IMPROVING STUDENTS’ VOCABULARY MASTERY USING
CONTEXTUAL TEACHING AND LEARNING
(A Classroom Action Research at the Third Grade of SD Negeri Kalimacan
in Academic Year 2009/2010)
In recent year, English as a foreign language has been learned by
Indonesian learners since they were in Elementary School. At the elementary
school, English is taught as local content subject. The importance of English as
the key to the international communication and commerce makes it compulsory
subject for students from the Junior High School up to the Senior High School.
English vocabulary is one of the elements in teaching English at the
elementary school. Vocabulary is the basic competence that must be reached by
students in order to get other competencies like reading, writing, listening, and
speaking. It is difficult to master the other competences without mastering and
understanding the vocabulary. Rivers in Nunan (1991: 117) argues that the
acquisition of an adequate vocabulary is essential for successful second language
use because without an extensive vocabulary, we will be unable to use the
structures and functions we may have learned for comprehensible communication.
In the field of education, including English education in Indonesia, our
education is still dominated by the view that knowledge is a set of facts which
have to be memorized. Teaching learning process focuses on teacher as prominent
source of knowledge. As a result, students have problems to understand academic
concepts as what they usually get is something abstract and lecture method. Many
students can serve good level of memorization of teaching material but in the end of teaching learning process they actually do not understand it at all. Actually
memorization of teaching materials lasts for a short time in their memory and
knowledge is not sets of facts which have to be memorized. Zahorik (1995) in
DEPDIKNAS (2003) states:
Knowledge is constructed by humans. Knowledge is not a set of facts,
concepts, or laws waiting to be discovered. It is not something that exists
independent of knower. Humans create or construct knowledge as they
attempt to bring meaning to their experience. Everything that we know,
we have made.
Based on this opinion, learning process which focuses on the teacher is no
longer suitable. It is because our brain is continuously finding meaning and saving
meaningful cases, and learning process has to involve students in finding
meaning. Teaching and learning process has to make it possible for the students to
understand the meaning of their learning material.
Contextual teaching learning is one of the methods appropriate in teaching
English for children. In a CTL learning environment, students discover
meaningful relationships between abstract ideas and practical applications in a
real world context. Students learn something by experiencing by themselves.
Contextual Teaching and Learning creates a team, whether in the classroom,
language laboratory, or in the worksite. Students learn best b y actively
constructing their own understanding (CTL Academy Fellow, 1999).
Considering the importance of implementing a method in teaching
English, the writer decides to carry out a research on “Improving Students’
Vocabulary Mastery using Contextual Teaching Learning (A Classroom Action 6
Research at The Third Grade of SDN Kalimacan, Kalijambe, Sragen in Academic
Year 2009/2010)