The Effect of Using Crossword Puzzles on the Eighth Grade Students’ Vocabulary Achievement at MTs kebunrejo Banyuwangi;

Abstract

Vocabulary is one of the language components that is essential to be mastered by the students. It is very important for the students to learn vocabulary in order to support the four language skills. It means that it is impossible to learn a language without vocabulary because the language itself consists of vocabulary. Therefore, the students should have enough vocabulary if they want to master a language. In order to make the students more interested in learning vocabulary, the teacher should use an appropriate and interesting technique in the teaching learning process. Since, an interesting teaching technique will make the students more enthusiastic in following the teaching learning process so that the students will get better vocabulary achievement. One of the techniques that can be used by the teacher to make the students more interested in learning vocabulary is by using games. Games are highly motivating because they are amusing and interesting. By using a game, the students can involve into many activities which are useful for the teaching learning process. There are many kinds of game which can be used in teaching vocabulary and one of them is Crossword Puzzle. It shows that Crossword Puzzle is one kind of game that can be used in teaching and learning vocabulary. By using Crossword Puzzles, the students will be more interested and feel more relax in learning the vocabulary. In addition, if the students feel more interested and more relax in learning vocabulary, they will be easier to understand the words they are learning so that it will affect their vocabulary achievement. This research was a quasi experimental research. The objective of this research was to know whether or not there was a significant effect of using xiii Crossword Puzzles on the eighth grade students’ vocabulary achievement at MTs Kebunrejo Banyuangi in the 2014/2015 academic year. The area of this research was MTs Kebunrejo Banyuwangi. This school was chosen purposively because the use of Crossword Puzzles had never been applied in teaching learning process in this school. The population of this research was the eighth grade students of MTs Kebunrejo Banyuwangi in the 2014/2015 academic year. The research respondents of this research were chosen by using cluster random sampling by lottery since the population was homogeneous based on the result of homogeneity test. The total number of the respondents was 83 students which consisted of 38 students of VIII D as the experimental group taught vocabulary using Crossword Puzzles, while the control group consisted of 46 students of class VIII E taught vocabulary by using Question-Answer technique. The data of this research were collected from the students’ scores of vocabulary test, interview, and documentation. The vocabulary achievement was collected from the vocabulary post test score. Then, the scores were analyzed statistically by using t-test formula to find the significant difference between the experimental and the control group. The result of t-test formula analysis showed that the value of t-test was higher than that of t-table (3.582>1.989). It means that there was a statistical difference between the experimental and the control groups. It indicated that there was a significant effect of using Crossword Puzzles on the eighth grade students’ vocabulary achievement at MTs Kebunrejo Banyuwangi in the 2014/2015 academic year.