Teaching English Vocabulary Through Pictures for Young Learners Essay

1.1 Background All languages consist of words. Languages emerge first as words, both historically, and in terms of the way each of us learned our first and any subsequent languages. Vocabulary plays an important role because it appears in every language skills. Mastering vocabulary is very important for the students who learn English as a foreign language. It is because vocabulary is a key to young learners understanding what they hear and read in school, to communicating successfully with other people and a person may be judged by others based on his or her vocabulary.

There are many advantages of mastering vocabulary. The important thing that we can get from learning vocabulary is learning fast. The other advantages are improve public speaking and easy to read English text.

Nowadays, many university students can not understand English. Whereas, in the university, there are a lot of teaching materials that use English. This will hamper them in studying the science they are studying. From the experiences, many people said that learning English is difficult and the lesson makes them bored.

This is not at all interesting for their first impression, but unfortunately, they did not enjoy it and felt oppressed. It makes them did not like English anymore and always felt oppressed everytime they learn English.

They must have strong foundation for their future. As we know that English is very important for everything. If they do not have strong base, they may be difficult to understand English in the future and for their learning in university. As I conclude that learning English for young learners is very important, we have to focus on base of the children learning English. And I think teaching English vocabulary through pictures for young learners is one of the strategy to make funny learning and their first impression for learning English is good.

1.2 Theoretical Framework “Vocabulary is a core component of language proficiency and provides much of the basis for how well learners speak, listen, read, and write.” (Jack, 2002:255). Why use pictures? “It is because verbal language is only a part of the way we usually get meaning from contexts. Thing we see play an enormous part in affecting us and giving us information.” (Andrew, 2009:5). Deduce and infer, not only from what we hear and read but from what we see around us and from what we remember having seen. “Pictures are not just an aspect of method but through their representation of places, objects and people they are an essential part of the overall experiences we must help our students to cope with.” (Andrew, 2009:5).

Vocabulary can be defined, roughly, as the words we teach in the foreign language. However, a new item of vocabulary may be more than just a single word: for example, post office, and mother-in-law, which are made up of two or three words but express a single idea. A useful convention is to cover all such cases by talking about vocabulary items rather than words.

All languages consist of words. Languages emerge first as words, both historically, and in terms of the way each of us learned our first and any subsequent languages. Vocabulary plays an important role because it appears in every language skills. Vocabulary building is really important in any language learning. Everybody who learns a language as a foreign language is hoped to know and master the vocabulary to improve the language skills. Vocabulary becomes a major problem in learning English, teachers emphasizes on this matter earlier. In teaching vocabulary, generally the teacher teach new words taken from reading text. It means that she integrates vocabulary with reading. This integration will lead to integrative lesson plan.

Why use pictures? It is because verbal language is only a part of the way we usually get meaning from contexts. Thing we see play an enormous part in affecting us and giving us information. Deduce and infer, not only from what we hear and read but from what we see around us and from what we remember having seen. Pictures are not just an aspect of method but through their representation of places, objects and people they are an essential part of the overall experiences we must help our students to cope with.

Specifically, pictures contribute to: * Interest and motivation; * A sense of the context of the language; * A specific reference point or stimulus.

1.3 Research Question 1. What are the students’ difficulties of learning vocabulary? 2. What is the impact to the students of the use of picture in learning vocabulary? 3. How do pictures improve students’ vocabulary?

1.4 Aims of the Research The main purposes of this research are: 1. To identify the students’ difficulties of learning vocabulary. 2. To identify the impact the students of the use of picture in learning vocabulary. 3. To identify the effectiveness of using pictures in improving students’ vocabulary.

1.5 Significance of the Research The result of this research hopefully gives positive contribution to improve vocabulary teaching techniques implemented in English classroom. It will be completed with the finding about difficulties faced by teacher during the activity is going on. The researcher also expects that this pictures media can be one of the precise devices to help students learn vocabulary. And for the future researcher to help them as a reference for their research.

1.6 Scope of the Research The research overviews the teaching of English vocabulary through pictures to young learners in this case to elementary school students. This will be a report of an observation conducted at Gunung Rahayu Elementary School Bandung. Which involved one teacher and forty students. The study focuses on investigating and describing the use of pictures in teaching English vocabulary limited only to nouns. At the research specified only to describe the implementation of pictures in teaching English vocabulary that is experienced by students and teacher in the classrom.

1.7 Research Methodology This research is conducted in the form of a survey. There are observations, interviews and questionnaires. In this research the data would be collected from every meeting conducted in the classroom through observation. Then for the interview, it was conducted to the students who were involved in the lessons. The interview it self was conducted individually and in a group. In this research, there are many steps in data collection. For the first step, selecting the class for observation of teaching english vocabulary through pictures. The second step, we divided the class into two groups, experimental group and control group.

The third step is giving a pretest to the experimental group and control group. After that, analysis the pre-test result both of the groups. The fourth step is giving treatment to experimental group, but the control group is not given the special treatment. Then the sixth step is giving post test for the experimental group and control group. The seventh step is doing statistical analyses of the post test results. The statistical analyses included to compare pretest and post test the experimental group and the control group, to compare post test results between experimental and control group. The eighth step is checking for the significance of relationship or difference by consulting the statistical tables. Then the last step is writing the report.

1.8 Clarification of the Terms To avoid misunderstanding several terms are clarified as follows: 1. Vocabulary in this research is all the words known and used for all people. Furthermore, based on Jack, vocabulary is a core component of language proficiency and provides much of the basis for how well learners speak, listen, read, and write. 2. Picture in this research is a visual media for making student interest to learn vocabulary. Furthermore, based on Ann Raimes, picture is drawings, photographs, posters, slides, cartoons, magazines advertisements, diagrams, graphs, tables, charts, and maps, can be valuable resource for teaching writing. 3. Young learner in this research is students in 4th grade of elementary school. Furthermore, according to Etty Maryati Hoesein, young learners are the students of Elementary School who are at grade four up to grade six. Their ages range from ten to twelve years of age. They have learned English for about one up to four years.