IMPROVING VII-E STUDENTS’ ACTIVE PARTICIPATION AND THEIR VOCABULARY ACHIEVEMENT BY USING FLASHCARDS AT SMPN 9 JEMBER IN THE 2015/2016 ACADEMIC YEAR

Abstract

This classroom action research was intended to improve VII-E students’ active participation and vocabulary achievement by using flashcards at SMPN 9 Jember in the 2015/2016 academic year. This research was started by interviewing the English teacher of the seventh grade students in the school. The interview was intended to get the problems faced by the students in the teaching and learning process of vocabulary. Based on the interviewing, the students had more problems than the other classes in the teaching and learning process of vocabulary. The problems were the students had limited vocabulary and the class had the lowest score in vocabulary achievement. Then, based on the observation in class VII-E, the students were not active in the teaching learning process. In this case, Flashcards was chosen to help the students improve their active participation and vocabulary achievement. This research was done in two cycles and each cycle covered four stages of activities namely; (1) the planning of the action, (2) the implementation of the action, (3) observation and evaluation of the action, and (4) reflection of the action. The evaluations conducted of this research were product and process evaluations. The product evaluation was conducted at the end of each cycle by administering a vocabulary achievement test. The process evaluation was conducted by observation in each meeting to evaluate the students’ active participation during the teaching and learning process of vocabulary. In this classroom action research, the researcher and the English teacher implemented the actions collaboratively. The research targets were 75% of the students got score at least 74 and 75% of the students actively participated in the teaching and learning process of vocabulary by using flashcards.