THE EFFECT OF USING CROSSWORD PUZZLE ON THE EIGHTH GRADE STUDENTS’ VOCABULARY ACHIEVEMENT

Abstract

One of the requirements of having the ability to communicate in English is by having adequate vocabulary. Vocabulary, according to Prasarntong and Dennis (2015: 1), is a central of a language and is important to the learners. Without having vocabulary, the process of language learning cannot be achieved. Thus, vocabulary is considered valuable to learn as it gives contribution to the students to perform or practice their language skills well. The researcher believes that teaching vocabulary should not be meaning-free, but be facilitated by an interesting technique to provide the students opportunities to enrich their vocabulary effectively. Therefore, it is teacher’s responsibility to seek an interesting technique to motivate students in learning vocabulary. One of the techniques that the researcher implemented was by using a language game named crossword puzzle. In addition, students who succeed in completing crossword puzzle are able to use the vocabularies they have learnt (Allen, 1983: 52). Therefore, choosing crossword puzzle as a game is expected to attract their attention. Besides, it can also be used to enrich their stocks of vocabulary through an interesting and motivating game, because interested and motivated students will have a better chance of learning vocabulary successfully. This experimental research was conducted to investigate the effect of using crossword puzzle on the eighth grade students’ vocabulary achievement. The population of this research was the whole eighth grade students. The research respondents were determined based on the results of homogeneity test by using ANOVA formula in SPSS program. Since the population was homogeneous, sampling was done by lottery to choose both experimental and control groups. As the result, 30 students of VIII C were selected as experimental group whereas 29 students of VIII G were chosen as the control one. The experimental group was exposed to the use of crossword puzzle whereas the control group received no treatment as they were only taught by question and answer technique. After presenting the materials to both experimental and control groups, the researcher measured the students’ vocabulary mastery by administering the posttest. The researcher analyzed the results of post test by using Independent sample t-test in SPSS program to reveal the mean difference between the groups. Based on the calculation of the data analysis, the significance value was 0.036. As it was lower than 0.05, it could be proved that null hypothesis was rejected while the alternative hypothesis was accepted. In other words, there was a significant effect of using crossword puzzle on the eighth grade students’ vocabulary achievement.