THE EFFECT OF GUESSING GAME ON VOCABULARY ACHIEVEMENT OF THE EIGHTH GRADE STUDENTS AT SMPN 1 PANJI SITUBONDO

Abstract

Purnata (2013) states that vocabulary is a crucial component in the process

of learning English. For Indonesian students, vocabulary has been considered difficult to master and begun to ignore. It is because the existence of vocabulary in basic competence of curriculum that students must master the language skills, while vocabulary is included with the fourth language skill which is not directly taught. Thus, students only focus on how they learn the language skills appropriately without concerning the components of language. In this case, the teacher needs to apply appropriate activities which could catch students’ interest of learning vocabulary. Playing games is one of creative activities which are frequently applied to get students’ attention of learning the material. Zaabi (2004) points that applying games may make learning more enjoyable and develop different abilities in students. On the other word, students would discover their ability of learning language through games. There are many types of games, including guessing game which as, Tuan (2012) suggests that word guessing helps young learners retain new word in long-term memory and become familiar with new vocabulary in an enjoyable way. Besides, Zaabi (2004) also agrees that memory and guessing games help young learners to memorize a word contextually. Thus, the researcher has an idea to conduct an experimental research to know the effectiveness of guessing game in teaching vocabulary.

Based on the problems described above, this research was aimed to be investigated. The research design used was quasi-experimental research with posttest only control group design. The population of this research was the eighth grade students of SMPN 1 Panji Situbondo. To select the sample, the researcher ensured the homogeneity of the population. For the sake of this, the researcher used the eighth grade students mean score of odd semester and analyzed it using levene test. The result of levene test showed that the significance of the homogeneity of variances was 0,212 which was higher than 0,05. It meant that the population of the eighth grade students of SMPN 1 Panji Situbondo was homogeneous. Though a lottery, VIII G was selected as the experimental group which received guessing game as the treatment. VIII I was chosen as the control group which received no treatment. In teaching vocabulary for the control group, dictionary definition and translating were used as the common techniques used by the English teacher of the eighth grade of SMPN 1 Pnaji Situbondo. The data was obtained from the vocabulary posttest. Independent sample t- test was used to analyze the result of the posttest. The mean score of post-test in experimental group was 76,79 while the mean score of post-test in control group was 69,68. In addition, based on the sig, value of independent sample t-test, the value of sig. column (2-tailed) was 0.001 which was also less than 0.005. Hence, the value of significance (2-tailed) was lower than 0,05, it indicated that the null hypothesis ( ): “There is no Significant Effect of Guessing Game on Vocabulary Achievement Of the Eighth Grade Students at SMPN 1 Panji Situbondo” was rejected. On the other word, the alternative hypothesis “There is Significant Effect of Guessing Game on Vocabulary Achievement Of the Eighth Grade Students at SMPN 1 Panji Situbondo” was accepted. it could be concluded that there was a significant effect of guessing game on vocabulary achievement of the eighth grade students at SMPN 1 Panji Situbondo.