1.

0 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Reflection on Teaching Experience

Based on past teaching experience, as a researcher, I had found

out that dictation had played an important role in the English
language curriculum in Malaysia, particularly in primary schools.
Dictation often acts as a memorization exercise or a spelling-checking
assessment in which teachers read the text, pupils dictate it, and then
the teachers read the text the third time for pupils to check through
their work

Plus, based on passed teaching experience, when I read a

passage to the pupils phrase by phrase, the pupils copied the phrase
or words and the passage then got corrected by teacher. This sort of
procedure was actually ineffective in promoting communication,
interaction or creative language use, and other skills that we value
highly in todays world of ESL classroom. Pupils, especially the less
capable pupils, either work under stress or give up in the boring and
threatening lesson. They gradually develop a negative attitude
towards dictation lessons that pressure their learning.
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Actually, after a period of time teaching the pupils, as a

researcher, I realize that rather than mechanical drilling or assessing,
dictation can also be treated as a teaching and learning exercise in
which pupils learn to improve their language learning. I can

use of different genre and a number of dictation activities to conduct

lessons so as to change a boring, threatening and stressful classroom
atmosphere into a relaxing and supportive and enjoyable learning
environment which subsequently brings a positive influence on pupils
performance to master the vocabulary.

1.2 Review of Related Theory

1.2.1 Vocabulary
Based on my past teaching experience, I found out that
vocabulary is very important to communicate with others and
understanding what he is reading. We cannot take the words we know
just for granted. Instead, we need to master the words to use in other
contexts as well. Course books and teachers tend to treat vocabulary
only for granted while the grammatical skills take centre stage. As a
teacher, the pupils need to know and understand what we are saying
so that they can communicate with us.

However, Ellis in Goodridge (2010) states that knowing the word

in a piece of discourse facilitates understanding which in turn allows
the grammatical patterning to become more transparent. In addition,
it is possible to communicate very effectively with imperfect grammar
if the correct vocabulary is known; indeed research suggests that
lexical errors affect comprehension more than grammatical errors. It
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makes vocabulary important in our daily life especially for young

learners because they who have better vocabularies are often able to
think more deeply, express themselves better, and learn new things
more quickly. McCarten (2007:2) explains it is equally important to
help pupils with how to learn vocabulary as well as what to learn. It
can be said that teaching vocabulary is important and how to lead the
students to study vocabulary.
Pikulski (2004) states that the vital importance of vocabulary for
success in life means people are able to express themselves clearly
and effectively if they have adequate vocabulary. Having better
vocabulary can improve pupils ability to think or express their mind.
Furthermore, having many vocabularies will make the pupils be able
to reveal something that is needed to communicate. They should be
taught equally and more attention should be given to teach
vocabulary in order to arrange some words into a sentence even a
paragraph.

In line with the above statement Carter & Nunan (2001:42) write
that English teachers learn to ignore the significance of vocabulary in
their teaching. In fact the use of suitable vocabulary can cancel out
structural incorrectness. Based on this authenticity, recently, linguists
have increasingly turned their attention to vocabulary, learning
stressing their importance in language teaching and reassessing some
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of the ways it is taught and learned. It means that vocabulary plays

very essentials task in language teaching. As the objective of
language teaching is to develop pupils skills namely: listening,
speaking, reading and writing; the acquisition of meaning also
influences the performance of students.

Based on the preliminary observation that I had done before

doing the research, I identified that many pupils does not understand
when teacher spoke and gave instruction to the pupils in the
classroom. I also had conducted a simple and basic dictation activity
to see their performance and level in spelling the words. So, the as the
result, many of them did not have enough vocabulary and couldnt
spell the words correctly.
Many of them also did not focus and had seems to lose interest when
they learnt English in the school. It caused many pupils unable to
communicate and write words correctly in English very well.

1.2.2 Dictation
Dictation is the process of writing down what teacher has said to
the pupils; dictation offers a way for a teacher to record pupils
thoughts or ideas when the writing demands surpass writing skills.
Wilson (2005) states that dictation activities allow pupils to practice
their listening and writing skills in very controlled setting. Dictation
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provides a chance for the students to model many writing behavior

including handwriting, matching sounds-to-letters to spell words, and
sentence formation.

Dictation has been used in language assessment for a long time,

but its benefit in language teaching and learning has been questioned
by some language teachers. Currently dictation seems to be
undergoing a revolution as a useful teaching device. It is thought that
dictation can help develop all language components, such as
vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation. However, there are no data
on the usefulness of dictation at tertiary level.

In its simplest form, dictation refers to a person reading some

text aloud so that the listener can write down what is being said.
When used in the language classroom, the aim has traditionally been
for students to write down what is said by the teacher, word for word,
later checking their own text against the original and correcting the
errors made. While this certainly has its uses, there are countless
variations that can make it more interesting and learner centered.

Dictation is a decoding-recoding activity. It is the act or process

of dictating material to another for transcription. Oller (1979) defines
it as a psychologically real system that sequentially orders linguistic
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elements in time and in relation to extra linguistic context in

meaningful ways. According to the statement above, the researcher
uses the dictation to practice and motivate students vocabulary
mastery so their mastery in this language feature can be effectively
improved.

1.3 Review of Related Literature

1.3.1 The Concept Of Vocabulary
For many pupils, vocabulary is regarded as the basic ability that
is used to understand the meaning of words that the pupils read and
hear throughout their life. Mastering vocabulary is one of the main
abilities that influence the success in learning language. Vocabulary is
assumed as the language component that is used an aid to the four
major skills, but nonetheless the role of vocabulary in learning English
cannot be ignored. Thornbury (2002:22) states that vocabulary is not
an all-or-nothing phenomenon on, that is a case of either knowing or
not knowing. The success of learning vocabulary is related to the
vocabulary size that is mastered by pupils.

A second language learner needs longer time to learn enough

vocabulary compared to someone who live in a natural setting. Every

learner has different amount of vocabulary, depending on the

demand. In the daily conversation, there are so many words that
English user usually uses; it is including the suffixes and the word
itself. It has difference quantity of every person because it also affects
by the environment and the habit of user itself.

In addition, Linse & Nunan (2005:121) state vocabulary is the

collection of words that an individual knows. Every individual has their
own words collection that they use to communicate. The process of
taking and adding words into their own word items have begun from
the young age. In the school environment, the young learners are
usually taught vocabularies beginning from the noun. This is the most
simple word class that is easy to understand and teach because it is
very easy to illustrate and students found it easier to imagine.
Meanwhile, for other kinds of word classes, such as verb, adverb,
adjective, noun, pronoun, conjunction, preposition and determiners
will be taught coincide with it.

Besides that, McCarten (2007) states that learning vocabulary is

largely about remembering. Remembering is the main concept in
leaning vocabulary that cannot be ignored. English learners have to be
able

to

remember

most

of

words

that

they

find.

Not

only
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remembering, they have to understand about the meaning of those

words. Remembering a lot of vocabulary will give many benefits to the
learner to improve their other language ability because knowing more
vocabulary means the good ability in using many varieties of words in
producing or accepting language. It will make the transfer of
information more accurate and faster. Therefore, learning vocabulary
needs the good teaching methods or techniques that are used in
teaching-learning process in order that student can remember it well.

Furthermore, Preszler (2006) mentions that vocabulary or word

meaning is one of the keys to comprehend. In linguistic, basically
information is sent through groups of coherence words that are narrow
into single certain information. It means knowing a lot of vocabulary
for the learners who are mastering. A text or speech will be easier to
comprehend if the reader or listener understands every word that the
writer or speaker wants to convey. Without mastering enough
vocabulary, it is definitely difficult for the pupils to accept the
information.

In addition, McCharthy et al. (2010) state learning new word

meanings comes over time. English has thousands of words and it still
increases which make it unlimited to be learned. Learning English
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vocabulary will be never finish because the language is always

developing as the development of its user. Learners will find the new
meaning of words merely even until they die because every time the
new language terms in communication always appear. Moreover,
English is used by many countries in the world; each of those
countries have different English style, which makes English has many
vocabularies.

Thus, Hiebert & Kamil (2005:3) also mention that vocabulary as

knowledge of words and word meanings in both oral and language and
in productive and receptive forms. However, vocabulary is more
complex than its definition. It has significant roles especially in
understanding the words meaning in oral form, such as when we are
speaking and listening. It is also useful when we are working with form
of word such as when we are reading or writing. Furthermore,
vocabulary is also used in productive and receptive form. In
productive form, vocabulary is used when we are delivering the
language in order it can be accepted well by the receiver. Conversely,
in receptive form, vocabulary is used when we are trying to accept
information.

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So, vocabulary is the basic language which has significant

function in developing language skill. It is about the word function and
meaning of word and become the basic medium to express their
ideas. It is used as a basic for beginners to start their study in learning
a language in order their knowledge can be improved gradually
appropriate with learning language steps. The good ability in using
words and understanding of its meaning is the basic ability will help
the learner to be easier to produce and accept information. In this
research, I focused on a set of vocabulary list that is in the document
standard of the Year 5 Kssr English subject. The list of words and
vocabulary are the words that are in the text book of Year 5 English of
the topic 6 and 7.

1.3.2 The Importance of Vocabulary

Vocabulary is an important language component that must be
learned. It has a significant effect in learning English as second
language. In order to know how importance the vocabulary mastery in
learning English, the researcher tries to stretch it through the opinions
from some compatible resources.

Vocabulary is the language component that is introduced earlier

in learning English and it is learned before grammar and structure.
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Learning vocabulary involves the mastery of word meaning where the

words are the basic that construct a language. It is regarded being
able to give alteration towards the pupils language development as
the reinforcement in learning the language basic skills. Daller et al.
(2007:1) state that vocabulary is a vital area of innovation in
academic approach. It is assumed as the most important phase that
influences the success in mastering English. Although it is heard easy
just to mastery the word meaning, but the things that make the pupils
have to work harder is the quantity of word that exist on English.

In addition, Pikulski & Templetion, (2004:5) state that one reason

teachers are concerned about teaching vocabulary is to facilitate the
comprehension of a test which pupils will be assigned to read. If pupils
do not know the meaning of many of the words which they will
encounter in a text, their comprehension of that selection is likely to
be compromised. When the purpose of the vocabulary instruction is to
facilitate the comprehension of the selection, it is obvious that this
instruction must take place as an introduction before the reading of
the selection.

Therefore, vocabulary is not a developmental skill or one that

can ever be seen as fully mastered. The expansion and elaboration of
vocabularies is something that extends across a lifetime Hibert a&
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Kamil (2005:2). Most of teaching program has a major aims as a

process for helping the students to gain more vocabulary of useful
word. As a teacher, we have to introduce the new words or vocabulary
and the pupils need to do some practice by relating a word to another
words or making in a sentence.

Vocabulary is exactly important in mastering English, because

many vocabularies which are mastered, it means more ideas they can
express or many ideas of people. So the pupils will realize that a word
can show many meanings and many words have one meaning. If
pupils has know about that, they will try to make a sentence in other
form and try to look for a new word which the meaning almost same
or synonym.

1.3.3 Teaching Vocabulary through Dictation

In relation to this study, dictation technique is used to improve
the pupils vocabulary mastery and acquisition. The vocabulary item
that is taught to the pupils can be presented in various ways and
context. The presentations of the words or vocabulary are given
through context, so the pupils are asked to look for and also to
understand the meaning of those words by relating them to their
context.

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Brown (2004) states dictation seems to provide a reasonably

valid method for integrating listening and writing skills and for tapping
into the cohesive element of language implied in short passage.

Dictation is the process of writing down what someone else has

said with the pupils, dictation offers a way for a teacher to record a
pupils thoughts or ideas when the writing demands surpass writing
skills. Dictation provides a chance for the pupils to model many
writing behaviors including handwriting, matching sounds-to-letters to
spell words, and sentence formation.

In this research about partial dictation, running dictation and

vocabulary mastery and acquisition, I had choose a text from the text
book that isnt too long or about 12 lines and it should be enough. I
divided the text into 2 equal parts; each part was on a different piece
of paper.

So, basically partial dictation and running dictation was

almost the same. The differences are in running dictation it involves

group work and pupils need to be running.

Then I divided the class into pairs. Pupil A dictates and pupil B is
the 'dictate'. Pupil A gets up and went to read the first sentence or
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phrase of the text, and then he returned to pupil B and says what he
has just read. Pupil B writes this down. They continue this process until
the entire first half has been written down. The pupil now change
roles: B dictates and A then becomes the dictate.

The activity can be used to write down questions that will be

used for a listening or reading activity, giving classroom instructions,
explanation of a grammatical point, a summary of what was done in
the previous lesson or simply as an activity in itself. A benefit is that
running dictations use the 4 skills of reading, writing, speaking and
listening; albeit in a controlled sense.

Partial and running dictations are good to use with pupils. They
may need some encouragement at first, but they soon get into it.
Before doing the activity, teacher could remind pupils of phrases such
as how do you spell ... ? could you say that again please ? could you
please check that last part ? A quick look at names given to
punctuation symbols (comma, full stop etc) is also useful.

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1.4 Definitions Of Terms

The following are some operational definitions in relation to the

topic of the study. In order to avoid misunderstanding, the researcher
needs to operationally define the following terms; they are as follows:

1. Vocabulary refers to the list of words from the year 5 textbook from
unit 6 and 7 that will be studied by the year 5 pupils of the school
which located in Ayer Hitam, Kedah

2. Dictation is a teaching activity that focuses on increasing the pupils

ability by dictating a page material. Dictation is the process of writing
what teacher is saying. In this research, I change and replace the

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tradition method of dictation and carried out partial dictation and

running dictation

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