FINAL PROJECT PAPER An Essay of Teaching Vocabulary in Fifth Grade of Primary School in English as a Foreign Language Context By Novianti

Patroli When thinking about teaching vocabulary to advance learner, it can be very easy to do. The teacher just asks the students to look the definition from the dictionary and ask them to make some sentence about it and it finishes. However, this technique wont work well for young learner. They have special characteristic that is really different from teenager even adult in terms of their needs, expectations, learning style and strategies, interests, psychological and cognitive development (Bardaki, 2010). Although it seems difficult to consider those things, teaching vocabulary to young learner can be easy because of their natural intelligence. Children are word learner (Carey, 1978) so that they will learn the words easily in a supporting condition. Here the role of teacher can be very vital to make the teaching and learning process as interesting as they can. As what Harmer (2001, p. 38) imply that young learners have a limited attention span, unless activities are extremely engaging they can easily get bored, losing interest after ten minutes or so. The video given by my lecturer record the performance of English teacher who taught in fifth grade of primary school. She seems well-prepared but I only interested in the way she place the vocabulary teaching and how to teach it to her students. The American Heritage Dictionary defines vocabulary as the sum of words used by, understood by, or at the command of a particular person or group. From that meaning, so there are so many new vocabularies involved in her teaching but I was really interested to the vocabulary of the name of foods and drinks (noun). Even though her teaching looks simple and common but there are some strengths in the way she teach implicitly the vocabulary of foods and drinks in the perspective of using media, clarification, drilling, and application of the language. To begin with, she used interesting media to visualize the food and drinks. She printed ten colorful pictures of foods and drinks which consist of apple, strawberry, hamburger, cake, mango, papaya, pear, donut, ice cream, candy, and sandwich. As what is mentioned before, children attention span is very short but they can concentrate on something that is interesting for them (Brown, 2001 p. 87 as cited in Bardaki, 2010). From the video, the use of these pictures can interest and grab students attention to create the atmosphere of language learning. The students seem unfamiliar with the kind of modern food involved and the pictures help them visualize these foods such as: hamburger, cake, pear, donut, and sandwich. The second is about the use of term clarification. From the conversation below, teacher tried to clarify the meaning of sandwich to the students. This matter can be found on the conversation below. T: Oh this one. Susi likes sandwich. You know sandwich? (by showing the picture of sandwich )
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FINAL PROJECT PAPER Ss: Tahu, roti T: Yeah, roti di tengahnya ada vegetable yah. Like that. At first, the students think that hamburger is only a kind of bread but then after they see the picture and listen to the teacher clarification, theyve already known what exactly the meaning of sandwich is. McGlothlin (1997) proposed that children direct their attention to things that are easy to understand. In this situation the teacher was able to make the material understandable by clarifying its definition through easy and simple words. As the result, after understanding what the sandwich is then children can give their attention fully and learn the material well. The third strength is related to drilling. Drilling is a method that has been used in foreign language classrooms for many years and known as the method which pays more emphasis on repeating structural patterns through oral practice. From the video, the teacher used repetition drilling in which the students repeat what the teacher says to make them familiar with new vocabulary (Cameron, 2001 p. 118) of foods and drinks. This matter can be found in the conversation below. T : Tanya, Tanya (ask one row of students) T : Do you like candy? Ss : Do you like candy? T : (show the picture again) T : Do you.? Ss : Do you like candy? By repeating the word candy and showing its picture again and again, so the students will be more familiar with the word candy and can recognize it well. In this drilling method, children can listen to others to pick up bits that she or he is unsure about (Cameron, 2001 p. 118) when theyre practicing to use the word. Although the focus of her teaching was to teach about do you like/I like but she can place well her teaching about the vocabulary (as an episode of grammar teaching in Cameron, 2001 p. 97) of foods and drinks. The last is about the language application. Teaching vocabulary for young learner is not as easy as people imagined. Teacher not only needs to teach the words but also to make sure that the words actually become the part of students lexicon (Heverly, 2011) and further children can use those words in their conversation. In the video, it seems that the main activity is survey in which the children are asked to interview their pair to find out whether or not she/he likes certain food and drink. During the activity, it can be seen that all the students tried to interview their friend by using the name of food and drink given by the teacher. Besides that, they were also allowed to find and use another food and drink on their interview freely. The teacher seems really concerned about this problem and uses this main activity to apply the use of vocabulary in the classroom. This kind of meaningful activity will create longterm retention for children (Brown, 2001 p. 57). Thats better than if teacher uses rote learning in their teaching and learning process to teach vocabulary.

Teaching English to Young Learner

FINAL PROJECT PAPER Teaching vocabulary at elementary school is not easy to do because most of the students still have difficulties in achieving high proficiency of the target language (Zu, 2009). To understand the characteristics of children and suit the material with those characteristics can be difficult but the teacher in the video had successfully taught the vocabulary of foods and drinks implicitly. Teaching the language focus of the material mostly can be done by all teachers but to insert another supported material is hard of doing. Overall, she is a good teacher but she still have to improve her ability in some aspects. Besides the strengths above, there is also one severe fault done by the teacher. She used ten pictures to show the foods and drinks in which each of them are varied in amount but she pronounced the entire items in its singular form. She did not consistent with the pronunciation of plural and singular and if it happens gradually it will affect to students automaticity (Brown, 2001 p. 55) in which they will absorb wrong form of plural and singular from their teacher. Its better for her not only to concern about the learning material and activity but also to the language form itself. Children will produce the plural when they are shown multiple identical objects because they will recognize them as same and that they have the same category label (Zapf, 2004). The teacher should mention the singular or plural forms of foods and drinks correctly to create the situation above so that children can recognize which one is singular and which one is plural. As the result they will understand the concept of plural and singular and use those forms correctly in their conversation. References Bardaki, Mehmet. (2010). Teaching Young Learners English through Language Teaching Materials. The Internet Journal [Online]. Retrieved [June 3, 2011] from http://search.ebscohost.com Brown, H. Douglas. (2001). Tecahing by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy. New York: Addison Wesley Longman Inc. Cameron, Lynne. (2001). Teaching Languages to Young Learners. Cambride: Cambridge University Press. Carey,Susan. (1978). The Child as Word Learner: Linguistic Theory and Psychological Reality. Cambridge: MIT Harmer, Jeremy. (2001). The Practice of English Language Teaching. Essex: Pearson Education Ltd. Heverly, Jerry. (2011). Speaking My Mind: Why I No Longer Teach Vocabulary. The Internet Journal [Online]. Retrieved [May 28, 2011] from http://search.ebscohost.com McGlothlin, J. Doug. (1997). A Childs First Steps in Language Learning. The Internet TESL Journal [Online]. Retrieved [June 3, 2011] from http://iteslj.org/Articles/ McGlothlin-ChildLearn.html Zapf, Jennifer A. (2004). The Role of Number, Similarity, and Individuation in Childrens Acquisition of the Plural.The Internet Journal [Online]. Retrieved [June 5, 2011] from http://search.ebscohost.com Zu, Feng-xia. (2009). Using Lexical Approach to Teach Vocabulary. The Internet Journal [Online]. Retrieved [May 28, 2011] from http://search.ebscohost.com
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