THE EFFECTS OF CONTEXTUALIZING AND DE CONTEXTUALIZING TECHNIQUES ON STUDENTS’ VOCABULARY MASTERY AT THE EIGHTH GRADE OF AL-IHSAN SCHOOL

Abstract

The present study was conducted to respond to the students low ability to master vocabulary. This was likely due to lack of teachers‟ practice, particularly the vocabulary teaching techniques. Therefore, the study was aimed at improving vocabulary by comparison two techniques on mastering it. The research question was formulated as: Does contextualizing technique work more effectively than decontextualizing on vocabulary mastery?, and do the students taught by decontextulizing have a better vocabulary mastery than those taught by contextualizing technique in teaching it? The research design used was quasi-experimental research. The subjects were two classes of the eighth grade of Junior High School. Each class consisted of 28 students. Both of them were taught to learn targeted English words by memorizing word lists associated with their Indonesia meanings (a decontextualizing technique) and having a lot of inside and outside of the class practice. In the other group, the students were taught to learn the targeted English words by guessing meaning of the word in sentence (a contextualizing technique). The data were collected using two types of vocabulary test; a guessing meaning of the word test and a rote memoration test. Both of them provided in multiple choice test (MCT). The results of the study tobt ˃t crit (2.237 ˃ 2.005), and Pvalue (0.029<0.05), it revealed that the students received treatment in decontextualized group outperformed statistacally than those in the contextualized one. Based on the findings of the study, it can be concluded that rote memorization of word-lists can work better than guessing meaning of the word in sentence (context). In other word, the decontextualizing technique is still more effective than the contextualizing one in teaching vocabulary especially for the eighth grade of Junior High School.