THE USE OF THE FLANNEL BOARD TO IMPROVE THE SEVENTH GRADE STUDENTS’ VOCABULARY ACHIEVEMENT OF SMPN 10 JEMBER IN THE 2009/ 2010 ACADEMIC YEAR

Abstract

This research was a classroom action research. It was intended to improve the quality of the teaching learning process, especially the teaching of vocabulary. It was conducted at SMPN 10 Jember which was chosen by purposive method with the following considerations: 1) The flannel board had never been used in the English teaching and learning process by the English teacher at the school. 2) The researcher was familiar with this kind of media. 3) The headmaster and the English teacher gave permission to conduct the classroom action research at the school. 4) The teacher was willing to collaborate with the researcher to do this research. The subjects of the research were the seventh grade students’ of SMPN 10. Based on the result of structured interview with the Seventh grade English teacher, the students of the seventh grade especially class VII G had difficulties in learning vocabulary and the lack of interest in memorizing new words given. In addition, the data of the research were taken from the vocabulary achievement test as primary data and the interview and the observation as supporting data. Considering the problems above, this research was undertaken to overcome the problems by using the flannel board. The procedures were as follows: at first the researcher introduced the flannel board to the students and gave some leading questions to the topic given. The next step was meeting some new words; in this stage the researcher gave the examples of new words and their meaning that the students must remember. Then, the researcher asked the students to do the exercises on the flannel board based on the researcher examples which was previously given. After that, the students discussed them with their friends and the researcher led them to correct the students’ understanding. In the implementation, there were two meetings in cycle 1 and two meetings in cycle 2. This classroom action research was done with a sequence of steps, namely the planning of the action, the implementation of the action, classroom observation and evaluation, data analysis and reflection of the action. The classroom observation used an observation checklist to identify the students’ active participation in the teaching and learning process of vocabulary, while the vocabulary achievement test used objective test in the form of multiple choice, completion and matching. There were two criteria used to evaluate the success of the actions in this research. They were: (1) the actions were considered successful if 70% of the students were actively took part in the teaching and learning process of vocabulary by using the flannel board.(2) The actions were successful if 75% of the students got score at least 70 in the vocabulary test in each cycle. The results of the actions in cycle 1 were unable to reach the target requirement. There were 46.1% or 18 of 39 students who were actively took part in the first meeting of cycle 1 while in the second meeting of cycle 1 there were 27 of 39 students or 69.2% who were actively took part. In addition, the percentage score of the students’ vocabulary achievement test had not fulfilled the target yet. There were only 64.1 % or 25 of 39 students could achieve the target score 70(􀀀70). But, there were an improvement on the students’ interest and vocabulary achievement in cycle 2. There were 74.36 % or 29 of 39 students who actively took part in the teaching and learning process of vocabulary in first meeting while in the second meeting there were 76.92 % or 30 of 39 students were interested. Then, the result of the test also improved to be 76.9 % or 30 of 39 students could achieve the target score. Therefore, the actions were stopped. Considering the research result, it was suggested that the English teacher use the flannel board as the alternative materials in teaching English vocabulary because it has been proved it could improve both students’ interest in learning vocabulary and students’ vocabulary achievement.