For a long time, there has been a
lot of discussion about language are used and learn. People learning English wanted
to learn to write and speak this is “Standard English “. Vocabulary has
important role in developing reading, speaking, listening and writing beside
that learning vocabulary can easier young learner to develop their four
language skill. Many teachers are aware of importance of teaching vocabulary to
their children, but they do not know to teach clearly, especially in elementary
school.
Elementary school is the first
stage in basic education level. Tamsik Udin (1987) stated that human being who
has individual and social characteristic, at age 7 years old to 12 years old
that involve in teaching learning process. Here, students learn some skill in
order to develop their ability and prepare for the next education stage in the
basic education level.
The curriculum in elementary school
is arranged to reach national educations’ purposes. The important things in
curriculum arrangement is that curriculum must be appropriate with the
students’ grow, circumstance of environment and also develop of technology.
Elementary school curriculum
consists of national curriculum and local content curriculum. National
curriculum is curriculum that arranged by education department. The content of
curriculum has to learn by students in Indonesia and the Indonesians’ school students
in abroad.
In curriculum there are standard
competence and basic competence. It is use to difference the level of learning
achievement. One of the standard competences of English in Fifth grade in
Elementary school is understand the simple instruction with action in school
context. It means that students of elementary school were expected able to
communicate with simple instruction by using English in the school context.
Every standard competence has basics competence deal with the lesson that will
learn.
In Elementary school, students were
taught about the basic of English. They will learn about the simple subject
such as things around them, the name of fruit, sport, game and giving
instruction, etc. In other word, they will learn a lot about vocabulary.
Vocabulary is a list of words with
their meaning glossaries and sum of words used in language. Those words have
meaning and convey some message (Hurt, 1976: 14). Vocabulary is one of the
importance components of the language. Vocabulary can be seizing one word,
phrase or more that explain one idea. Also short sentences, used repeatedly in
communication activity orally.
Vocabulary learning in Indonesia
considered as one of base material taught to the students before they learn
other material in English domain. The recently developing, vocabulary is taught
integrally with other skills and elements of language as like: listening,
speaking, reading and structure. But teaching vocabulary in Indonesia,
especially in elementary school is mostly taught in conventional way.
The way to present the vocabulary
is really influence the student’s achievement in learning vocabulary.
Unfortunately, many teachers do not understand how the good way to deliver the
material is. It is also to be reason why student’s ability in mastering English
is still less, although they have learnt it since in early age.
