THE USE OF SHOW AND TELL (S&T) METHOD IN TEACHING VOCABULARY OF JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL (SMP)
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. Background
English was as an international language used as a tool for communication in daily life and in academic activities. In Indonesia, English as a foreign language was formally taught in schools from junior high school until university. It had become an obligatory subject and as one of the subjects examined in the National Examination. Furthermore, there were so many elements in English such as vocabulary. Vocabulary was a smallest element in English that had to be mastered by students because without vocabulary we could not understand each other’s and we could not express our opinion, feeling and ideas. On the other hand, teaching vocabulary was very hard, because the teachers had to choose an appropriate ways in order to make the learning process effectively. So, the students enjoyed and relaxed learning vocabulary and they could master it. There were many factors that made the students difficult in mastering vocabulary. Allen (1999) stated that lack of interest, self confidence, motivation, teacher and environment are factors that hamper students to master English vocabulary.
Based on the pre-observing that was done in SMP, the researcher found 3 problems; 1) The students could not understand the meaning and did not know how to write the word, because the students were very lazy to memorize the meaning of the words, the students just saw the words on dictionary without memorizing their meaning and without giving attention about the written form. 2) The students could not pronounce the words well, because the students just read the words based on its writing, they did not observe the way to pronounce the words. 3) The teacher still used a traditional method in teaching English, in this problems the teachers just gave list vocabulary to students and asked them to memorize the vocabulary, which made the students did not interest and feel bored in learning process.
By those conditions, the researcher assumed that the teaching of English must be really improved with some practical and easy ways. The teacher had to choose an appropriate method in teaching vocabulary, because it was not easy to teach English especially vocabulary without using suitable method. Teaching vocabulary was like teaching other social science, which needed suitable techniques or methods in order to get the successful learning. One of the good techniques or methods was Show and Tell (S&T) method. The method used by the teacher could influence the success or failure in language learning.
Gordon, M & Harel, D (2000) stated that Show and Tell (S&T) is the new method combines natural language parsing methods with user interaction and uses these to create an intelligent user interface. Show and Tell (S&T) method is a good and new method for helping the teaching and learning process, it can improve students’ intelligence in vocabulary by translating the.......(Baca Selengkapnya)
