. So, the writer tries to take it from some references.

Vocabulary is the "Everest of language".¹ For this reason, a person who wants to be able to communicate in a certain language has to master the vocabulary of that language for the first time.

Vocabulary as one of the language aspects have to be learned when people are learning a language. Good mastery of vocabulary is important for anyone who learns the language used in listening, speaking, writing, and reading besides grammar. A learner of the foreign language will speak fluently and accurately, write easily, or understand what he or she reads or hears if he or she has enough vocabulary and has a capability of using it accurately. S. H. Burton said: "without a large vocabulary, it is impossible to

8 use English language precisely and vividly".²According to Collier "When a student has mastered the fundamental grammatical patterns of language, his next task is to master its vocabulary, or at least that of its vocabulary that he need."³

It is obvious that vocabulary is very important in learning a language, especially English, because the English vocabulary is extremely large and varies as well. Therefore, it is highly essential for English teachers to help their students in mastering vocabulary.

Norbert Schmitt gave the definition of vocabulary as follows. Vocabulary is a basis of a language: it is very important to be mastered first. We cannot speak well and understand written materials if we do not master it. Norbert Schmitt stated that no matter how successfully the sound of the foreign language is mastered, without words to express the wider range of meanings, communication in a foreign language just cannot happen in any meaningful way.⁴

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English defines "vocabulary means all the words that someone know, learn of uses, or the words that are typically used when talking about particular subject or a list of words with the explanations of their meanings in a book for learning foreign language".

Webster has three definition of vocabulary as follows:

1.      A list or collection of words and phrases usually alphabetically arranged and explained or define.

2.      A list or collection of terms or codes available for use.

3.      A sum or stock of word employed by a language group, individual or work or in a field knowledge.⁶

In some literature, we found the meaning of vocabulary. There are some definitions of vocabulary. A.S. Hornby in "Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English" states that vocabulary is:

1.              Total number of words which (with rules for combining them) make up a language.

2.              (Range of) words known to, or used by, a person, in a trade, profession, etc.⁷

Another dictionary, Webster's New World College Dictionary, defined vocabulary as a list of words ands, often, phrases, abbreviations, inflectional form, etc, usually arranged in alphabetical order and defined or otherwise identified, as in a dictionary or glossary. Vocabulary is considered as the most important part in learning a language. It is impossible for the students to read, write and speak a foreign language without having enough knowledge of the vocabulary. Learning the new vocabulary does not only mean memorizing the form of the word but also understand its meaning.

2. Kinds of Vocabulary

Vocabulary varies in the four skills of language, listening, writing, reading and speaking. Generally, a student will absorb listening and speaking vocabulary before coming to the reading and writing vocabulary. But in real situation, the process may change, especially in foreign language teaching. Reading vocabulary may become the first stage before processing the speaking and listening vocabulary.

According to the basis of frequency, vocabulary can be divided into two kinds; there are high frequency vocabulary and low frequency vocabulary.⁹

a. High frequency vocabulary consists of words that are used very often in normal language, use in all four skills and across the full range of situation of use. High frequency vocabulary consists of 2000 word families, which are about 87% of the running words in formal written text and more than 95% of the words in informal spoken texts.

b. The low frequency vocabulary on the other hand, covers only small

proportion of the running words of a continuous text, it means that low

frequency vocabulary is rarely, used in common activity of English

language. This group includes well over 100.000 word families.

I.S.P Nation calls those vocabularies as motivated vocabulary and unmotivated vocabulary. Motivated (active) vocabulary consists of all the words we need to use and feel no reluctance in using in our everyday life. While, the unmotivated (passive) vocabulary can be divided into two groups:

1. Words which are only partly understood and are not well known enough to use actively, and

2. Words which are not needed in daily communication.¹⁰

From the explanation above, we can conclude that active vocabulary is all the words used in daily activities, partly while, passive vocabulary is all the words recognized and understood, and not necessarily used. Jo Ann Aebersold and Mary Lee Field classify into active and passive.
a. Active vocabulary refers to put item which the learner can use appropriately
in speaking or writing, and it is also called as productive vocabulary,
although in fact it is more difficult to put into practice, its means that to use
the productive vocabulary, the students must to know how to pronounce it

well, they must be familiar with collocation and understand the connotation meaning of the word. This type is often used in speaking and writing skill.

b. Passive vocabulary refers to language items that can be recognized and understood in the context of reading or listening and also called as receptive vocabulary.

Besides receptive and productive vocabulary, Jo Ann Aebersold and Marry Lee Field also classified vocabulary into topic-specific or content- specific vocabulary. Topic-specific or content-specific vocabulary is the words that appear frequently in a particular text because they are related to the topic of the text.¹¹ For example, in a text on the topic of ice cream, the words flavor, texture, cone, toppings and carton might appear frequently. So, those words can we call as topic-specific or content-specific vocabulary.

Meanwhile Djalinushah and Azimar Enong divided vocabulary into two, namely general vocabulary and special vocabulary. General vocabulary is of the words that are used in general. There is no limit of field and user. Special vocabulary is that the words that are used in the certain field and job, profession of special science and technology.¹²

From the explanation above, we know that every experts in every book is different in classifying the kind of vocabulary, because every person has different way in showing and telling their opinions and ideas. Some of them who emphasize vocabulary to the items which the learners can use appropriately in speaking or writing and to the language items which the learners can use appropriately in speaking or writing and to the language items that can be recognized and understood in the context of reading and listening and some of them classify vocabulary that they have made are different, but the point is the same, because their classification are based on the different sides and aspects.

3. Teaching Vocabulary

Because of the importance of vocabulary, it needs a serious attention in learning vocabulary from both learners and teachers. It becomes a great challenging act for the teacher to teach vocabulary, what kind of methods they use, what kind of vocabulary that they give, or how many vocabularies that they should teach. There are some key principles of teaching vocabulary:¹³

1.      Build a large sight of vocabulary.

2.      Integrated new words with previous words.

3.      Provide a number of encounters with a word.

4.      Promotes deep level of processing.

5.      Facilitate imaging.

6.      Make new word "real" by connecting them to the student's word in some way.

7.      Use variety techniques.

8.      Encourage independent learning strategies.

As it has already mentioned at the beginning that there is no right or best way to teach English skill, it all depends on the type of students, the school system and curriculum, the word that are targeted and many other factors. The choice of vocabulary to teach is also limited to the learner's need, experiences and interest.

B. Reading

1. Definition of Reading

Reading knowledge is broadened and well-informed by reading. Reading is really crucial our knowledge is usually broadened and informed by reading activities, and the activity of reading can be found in the internet, book, etc.

Students should practice their reading more and more, so that their reading ability and their reading experience will be improved. They may find difficulty and frustrating, but if they keep practicing, they will have a good sense of English and will help them to grasp the total meaning of the words. Another thing should be remembered in reading that students should not open

a dictionary too often because it will slow down their reading rate and can make them bored. If they find new words, they should try to guess the meanings by trying to find out any clue words according to the context in the passages

There are a lot of definitions of reading. Linguists give definitions about reading, their opinions about reading vary.

Some of them say reading is the process to get, to understand, to catch the content of the reading. And also reading is a process to understand a written text which means extracting the required information from it as efficiently as possible.

According to Walter R. Hill "Reading is what the reader does to get the meaning he needs from textual sources."¹⁴ Meanwhile Guy L. Bond and Eva Bond Wagner explained the meaning of reading as "the process of acquiring and author's meaning and of interpreting, evaluating, and effecting upon those meanings."¹⁵

F. Dubin explained the meaning of reading as "reading is primarily a

cognitive process, which means that the brain does most of the work."¹⁶

Those statements above show the various definitions of reading, they mean generally. Reading means a complex process of thinking in assigning meaning from printed materials which involve most of the reader's intellectual act such as pronunciation and comprehension in order to receive ideas or information extended by the text. It can be seen that reading is not only looking at word in the form of graphic symbols but also getting meaning from word to word or line to line to understand what we read. It means that reading is a process to understand the text content and to get information.

2. Aims of Reading

A person may read for many purposes, and purpose helps to understand more what is read by people. If he is reading for pleasure or reading for pure recreation and enjoyment, he may read either quickly or slowly based on the way he likes or feels. But if reads for studying or setting information such news, science or same line, which are part of his study or assignment he does it very slowly and carefully.

According to Paul S. Anderson, there are seven aims of reading, reading for details and fact, reading for main ideas, reading for sequence or organization, reading for inference, reading for classifying, reading for evaluating and reading for comparing of contest.

a.       Reading for details and fact is reading to know what is done by the subject of the story

b.      Reading for main ideas is reading to get the problem statement

c.       Reading for sequence of organization is reading to know each part of the story

d.      Reading for inference is reading to know what is the writer meant by its story

e.       Reading for classifying is reading to find unusual things

f.       Reading for evaluating is reading to know the value of the story

g.      Reading for comparing or contest is reading to compare the way of life of the story with the way of life of the reader.

Another author said that the aim of reading is:

a.       Reading for pleasure

b.      Reading for information (in order to find out something or in order to do something with the information you get).¹⁸

Meanwhile Lester and Allice Crow classified two general purposes. These purposes includes; Leisure-time reading and more serious reading

1.      Leisure-time reading. It is reading for enjoyment which may vary in to follow your favorite sport, comic, article, and movie program.

2.      More serious reading. It is reading to study for a goal such as to obtain factual information and solve problems.

3.    Types of Reading

Depending on the purposes of reading it also can be classified into two types of activities, intensive and extensive reading.²⁰

a.    Intensive reading:

Intensive reading means reading shorter texts to extract specific information. This activity is likely more to emphasize the accuracy activity involving reading for detail. The process of scanning takes a more prominent role here than skimming. Reader is trying to absorb all the information given, example: Reading dosage instruction for medicine.

b.   Extensive reading:

Reader deals with a longer text as a whole, which requires the ability to understand the component part and their contribution the overall meaning, usually for one's own pleasure. This is a fluency activity, mainly involving global understanding. Example: Reading a newspaper, article, short story or novel.

In other words Francoise Grellet defines that "skimming is quickly running one's eyes over a text to get the gist of it. While, "scanning is quickly going through a text to find a particular piece of information."²¹

So if a person wants to get an address, phone number, a date in a book over paragraph in order to locate a special piece of information, that activities is called "scanning" but if he reads all the passage in order to know about what it deals about his reading, that is called "skimming".

In skimming a reader must ask himself what the text is talked about. He must move his eyes quickly over the text, looking especially at the main title, the beginning and the end, and the first sentence of paragraph. In scanning the reader must ask himself weather or not the text contains what he is looking for and if any, he must find where is located, he moves also his eyes more or less quickly over the text for specific items.

4. Reading Comprehension

The essence of reading act is comprehension: it becomes a primary challenge in teaching or learning of reading skill. In order to learn or understand the massage of the author, the students are hoped to have the ability to comprehend the written textbook. Comprehension means understanding the meaning or the point of a topic, F. Dubin, D.E Eskey and

W. Grabe show a more specific explanation, comprehension means relating what we do not know or new information, which is not random collection of facts but a "theory of a world" in each of our heads.²²

Reading with comprehension means to understand what has been read. Dorothy Rubin states that reading comprehension is a complex intellectual process involving a number of abilities. The two major abilities concern word meanings and reasoning with verbal concepts.²³ English has been taught as a foreign language in our country, however, it does not mean that the result of teaching English in our school is satisfactory, despite the fact that it is taught continuously for six years at the high school, three years at SMP, and three years at SMA. Ramelan say that most SMA graduates are still very poor in their reading comprehension, since they cannot usually read or understand articles in English dailies.²⁴

There are different lists of skills that they feel are basic to understanding. The skills usually listed are as follows:²⁵

1. React to the sensory images (visual, kinesthetic, taste, smell) suggested by words.

2.         Interpret verbal connotations and denotations.

3.         Recognize and understand the writer's purpose.

4.         Determine whether the text affirms, denies, or fails to express an opinion about a supposed fact or condition.

5.         Identify the antecedents of such words as who, some, or they.

5. Factors Affecting Comprehensions

As it has already been shown, reading comprehension need some intellectual ability to master it. There are six basic factors that influence the students' ability in comprehending written materials.

a.     Background Experiences

Students who have little experience may have some difficulties in comprehending many ideas and activities with which other children are familiar before they learn in school. For an example, a student who never sees or hears about the mountain, and in some occasions dealing with it will find the story hard to follow, so he must have experiences in his background that enables him to bring personal meaning to the events an feelings if the story.

b.     Intellectual Abilities

Second aspect of comprehension is the students' ability to think, it all depends on his intellectual development. Although the teacher gives the same textbook and same purpose of reading, the result of reading may

be different. The number of ideas that they understand and the depth of their understanding will be largely dependent upon their general capacity to learn. The slow learning or dull-normal students cannot be expected to show same reaction or gain the same appreciations as the bright students when they read together for pleasure or to gain information.

c.    Language Abilities

The third aspect is the students' language abilities, including semantics or word meaning and grasp of syntax. Understanding of semantics comes from experience with words in various, personally meaningful settings. A grasp of syntax is needed to recover the structure of the language, so the students have to master syntax which links deep and surface structure.

d.   Affection

Such as personal interest, motivation, attitudes, beliefs, feelings; students will attend a better understanding to the story about a topic if they find personally interesting. The cause of greater understanding is also affected by reader's attitude and beliefs, readers could understand materials better when it matches their own attitudes and beliefs on a topic. This affection is usually linked to each other.

e.    The purpose of reading

This fifth factor also determines the comprehension ability, student could also have difficulties to understand the story if he reads it with no particular purpose in mind. Comprehension is always directed and controlled by the needs and purposes of an individual.²⁶ If that so, they must establish their own purpose before reading and commits the entire story to memory.

f.    Skills of comprehending

Another factor which influences the depth and the amount of comprehension is the skills that the students have developed for that purpose; the ability to comprehend develops gradually from the simple to the complex skills. The teacher give a balanced program, include direct teaching of techniques which will aid the student in developing attitudes and skill of thoughtful, purposeful reading.

6. Correlation between Vocabulary and Reading

One reason why children find reading in some subject fields difficult because of their lack of vocabulary. Whereas in fact of vocabulary is the most important thing in reading skill. Most of us if we find the difficult word, we still just continue our reading in the hope that the word we read is not really important or that it's meaning will become clear later on. But sometimes these word that we passed usually as the key of our reading and understanding. We

can not catch and grasp the idea from our reading as well as possible. So looking up the difficult words in dictionary is better for us.

NB : INGIN BAB 3 4 DAN 5 SILAHKAN TEMAN-TEMAN REQUEST DIKOLOM KOMENTAR DENGAN MENINGGALKAN E-MAIL .............
 

loading...