Developing English Vocabulary Mastery through Meaningful Learning Approach

Abstract

The aims of this article are to explore: Firstly, the description on the existing of students’ mastery of English Vocabularies, teaching English vocabulary model, and the students’ condition in Competitive Class of Junior High Schools in Gorontalo City through Focus Group Discussion (FGD); Secondly, to observe and to formulate a model of teaching English vocabulary development creatively based on contexts and utilizing ICT Media; Thirdly, to study on the effectiveness of that model formulated development in teaching and learning English vocabularies. This research used FGD and Experimental method by applying One Group Pre-test and Post-test Design. The result of this research consist of firstly the teachers have used English in teaching non-English subjects, by using traditional method such translation method, and memorizing some words without context, the teachers also do reflection, however is not optimum based on psycholinguistic approach; secondly is this research successfully identifies the average of the students’ score on English vocabularies: (a) on pretest, X score is 27.62 from the maximum score 49; then to apply that developed model of learning and teaching English vocabularies; (b) On posttest is found the average of students’ score gradually up reaching the X score is 35.66 from the maximum score 53. From the two unit tests seemed on the average score on the posttest get improvement 8.15 point. While on the inferential statically analysis by the significance level α = 0.05, the t score acquired -5.348. Because of the statically calculation is obtained 0.000 < 0.05. So it is interpreted that Ho (null) hypothesis is rejected, and accepting Ha (alternative) hypothesis, while T-test analysis proved that the students’ scores increased significantly. It means that the teaching and learning model created which being applied is able to increase significantly the students’ mastery on English vocabularies in the competitive Class at Junior High Schools in Gorontalo. Based on that research finding, it is suggested that mastering specific English vocabularies need to emphasize the meaningful learning approach, more over relating to the concept of a certain subject, such as Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, and Social Science.