Improving the Fifth Grade Students9 Vocabulary Achievement through Pocket Chart at SDN 5 Pasirian- Lumajang in the 2008/2009Academic Year

Abstract

This classroom action research was intended to improve the fifth grade students’ vocabulary achievement through pocket chart. Based on the result of the interview with the fifth grade English teacher of SDN 5 Pasirian- Lumajang, it was found that the students of class VB still had problems with vocabulary and memorizing the meaning of the words. It was shown by the students’ previous score in vocabulary that was low (the mean score was 60.2). Additionally, the students tended to get bored in learning vocabulary. It might be caused by the way English teacher gave vocabulary material were quite monotonous. The English teacher still asked the students to find the difficult words from the text and let the students look up the meaning of the difficult words in dictionary. The activities did not involve the students actively and made the students get difficulties in memorizing the words. Considering the problems above, pocket chart was chosen as the appropriate aid to overcome the problems above under the reasons that pocket chart is motivating. The students could hold the cards and put the cards in the chart. By having pocket chart, the students can move the cards and arrange the cards into a sentence. It makes the students interested in following the lesson. This means that pocket chart was able to arouse the students’ motivation and improve the students’ vocabulary achievement. In addition, pocket chart could help the students remember the words easily since pocket chart has color cards and involved the students in the teaching learning process. The students would be easy to recall the vocabularies they have learned if they learn the vocabularies in fun and attractive way This classroom action research was done in two cycles, in which each cycle covered four stages, including: planning, implementation, observation, evaluation and reflection. Each cycle was conducted in two meetings and vocabulary test was conducted in the third meeting. The data collection methods used were vocabulary test and observation to get the primary data, and interview and documentation to get the secondary data. In the first cycle, it was known that the students’ mean score of vocabulary test was 69.08. The number of the students who got score >65 was 23 students (67.64%). These results have not achieved the target requirement yet because there were only 67.64% of the students who got score >65 (it was targeted 75% of the students got score >65). Meanwhile, the results of observation showed that the percentage of active students increased from 64.70% (22 students) in the first meeting to 73.52% (25 students) in the second meeting. However, its percentage had not achieved the target requirement of process evaluation yet, that was 75% of the students actively involved in the teaching learning process. Therefore, it was necessary to continue the actions to the second cycle by revising some necessary aspects in the first cycle. In the second cycle, the results of vocabulary test were better (M= 76.32) than in the first cycle (M=69.08). The number of the students who got score >65 was 27 students (79.41%). Besides, the students’ activeness in the teaching learning process of vocabulary also improved from 76.47% (26 students) in the first meeting to 82.35% (28 students) in the second cycle. Thus, the percentage of students’ activeness in the teaching learning process of vocabulary through pocket chart had achieved the targeted percentage of >75%. As a conclusion, teaching vocabulary through pocket chart could improve the students’ vocabulary achievement and the students’ activeness in the teaching learning process. Therefore, the teacher was suggested to use pocket charts as alternative aids in teaching vocabulary since pocket chart can motivate and attract students in learning vocabulary.