THE EFFECT OF USING FLASHCARDS ON THE ENGLISH VOCABULARY ACHIEVEMENT OF THE SEVENTH GRADE STUDENTS AT SMP NEGERI 1 WULUHAN IN THE 2010/2011 ACADEMIC YEAR

Abstract

Vocabulary is one of the language components that play an important role in the process of learning English. Tarigan (1989:2) states that the richer someone masters vocabulary, the bigger chance to master the language. It means that the quality of someone‘s language skill depends on his quality and quantity of vocabulary they have. In learning vocabulary, many students have difficulty in memorizing the meaning of the word. Because of that reason, the teacher needs to use media that can help the students in understanding the meaning of vocabulary easily. To solve the problem above, the researcher used flashcards as media to help the students memorize and understand the meaning of new vocabulary. The researcher used media because it is not only reduced the students’ boredom but also could motivate the students in learning. Arsyad (2006:120) states that the importance of using flashcards is to enable the teachers in giving such efficient and interesting way of vocabulary teaching. This means that media can be very useful and meaningful in language learning process. The purpose of this research was to know whether or not there is a significant effect of using flsahcards on grade seven students’ vocabulary achievement at SMPN 1 Wuluhan. The research design was quasy experiment. It was begun from conducting homogenity test, deciding the experimental group and control group, giving treatment to the experimental group, giving the same posttest to the both classes, and the last was analyzing the result of the posttest by using t-test formula. The area of this research was SMPN 1 Wuluhan. It was chosen because flashcards had never been used by the English teacher in teaching English especially for teaching vocabulary. Based on the result of the homogeneity test, class VII C and class VII D were chosen as experimental group and control group. The result of this research showed that there was a significant effect of using flashcards on grade seven students’ vocabulary achievement. It was proven by the result of t-statistic value was 2.86 and t-table value with significant level of 5% was 2.000. It means that the t-statistic value was higher than t-table value. It could be understood that there is a significant effect of using flashcards on the English vocabulary achievement of the seventh grade students at SMPN 2 Wuluhan. So that, it is suggested that the English teacher uses flashcards as a teaching media to teach vocabulary and use various media to teach English subject especially vocabulary.