The Effect of Using Definition Maze Game on the Tenth Year Students’ Vocabulary Achievement at SMAN Arjasa Jember in the 2012/2013 Academic Year

Abstract

Vocabulary is one of the English components that is very important to be mastered by students before they learn speaking, listening, writing and reading. Tarigan (1989: 2) argues that the quality of someone„s language skill depends on his quality and quantity of vocabulary they have. Students will get difficulties in learning listening, speaking, reading, and writing without having vocabulary, as lack of vocabulary will make students difficult to master the language. Generally students find difficulties in learning vocabulary. It is very difficult for the students to enlarge or enrich their vocabulary because they sometimes have lack of correspondence between individual words and individual meaning (Schmitt, 2000:2). So that in order to motivate the students and to avoid boredom in learning vocabulary, the teacher needs some challenging teaching techniques in teaching vocabulary. One of the interesting techniques in teaching vocabulary is using games. This research was conducted to investigate the effect of using Definition Maze Game on the tenth year students‟ vocabulary achievement at SMAN Arjasa Jember in the 2012/2013 academic year. The population of this research was the tenth year students of SMAN Arjasa Jember in the 2012/2013 academic year. Homogenity test was done to know the homogeneity of the population and to determine the research samples. The result of the homogeneity test was analyzed using ANOVA and the result showed that „F0‟ was higher than F table (5.14>2.05). It means that the population was heterogeneous. Thus, two classes which had the closest mean score were chosen as the respondents of the research. The calculation revealed that two viii classes which had the closest mean score were X 1 and X 2. The total number of the respondents was 76 students that consisted of 38 students of X 1 as the experimental group that was taught vocabulary by using Definition Maze Game, while the control group consisted of 38 students of X 2 that was taught vocabulary by using lecturing technique. The primary data of this research were collected from the students‟ scores of vocabulary test, while the supporting data of this research were gained through interview and documentation. The primary data were collected and then analyzed by using t-test formula. The result indicated that the value of t-statistic was 3.95, while the t-table with the significant level of 5% and the degree of freedom (Df) of 74 was 1.67. The value of t-test was 3.95 and it was higher than 1.67 (3.95>1.67). Therefore, the null hypothesis (Ho) which was formulated: “there is no significant effect of using Definition Maze Game on the tenth year students‟ vocabulary achievement at SMAN Arjasa Jember in the 2012/ 2013 academic year” was rejected. On the other hand, the formulated alternative hypothesis (Ha): “there is a significant effect of using Definition Maze Game on the tenth year students‟ vocabulary achievement at SMAN Arjasa Jember in the 2012/ 2013 academic year” was accepted. This finding suggest that the students‟ who were taught by using Definition Maze Game could memorize the vocabulary well, as Wright et al. (2006:2) state that a game helps encourage many learners sustain their interest and put something learn in their memory. It means that, game can help the students to achieve their learning goals by using interesting activities especially in overcoming the problem of learning vocabulary. The research results proved that there was a significant effect of using Definition Maze Game on the tenth year students‟ vocabulary achievement at SMAN Arjasa Jember in the 2012/2013 academic year. Therefore, it is recommended for the English teacher to apply Definition Maze Game as an alternative technique in teaching vocabulary.