CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1. 1 Background of the study
English
is the most important language in the world, which is used by people all over
the world as an international language to
communicate to one another either in spoken or written interaction.
Based on the needs to communicate to others, people more realized that English
is very important to be learnt. However, students sometimes do not realize that
mastering English is important. They learn English just because it is a
compulsory subject and what they want to achieve is getting good marks and passing the exam. Because of motivation
that depends on needs, interests and sense of values, they start to learn
English
seriously. Although some cannot reach the optimal target sometimes. Mackey
(1965: 125) said that somebody has different motivation, by saying: Motivation determines how much a person will
learn and when he will learn it. This depends on what he wants to know and how badly
he wants to know it. It depends on how he thinks he can learn it, and on what
he believes to be to his advantages, it depends on the needs, interests, and
senses of values of an individual.
Nowadays,
in line with the government’s plan for the nine-year basic education, English
teaching at elementary school has been possible. According to the 1994
curriculum, elementary school may add any lesson as far as it is not in the contradiction with
the goal of the national education. The
additional lesson should be in line with the needs of the local community. The
examples of the additional lessons offered by some school are dancing,
handicraft, gardening, and English. So English can be taught as Muatan Lokal
(Mulok), or a local content subject.
The
objectives of teaching English to elementary school students as a local content
subject are: “The students are expected to have the skills to communicate in
simple English, with the emphasis to have speaking skills using selected topics
related to their environmental needs such as tourism industry” (Depdikbud,
1995: 2). It is said before that in elementary school, English is taught as one
of the local contents subject. Here, the students learn English for the first
time. The function of teaching English in the elementary school is to introduce
English as the first foreign language of our country to the elementary school
students. Teachers teach English to 4, 5, and 6 grades of students. The aim of
teaching English here is to motivate these students to learn English at higher
levels of education, in this case is in junior high schools. Therefore, they just learn the simple
English patterns including vocabulary, grammar etc. Wells say:” All but a small
minority of children reach the age of schooling with a vocabulary of several
thousand word, control of the basic grammar of the language of their community,
and an ability to deploy these resources in conversation arising from the many
and varied situations that occur in their everyday lives”(1978: 16) in Wray
(1994: 10). From the quotation above, the writer concludes that children learn
vocabulary both at home and school. In daily life, they use their mother tongue
to communicate with their family,
teachers, friends, and others. They do not feel difficult because they use it
since they were children. As the writer’s statement above, English is a foreign
language not the first language. Therefore, the children cannot master the
vocabulary items automatically.
Teaching
vocabulary is not easy for teachers.
Although the teaching of English vocabulary starts at elementary schools for several areas, the result has been
considered unsatisfactory. In this case,
effective and professional teachers are needed. The teachers must be creative
to select the best technique to be used in the classroom. It is supported by
Finnochiaro who says that learning methods and techniques of teaching English
as a second language should be needed by teachers to develop????????????????????????????????????????
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