Title
IMPROVING STUDENTS' VOCABULARY BY USING SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORK (FOCUSED ON FACEBOOK AT THE FIRST SEMESTER OF ENGLISH EDUCATION PROGRAM IN STAIN PAREPARE)
Background
Building vocabulary is foundational at any English skill. It's much more than grammar because is the key to communicating successfully with other people. Knowing more words gives our mind more ways to think about things and more tools to plan or figure out about something. There are many underlying reasons why people seek to improve their vocabulary. It could be a work situation or perhaps for social reasons. Whatever the rationale behind increasing our word knowledge, we should be aware of general obstacles that might confront along the way. This is not bad news, though, as these are easily overcome. It is important to aware of these road blocks before they come up. If aware, we won’t feel inadequate as webegin the journey of improving our vocabulary. Teaching vocabulary in any level of education for English learners has become one of necessary thing to build and improve all of English skill. Teaching vocabulary to students will deal with what's method or what's media that can be applied in the class.
One of the latest methods of teaching vocabulary deals with internet function. As internet grows, online learning has had more influence in the several countries with consequence that face to face discussion and paper resources still dominate public education. The Internet has become an increasingly important feature of the learning environment for teenagers. Research by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in November and December 2000 shows that teens use the Internet as an essential study aid outside the classroom and that the Internet increasingly has a place inside the classroom. The Project surveyed 754 online youth ages 12-17 and their parents. Teens and parents report that Internet is vital to completing school projects and has effectively replaced the library for a large number of online youth. 71% of students report using the Internet at their primary source for their last major project, and they also report accessing online study aids like Sparknotes or CliffNotes and as another fact that really helps the English learners to study.There are several sites that provide the English learners to study about English especially to improve their vocabularies such as www.vocabulary.co.il, www.vocabulary.com, www.learnenglish.de, www.english-daily.com, www.learn-english-vocabulary.com. Besides, sharing about difficulties in learning English or just sharing about several vocabularies and expressions for the English learners can be found in several forum sites as follow: www.englishforums.com, www.myenglishpages.com, www.eslgo.com.
In recently year, social media network as one of the main part of internet developing has taken part also in the learning process. As a research by K. Walsh (2011) finds that social networking applications have a place in the classroom. Facebook as the most famous internet social networking is the best media to be used in teaching.Besides, it helps us connect and share with the people easily. For instance, Alessandro Cessarano, who teaches a beginning Spanish class in the University of South Florida (USF), uses Facebook for homework assignment and class discussions in lieu of blackboard. According to him, the Facebook page is better than blackboard because students have more access to authentic cultural material and not to waste class time to teaching them to use a new program because many of them already use Facebook.
Using Facebook as a media to improve the students' English vocabulary in several schools and universities is a brand new. K. Walsh (2011) states that so many teachers, even those at online universities, are hesitant to use such popular tools, given their inherent risk of exploring students to inappropriate content. The hesitance of teachers is also happened for English students in STAIN Parepare. In the fact, several lecturers of STAIN Parepare don't allow their students to open Facebook while they are studying. In this case, we have to consider not only Facebook as a media for entertainment and having fun but also how to use it as a media for English learning especially for the English learners in STAIN Parepare who study in the first semester that have vocabulary class as one of requirement subject. Therefore, writer will research about using social media network especially Facebook to improve the vocabularies of the students on the first semester of English Education Program (Program Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris/PBI) in STAIN Parepare.
Problem Statement
Considering the background above, the researcher would like to formulate the research are:
Is using social media network (facebook) able to improve students’ vocabulary at the first semester of English Education Program in STAIN Parepare?
In what way we can use to improve students’ vocabulary by using Facebookat the first semester of English Education Program in STAIN Parepare?
Objective Of The Research
Based on the formulation of the problems, the objectives of this research are:
To find the answer by using social media network (facebook) is able to improve students’ vocabularyat the first semester of english education program in STAINParepareor not.
To decribe several ways that can we use to improve students’ vocabulary by using Facebookat the first semester of English Education Program in STAIN Parepare.
Significance Of The Research
The significance of the research is dividing into two benefits for a theory and application, where describe as follow:
It’s expected for English teacher as one of method in the teaching process.
It’s expected to make the students more interest to improve their vocabulary.
It’s expected to inspire fun activities that can be done in English learning.
Review of related literature
This part deals with the previous related research findings and some pertinent ideas:
Previous related research findings
Many researchers have been reported to expose identification of the students’ vocabulary knowledge in learning English for the goal to make it easier to make them can increase their ability.
Caroline Lego Muñoz and Terri L. Towner, in their research entitle “Opening Facebook: How to Use Facebook in the College Classroom” find that the benefits of Facebook’s networking and social communication capabilities can benefit both the instructor and the student by tapping into a greater number of learning styles, providing an alternative to the traditional lecture format, creating an online classroom community, and increasing teacher-student and student-student interaction. Efforts should be made by instructors to expand their pedagogical portfolio, promote active learning through a learning community, and to test the effectiveness of on-line learning communities through social networks such as Facebook. Scholars should continue their investigations into these alternative teaching tools to determine if the benefit of creating cyber learning communities to complement the traditional classroom experience is worth the cost of retooling and restructuring. Furthermore, teacher preparation can be enhanced by creating opportunities for teachers in training to see, experience, and effectively model lessons learned on Facebook in their future classrooms.
The University of Minnesota, in the research entitle “Educational Benefits Of Social Networking Sites Uncovered” have discovered the educational benefits of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. The same study found that low-income students are in many ways just as technologically proficient as their counterparts, going against what results from previous studies have suggested. Interestingly, researchers found that very few students in the study were actually aware of the academic and professional networking opportunities that the Web sites provide. Making this opportunity more known to students and it is just one way that educators can work with students and their experiences on social networking sites.
Ahmad Mujahid with research title “Teaching Vocabulary Of Transportation Through Facebook To Improve Student’s Memorizing” finds that vocabulary is one of the language components which play an important role in learning a language. The need of studying vocabulary is essential even though it is not the main goal of the learning process itself. We can use Facebook as one of the alternatives of the technique in teaching vocabulary. Facebook is part of creating environment of the students’ because they can see, hear, say and write the words in the power point. It can make students more exits in learning vocabulary. Teaching vocabulary of transportation through Facebook can make student enthusiastically to learn vocabulary because it can make happy and enjoy with color and picture. The use of Facebook method as media technology is very simple and also makes the students easier to learn the new vocabulary about the type of transportation and memorize it. Then there are no difficulties that face by teacher, even sometimes she fells little bit lazy and difficult to prepare material such as laptop or computer and projector.
Concept of Vocabulary
The Meaning of Teaching English Vocabulary
In a teaching learning process, there is a process of transformation of knowledge the teacher to the learner and the teacher’s role is to facilitate the learner to earn until they can receive and absorb the material as well as possible. It is supported by Gagne’s (1974: 4) statement that, “Instruction or teaching is a set of events which effect learners in such a way that learning is facilitated”. Moreover Kasihani Kasbolah (1993: 9) states that teaching is showing or helping someone to learn how to do something, providing with knowledge, causing to know or understand.
It means that teaching is the teacher’s effort to create situation or teaching behavior in such a way that there is an instruction between learners and environmental which includes teacher, teaching aids, and so forth called learning process in order to achieve the determined goal in teaching English, especially teaching English to young learners.
The Nature of Vocabulary
Vocabulary is a component of language that maintains all of information about meaning and using word in language. Vocabulary building is really important in any language learning especially for the second language learners. This opinion is supported by Schmitt: “One of the keys in learning a foreign language is mastery the second language’s vocabulary“(2000:19). We have known that as long as we live we always find even produce new vocabularies. It is clear enough that everybody who learns a language as a foreign language has to learn about vocabulary if he/she wants to mastery their second language. In the fact, vocabulary becomes one of major problem in learning English, teachers of Elementary School emphasizes on this matter earlier. In teaching vocabulary, generally the teacher teaches new words taken from reading text or takes from dictionary when doesn’t know how to transfer their first language to English. It means that he integrates vocabulary with reading and translation. This integration will lead to integrative lesson plan.
It seems almost impossible to overstate the power of words; they literally have changed and will continue to change the course of world history. Perhaps the greatest tools we can give students for succeeding, not only in their education but more generally in life, is a large, rich vocabulary and the skills for using those words. Our ability to function in today’s complex social and economic worlds is mightily affected by our language skills and word knowledge.
The writer defines vocabulary as a group of word in a language which is constructed to the meaningful states. Every learner should build up their vocabulary because it is a basic to know and to understand about English. As Thornburry says; “That vocabulary and comprehension have powerful relationship” (2002:15). Therefore, mastery in English skills include speaking, writing, reading and listening means we have to have knowledge in vocabulary.
Vocabulary, much more than grammar, is the key to understanding what we hear and read in school; and to communicating successfully with other people. For this reason it is very important for her to quickly build up a large store of words. Research studies have shown the strong links between having an extensive vocabulary and achieving school success.
Moreover, The Importance of Vocabulary may consist of several cases the follow:
The singular importance of vocabulary has become a powerful insight to raising achievement.
The words we know help us organize our learning.
The creation of labels (words) is our tool for increasing learning.
Vocabulary instruction should be a focal point of learning, especially for students impacted by poverty.
Vocabulary instruction is an excellent advance organizer but also must be taught in context.
In the first level of a course, the starter even beginner, the active vocabulary is more prominent. But, when the students in higher level of study such as intermediated or advanced level passive vocabulary is more useful because they will find so many complicated words. Based on this statement, it brings us to the fact that every expert in every book is different in classifying the kinds of vocabulary, because every person has different ways in showing and expressing their opinions and ideas. Therefore, vocabulary is containing of two kinds function and content words.
Kinds of Vocabulary
A student of a foreign language must know about the words and word formation in order to be able to understand the form and meaning of words as well as to be able to use the correct form of word. English vocabulary is divided into two different parts that is active vocabulary and passive vocabulary.
1). Active Vocabulary
The students develop their vocabulary if they try to express their idea in active class and teacher can support the students by presenting the dialogues demonstrated by two or more students or by teacher and the students. Furthermore, the teacher can ask her students to write a short story about their daily activity or about their family. By this way, they can improve their vocabulary in real situation. According to Hornby (2000:1447) “Active vocabulary is the words that you see”. It means that vocabulary can be said active if we can use it for speaking and writing everyday.
2). Passive Vocabulary
The students usually find the meaning of the words in listening and reading materials. They will know the meaning of the unknown words on the text. The teacher can help their students to find out the meaning of the new words by explaining the meaning. The students can increase their vocabulary by themselves. Hornby says (2000:1447) that passive vocabulary is the word that you understand but do not use. It means that passive vocabulary is the words which we recognize and understand when listening or reading materials.
The next discussion is about the definition of word, word classes, and word formation.
Definition of Word
There are some definitions of the term word. Longman dictionary of American English stated that word is written representation of one or more sounds which can be spoken to represent an idea, object, etc. Crowley et.al (1995:7) stated that the term word is a unit of linguistic analysis which has these characteristics: (1) isolability, means that words can be pronounced in isolation from other words, (2) mobility, means that words are item which can be moved around within a sentence to form new sentences, and (3) phonological independence which means that words are correspond to the minimal units of phonological analysis.
Class of Word
The classes of word can be divided into eight different classes such as nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and determiners. Thornbury (2002:3) mentioned that there are two crude division of word that is content words (lexical words) and function words (grammatical words). Content words are those that carry high information load such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. The membership is unrestricted and still allow for the addition of new members. Meanwhile function words are words that mainly contribute to the grammatical sentence such as prepositions, conjunctions, determiners, and pronouns. The membership is restricted and definite.
Formation of Word
There are many ways of words formation. These develop and enrich vocabularies of a language. In English, the common word formation processes are (1) derivation, (2) compounding, (3) acronyms, (4) back formation, (5) blending, (6) clipping, (7) coinage, (8) functional shift, (9) false etymology, and (10) proper names. (Fromkin, 1988). Below is the definition of each process.
Derivation
It is the process that derives new words by using prefixes and suffixes. Some common prefixes are anti-, dis-, in-, pre-, post-, un-, and re-. Some common suffixes are –ation, -able, -al, -er, -ed, -ful, -ity, -ing, -ly, -ness, and –y. For instance, from the word believe (verb) can be derived into some adjectives by adding prefix and suffix like follow: believable, unbelievable.
Compounding
It is the process that forms new words by putting together two or more existing words. For instance by combining noun and noun like girlfriend, landlord, or mailman.
Acronyms
It is the process that forms new words by uniting the initial sounds or letters of words then pronounceable as a new separate word. For example the word laser from light amplification through the stimulated emission of radiation or UN from United Nation.
Back Formation
It is the process that uses analogy in a rather backwards manner to derive new words. For instance the word revise is derived from the word revision.
Blending
It is the process that combines parts of two words, usually the initial part of a word and the last part of another word. For example the word brunch is the blending from breakfast and lunch.
Clipping
It is the process that derives new words by shortening the words so it is easy to be pronounced without paying attention to the derivational morphology of the word. For instance the word dorm from the word dormitory and the word lab from laboratory.
Coinage
It is the process that derives new words by using no morphological methods but just take the brand of some products to name the things refer. For example the word aqua to name all bottled mineral water and the word Kodak to name any kind of camera.
Functional Shift
It is the process that derives new words by moving the part of speech of a word and no changing of its form. For instance the word run can be used as noun and also as verb.
Morphological Misanalysis
It is the process that derives new words by introducing new words taken from similar words. This can be because of actual misunderstanding, or intentional (creative) extension of morphemes. For instance the word workaholic derives from alcoholic.
Proper Names
It is the process that derives new words from names of persons connected with them. For example the word watt from James Watt the name of the person who invented electricity.
These processes of words formation can be introduced to students in order to give them the rule of deriving new words which they can apply and to improve their vocabularies. The knowledge of words and words formation processes is beneficial to help the students in learning vocabularies. First, they can learn the principles in forming words. Then, the knowledge leads them to be productive and creative that is by applying the principles in order to ‘create’ words. As the result, they may improve their vocabularies.
Vocabulary Learning and Acquisition
The questions relate with vocabularies acquisition are what kinds of words one needs to know and how many words he must know. The vocabularies that should a student know first are the high frequency words. These are words that he uses most often in communication either in classroom activities or outside classroom. The high frequency words are called the general service vocabulary. Next, he also should know the academic or sub technical words which are not in general service vocabulary but occur frequently over a range of academic texts.
Research in first and second language acquisition suggest that initial teaching priorities for language areas should be vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. Deep strategies take more time but ensure greater retention and ease of retrieval from memory. They include learning lists, reading a variety of texts on the same theme so as to ensure multiple exposures to relevant items, making extensive use of dictionaries, building up deep knowledge through word associations and revising to ensure retention.
Teachers may have little role to play where a learner is using shallow strategies appropriately. But they have a clear and ongoing role both in using deep strategies in class work and in training learners in their use. This is especially true for weaker learners, who tend to use even shallow strategies ineffectively: they guess inaccurately from context and do not later modify wrong guesses, and they do not read widely enough. Therefore, the English teacher has to be able to organize teaching and learning activities; they have to give materials by using a suitable technique and master the lesson effectively. Especially in learning vocabulary, teachers must make the students able to memorize such words in English language and group of new words. The statements above mean, vocabulary is important to teach and teachers must try to find the most effective way to teach it.
The questions relate with vocabularies acquisition are what kinds of words one needs to know and how many words he must know. The vocabularies that should a student know first are the high frequency words. These are words that he uses most often in communication either in classroom activities or outside classroom. The high frequency words are called the general service vocabulary. Next, he also should know the academic or sub technical words which are not in general service vocabulary but occur frequently over a range of academic texts.
Teaching Vocabulary
Basically, teaching vocabulary is presenting new words to the students. Teaching vocabulary can help the students to learn the meaning of the words, understand the connection between the form and the meaning and how to use them. Students always deal with vocabularies in learning English because it has a related in any language skills. Having more vocabularies can make them able to know more about listening, speaking, reading and writing. Schmitt states that students who haven’t ability to recognize or product a word, any other kind of knowledge and language skill are virtual useless.
Teacher who teaches about vocabulary exactly knows that teach this knowledge needs a lot of creativity and fresh ideas. In order to make them easily to understand and to learn new vocabularies. Schmitt cites that factors can be related to the word itself (intra lexical factors) or they can involve how well the first language learners matches the second language learners (cross linguistic factors). (2000:148). That means when the teacher teach vocabulary, they probably face the problem from many factors related to the word itself and also the first language learners matches the second language learners.
Ahmad Mujahid (2011) has assumption to fit explanation on some principles of teaching vocabulary as a follow:
The teaching of vocabulary should be based on the students’ ability.
The teaching of vocabulary should be suitable with student’s capability.
The words are taught from easiest to the difficult.
In his research entitled “Teaching Vocabulary Of Transportation Through Facebook To Improve Student’s Memorizing” comments that one of the principles that had been found useful in all methodological decisions is the principles of time effectiveness. The key in all, vocabulary teaching is to keep motivation high while encouraging students to develop strategies that they can continue to use once they leave the classroom.
According to the assumption above, he infers that to know a word in a language as well as the native speakers knows it needs the ability to:
Recognize it in its spoken or written form.
Recall it will.
Relate it to an appropriate object or concept.
Use it in the appropriate grammatical form.
In speech, pronounce it in a recognizable way.
In writing spell it correctly
Use it with the words it correctly goes with i.e. in the correct collocation.
Use it at the appropriate level of formality.
Aware of its connotations and associations.
In the next discussion of teaching vocabulary will concern with the Methods of Teaching Vocabulary and technique of Teaching Vocabulary.
Method of Teaching Vocabulary
The vocabulary mastery should be developed and planned in the teaching program. Some techniques of presenting new words can be applied affectively using pictures, songs, games, etc. the teacher should choose the most suitable method in teaching learning process. According to Jack C Richards and Theodore S. Rodgers (1986:15) in approaches and methods in language teaching, “Method is an overall plan for the orderly presentation of language material, no part of which contradicts and all of which is based upon the selected approach”.
An approach is a set of correlative assumptions dealing with the nature of language teaching and learning. An approach is axiomatic. It describes the nature of subject matter to be taught. It is particular trick, stratagem, or contrivance used to accomplish an immediate objective. Techniques must be consistent with a method, and therefore in harmony with an approach as well.
2). Techniques of teaching vocabulary
Technique is implementation and strategies done by the teacher students in classroom which is suitable with the method that is used. A number of teachers have said that they are not impressed with the efficiency of workbooks. The best way for someone to improve their vocabulary is by reading words and using them daily on a regular basis. The student has to practice these words many times. Nevertheless, by reading a book, it is not only a guaranteed that we can master vocabularies. Even tests have become subject to know our capability in mastering vocabulary. Most students will memorize the word before the test, and after they have taken it, they will forget about it. However, improving vocabulary from the things that we read is very important. For example, if we are reading a book that deals with a scientific subject, the difficult words should be noted in that book. If we are reading a fiction book, and an uncommon term is used, a definition of that term should be listed.
According to the statement above, the English teacher should be creative and imaginative so that they many ideas to make the students enjoy and interested in their lesson.
Facebook
Definition of Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. However, overusing sound effects and transitions will probably do more to annoy your audience than draw their attention.
Facebook has affected the social life and activity of people in various ways. Especially with its availability on many mobile devices, Facebook allows users to continuously stay in touch with friends, relatives and other acquaintances wherever they are in the world, as long as there is access to the Internet. It can also unite people with common interests and/or beliefs through groups and other pages, and has been known to reunite lost family members and friends. One such reunion was between John Watson and the daughter he had been seeking for 20 years. They met after Watson found her Facebook profile. Another father-daughter reunion was between Tony Macnauton and Frances Simpson, who had not seen each other for nearly 48 years.
Correlating with education, we might find that Facebook is provided the class in every where without distance trouble. The students who is being sick or can’t join in a class because of particular reason may join in a class by accessing Facebook. This media also supports for another teacher who wants to teach voluntary in your class. Imagine, when teach about some expressions and we are the teacher who also non-English native speaker. For the better pronunciation or usage, we might invite such as our native friend or acquaintance to give us more information about those words, and it just by clicking video chat on Facebook. Therefore, it’s really helping.
As time goes on, facebook has completed by several educational applications support that provide us to teach easily in this social media networking. Copying from K. Walsh’s article “Facebook In The Classroom. Seriously”. Shows so many examples of American teacher do their job by using facebook, these are some examples of their arguments that was taken from K. Walsh article:
Professor Gideon Burton’s work with Facebook: His experiment has a comment by his student Kristen Nicole. She commented, “In my British Literary History course last winter semester, my professor created a class facebook group which we all joined. We’d finish our reading for class and then get online and write a paragraph about what we’d read, focusing our comments on the specific course aims that my professor had created for the class. We would then go to class where my professor would note the ways in which we’d covered the material well and he’d teach anything we missed as well as anything else he wanted us to know.”
University of South Florida teacher uses Facebook in class: according on article of USF graduate student Alessandro Cesarano, who teaches a Beginning Spanish class, and uses Facebook for homework assignments and class discussions in lieu of Blackboard says, “I like the Facebook page better than Blackboard because students have more access to authentic cultural material, and I don’t have to waste class time teaching them how to use a new program because many of them already use Facebook.”
Texas Kindergarten Teacher communicating with Parents via Facebook: Kindergarten teacher Matt Gomez wrote a couple posts on his blog, mattgomez.posterous.com, about his use of Facebook as a tool to communicate with parents. In this post, he explained that he had, “been toying with the idea of the page for several months. The main reason is Facebook has 500 million+ users. This is a tool that most parents know how to use and use on a consistent basis. Why struggle to make parents visit your website or blog when you can meet them in a place they already visit online?” In this post, he provides some observations about how it worked out.
Jason Graham comments “I’ve been using FaceBook with grade 1 …….yes grade 1. Most of the parents are on Facebook so its a convenient way to communicate with them, and they can send private messages as well. Most of the parents are busy on the go people who use their Blackberries and FaceBook, Twitter etc to communicate. Its convenient for all. Plus it provides a digital record.”
Anne De Manser says “I use facebook with my students in several ways. I find it is a great way to provide positive role modelling in an online environment by making positive comments on their facebook walls and by providing them a window into the way my ‘public ‘ face looks online. It’s just another way of communicating and building relationships with our school community.”
In briefs, several advantages of Facebook are:
Facebook is intended to social communication that’s why it’s fun to operate it.
Facebook can accommodate all learners' needs if you use it correctly.
It has a English spell-check function. Something our black boards and overheads lacks.
It motivates students when used in moderation.
It motivates teachers.
Facebook can make an easier each student to communicate.
Facebook can make an easier for teacher to give the task for student.
Facebook is provided translation tool to make the students easily to translate the words that they want to know without looking for this word in the dictionary, instead.
The Usage of Facebook
Utilizing Facebook effectively in teacher education courses will help facilitate perspective teachers to model what they have learned in their own classrooms. Teacher education students will not only benefit by the classroom advantages of using Facebook, but also by learning professional Facebook etiquette. Based on the explanation above, we may conclude that teaching vocabulary by using facebook isn’t only for increasing the student’s vocabulary but also their knowledge about technology.
Nowadays, facebook has given a lot of attention for the club or group which wants to socialite with their member or even just a small forum. This feature for English learners has used for accommodating the English learners into a discussion about English include vocabulary discussion. Based on Lorie Vela’s article, these several steps that can we use to teach Facebook:
Creating a teacher/educator profile
Creating groups, i strongly recommend creating groups according to several topics:
Coursing (add the students into the group)
Giving them several vocabularies In a day.
Working groups and/or activities.
Establish the rules
If the students do not want to share their “personal” profiles and don’t know how to manage privacy, we may encourage them to create another profile for educational purposes.
Create events: maybe we want to share some events with the students… meetings, concerts, seminars, or simply notify an extra activity like readings, tests… we instantly get to know who is interested in it and get some great feedback on which events are more popular among students.
Using games feature: a virtual farm or restaurant could be very attractive for students if they have their own community.
Make questions and use forums to engage students in conversation
We might use Youtube to share some interesting videos not just about your subject, but some funny ones to connect with them. We may also use videos to make discussions that can relate to a topic and make questions to make them share their opinions.
Let students know they can also send the private messages for specific topics, but can encourage them to share their questions in the wall, so that everyone else can answer. This way to exchange roles with students and being a facilitator, let the lead to students.
Turning Facebook into that other “space” is a better way to make them feel comfortable with and be the Community Manager of your own courses.
Improving Vocabulary by using Facebook
In building up students’ vocabulary achievement, the students must learn it well. The Facebook can be more effective if the student can interact with the Facebook; this interaction includes the activities that can expand the students’ understanding of the words and the use of them in any language skill. In addition, Facebook can add a new dimension to learning allowing teachers to explain abstract concepts, while accommodating all learning styles. Used properly, Facebook can be one of the most powerful tools for disseminating information ever known. Employed inappropriately, Facebook could potentially confuse students and make learning a difficult process.
Students will not feel that they are studying while using Facebook because they feel such as playing their hobbies. Giving them new vocabularies to make those words as popular topics in Facebook forum will make them accustomed with those words and they can be easily to memorize them without intended to memorizing purposely. Not only build up their vocabulary as a final result but also students may be helped by using vocabulary to improve their vocabulary ability moreover their skills in English such as writing and reading.
Conceptual Framework
The focus of this research is vocabulary ability using Facebook media. The conceptual framework of this research as follows:
Note:
Directly related to this researcher
Indirectly related to this researcher
Hypothesis
Based on the previous explanation, the researcher formulates the hypothesis as follows:
The students’ vocabulary ability can be better by using Facebook.
There are more advantages when Facebook is used to teach about English Vocabulary.
Research Method
Research Design
The method applied in this research is pre-experimental method because it only has both one group pre-test/post-test and treatment. The success of the treatment is determined by comparing pre-test and post-test score because there is no control variable. And then researcher applied quantitative descriptive in order to find out what extent Facebook improves the students’ vocabulary ability at the first semester of English education program In STAIN Parepare. This design is presented as follows:
E=O1xO2
Which:
E: Experimental
O1:Pre-Test
O2: Post-Test
X: Treatment
Furthermore the research uses planned observation to know in what way Facebook improves the students’ vocabulary at the first semester of English education program In STAIN Parepare.
In planned observation the researcher uses sheet observation that contains some types of students’ activities or behaviors that is observed.
Research Variable
There are two variables involved in this research namely:
Independent variable
Independent variable is a variable which is influences or causes an apparent change or simply affect for dependent variable.
Independent variable in this research is Facebook, where Facebook will influence students’ vocabulary ability.
Dependent variable
Dependent variable is a variable which is influenced by independent variable. Dependent variable in this research is students’ vocabulary because students’ vocabulary will be influenced by implementation of Facebook activity.
Operational definition of variable:
Facebook
Facebook is a popular free social networking website that allows registered users to create profiles, upload photos and video, send messages and keep in touch with friends, family and colleagues.
According to definition above, we may infer that Facebook is a media to communicate with the other people in this world which supports us to make acquaintance and befriend with every people in the world which is completed with several features such as application and forums that very useful for any aspect in daily life.
Student’s vocabulary knowledge
Vocabulary knowledge is defined as the ability to go from the printed form of a word to its meaning.
Students is person who studying at college, university, secondary school, and particular subject.
According on the meaning above, it can be inferred that student’s vocabulary knowledge is the ability of students to know more about vocabulary from its form and meaning. That’s why we will know whether students lack of vocabulary or not. It can be graded excellent, good, enough or poor.
3. Population and Sample
a. Population
Population is a group of individuals or items that share one or more characteristic from which data can be gathered and analyzed. The population of this research is the first semester students at STAIN Parepare in academic year 2011/2012 which is consist of 5 classes.
b. Sample
Sample is a set of individuals or items selected from a population for analysis to yield estimates of, or to test hypotheses about, parameters of the whole population. This research determines 1 class which is consisted of 35 students as sample.
Technique and instrument of collecting data
Technique of collecting data
Technique of collecting data that is used in this research is:
1). Test
Test is an examination of a person’s knowledge and ability. The research uses pre-test and post-test to find out the students’ vocabulary knowledge before and after treatment. so that, this test will answer the question whether Facebook can improve students’ vocabulary or not.
2). Observation
Observation is act of watching something carefully for a period of time. Observation is done during teaching and learning process. The researcher took notes in the teacher’s journal to record the teaching and learning activities and the students’ mastery on vocabulary. While the result of the exercises and tests were recorded to know the students’ mastery on vocabulary
Instrument of collecting data
In this research will use three instruments such as pre test/ post test to find out the students ability, observation which is used note and media to connect to the internet such as PC (notebook, netbook, laptop and gadgets) and Modem.
Procedure to collecting data
The research will conduct test and observation in collecting data. Testing will conduct twice, pre-test and post-test. The pre-test will be given to find out their vocabulary knowledge before conducting the material. The post-test is held to find out their vocabulary knowledge after presenting the material (teaching vocabulary using Facebook media). The observation is done to write down all students’ behaviors during learning process. So that, the research will notice in what way Facebook media improves the students’ vocabulary.
The procedure is presented in chronological order as follows:
Pre-test
Pre-test is the test before treatment. The classified of vocabulary test is individual test. The test item is answered by despondence in written test. There are 40 test items covering the 30 of matching test items, the 5 of completing test items, and the 5 of true – false test items.
Treatment
After giving a pre-test, the research will give treatment for 10 times, and each times will take 60 minutes. The research will teach about vocabulary by using Facebook. The vocabularies that the research will give to them are educational terms, idiomatic expressions, and advance vocabulary.
The steps in teaching pronunciation using Facebook media are:
The first meeting:
1). after introducing and greeting, the research explains about the vocabularies and Facebook media that used to build up their vocabularies. Approximately 20 minutes.
2). the research will make a group and ask them to follow that’s group.
3). Giving several vocabularies on that group’s wall and ask them to give their comments about those words meaning according to them. Approximately 10 minutes.
4). Ask one of them to write down some vocabularies and the other friends have to give their comments.
5). Posting an article or story about education and ask them to find the vocabulary that they don’t know and those vocabularies will be discussed together. Approximately 30 minutes.
6). Addressing some questions and/or status in order to make them to answer or reply (All of activities are using English). Approximately 5 minutes.
7). the research ends this class.
The second ‘till tenth meeting
1). The Class will begin with several vocabularies games that are available on Facebook. Take times approximately 20 minutes.
2). Chatting time, approximately 15 minutes. In this part, research will give several idiomatic expressions.
3). Posting several advance vocabularies and ask them to translate and make into the sentence. Approximately 15 minutes.
4). Addressing some questions and/or status in order to make them to answer or reply (All of activities are using English). Approximately 5 minutes.
5). The research ends the class.
Post-test
Post-test will be given on the tenth meeting. The activity intends to know the students progress in vocabulary knowledge after treatment by 8 times, and the steps will be same with the pre-test.
Observation
Observation is held to observe the activity of students and teacher during the teaching and learning process. The criteria of success of this part are by using observation sheet. The result of this observation will be seen the percentage.
Technique of analysis data
The data will be collected trough the test are score into raw score by using the following criteria:
Scoring the result of the test:
The data collected from of the both of test, pre-test and post-test are classified based on the following classification.
Standardized score Standardized Value
4
3
2
1 Very Good / Excellent
Good
Fairly Good
Poor / Bad
The criteria of success in this action are decided as follow:
75 % < MS ≤ 100 % = very good
50 % < MS ≤ 75 % = good
25 % < MS ≤ 50 % = Good enough
0 % < MS ≤ 25 % = not good
Finding out the mean score will use the formula:
X=(∑X)/n x
Where:
X = Mean
n = The amount of students
∑X= total score
One of the most widely used statistical methods for testing the difference between means, and the one we’re going to get you up-to-speed on, is called the t-test. We will find the difference between the mean score between the pre-test and post-test by calculating the value of the t-test, the formula is,
Where:
D: the means score of difference.
∑D: the difference score of two tests (pre-test and post-test).
∑D2: the sum of the differences score both of tests.
n :the total sample
Calculation standard deviation, the formula is:
SD= √SS/N, Where SS=∑X2 – ((∑X)^2)/N
SD: the standard of deviation
n : the number of subject
SS: the square root of the sum of squares
∑X2: The sum of all of squares
(∑X)2: the square of the sum of the scores.
http://www46.homepage.villanova.edu/john.immerwahr/FTP101/Facebook.pdf
hkr.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:228945/FULLTEXT01
French Allen, Virginia. 2000. Teaching Technique in Teaching Vocabulary. New York. Oxford University Press
Thornburry, Scott. 2002. How to Teach Vocabulary. Oxford shire: Longman Pearson Education
Kasiani, Kasbolah. 1998. A Study the Technique Used in Introducing New Vocabulary for Beginner Level of Planet Kids English Course. Malang: Department of English Education
Haris, P, David, Phd. 1974 . Testing English as a Second Language. New Delhi : Tata Mo, Graw Hill, Publishing Co, Ltd.
Hornby, A.S. 1963. Oxford Advance Dictionary of Current English. London: Oxford University press
Richards, Jack C and Theodore S. Rodgers. 1986. Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching. New York: Cambridge University Press
IMPROVING STUDENTS' VOCABULARY BY USING SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORK (FOCUSED ON FACEBOOK AT THE FIRST SEMESTER OF ENGLISH EDUCATION PROGRAM IN STAIN PAREPARE)
Background
Building vocabulary is foundational at any English skill. It's much more than grammar because is the key to communicating successfully with other people. Knowing more words gives our mind more ways to think about things and more tools to plan or figure out about something. There are many underlying reasons why people seek to improve their vocabulary. It could be a work situation or perhaps for social reasons. Whatever the rationale behind increasing our word knowledge, we should be aware of general obstacles that might confront along the way. This is not bad news, though, as these are easily overcome. It is important to aware of these road blocks before they come up. If aware, we won’t feel inadequate as webegin the journey of improving our vocabulary. Teaching vocabulary in any level of education for English learners has become one of necessary thing to build and improve all of English skill. Teaching vocabulary to students will deal with what's method or what's media that can be applied in the class.
One of the latest methods of teaching vocabulary deals with internet function. As internet grows, online learning has had more influence in the several countries with consequence that face to face discussion and paper resources still dominate public education. The Internet has become an increasingly important feature of the learning environment for teenagers. Research by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in November and December 2000 shows that teens use the Internet as an essential study aid outside the classroom and that the Internet increasingly has a place inside the classroom. The Project surveyed 754 online youth ages 12-17 and their parents. Teens and parents report that Internet is vital to completing school projects and has effectively replaced the library for a large number of online youth. 71% of students report using the Internet at their primary source for their last major project, and they also report accessing online study aids like Sparknotes or CliffNotes and as another fact that really helps the English learners to study.There are several sites that provide the English learners to study about English especially to improve their vocabularies such as www.vocabulary.co.il, www.vocabulary.com, www.learnenglish.de, www.english-daily.com, www.learn-english-vocabulary.com. Besides, sharing about difficulties in learning English or just sharing about several vocabularies and expressions for the English learners can be found in several forum sites as follow: www.englishforums.com, www.myenglishpages.com, www.eslgo.com.
In recently year, social media network as one of the main part of internet developing has taken part also in the learning process. As a research by K. Walsh (2011) finds that social networking applications have a place in the classroom. Facebook as the most famous internet social networking is the best media to be used in teaching.Besides, it helps us connect and share with the people easily. For instance, Alessandro Cessarano, who teaches a beginning Spanish class in the University of South Florida (USF), uses Facebook for homework assignment and class discussions in lieu of blackboard. According to him, the Facebook page is better than blackboard because students have more access to authentic cultural material and not to waste class time to teaching them to use a new program because many of them already use Facebook.
Using Facebook as a media to improve the students' English vocabulary in several schools and universities is a brand new. K. Walsh (2011) states that so many teachers, even those at online universities, are hesitant to use such popular tools, given their inherent risk of exploring students to inappropriate content. The hesitance of teachers is also happened for English students in STAIN Parepare. In the fact, several lecturers of STAIN Parepare don't allow their students to open Facebook while they are studying. In this case, we have to consider not only Facebook as a media for entertainment and having fun but also how to use it as a media for English learning especially for the English learners in STAIN Parepare who study in the first semester that have vocabulary class as one of requirement subject. Therefore, writer will research about using social media network especially Facebook to improve the vocabularies of the students on the first semester of English Education Program (Program Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris/PBI) in STAIN Parepare.
Problem Statement
Considering the background above, the researcher would like to formulate the research are:
Is using social media network (facebook) able to improve students’ vocabulary at the first semester of English Education Program in STAIN Parepare?
In what way we can use to improve students’ vocabulary by using Facebookat the first semester of English Education Program in STAIN Parepare?
Objective Of The Research
Based on the formulation of the problems, the objectives of this research are:
To find the answer by using social media network (facebook) is able to improve students’ vocabularyat the first semester of english education program in STAINParepareor not.
To decribe several ways that can we use to improve students’ vocabulary by using Facebookat the first semester of English Education Program in STAIN Parepare.
Significance Of The Research
The significance of the research is dividing into two benefits for a theory and application, where describe as follow:
It’s expected for English teacher as one of method in the teaching process.
It’s expected to make the students more interest to improve their vocabulary.
It’s expected to inspire fun activities that can be done in English learning.
Review of related literature
This part deals with the previous related research findings and some pertinent ideas:
Previous related research findings
Many researchers have been reported to expose identification of the students’ vocabulary knowledge in learning English for the goal to make it easier to make them can increase their ability.
Caroline Lego Muñoz and Terri L. Towner, in their research entitle “Opening Facebook: How to Use Facebook in the College Classroom” find that the benefits of Facebook’s networking and social communication capabilities can benefit both the instructor and the student by tapping into a greater number of learning styles, providing an alternative to the traditional lecture format, creating an online classroom community, and increasing teacher-student and student-student interaction. Efforts should be made by instructors to expand their pedagogical portfolio, promote active learning through a learning community, and to test the effectiveness of on-line learning communities through social networks such as Facebook. Scholars should continue their investigations into these alternative teaching tools to determine if the benefit of creating cyber learning communities to complement the traditional classroom experience is worth the cost of retooling and restructuring. Furthermore, teacher preparation can be enhanced by creating opportunities for teachers in training to see, experience, and effectively model lessons learned on Facebook in their future classrooms.
The University of Minnesota, in the research entitle “Educational Benefits Of Social Networking Sites Uncovered” have discovered the educational benefits of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. The same study found that low-income students are in many ways just as technologically proficient as their counterparts, going against what results from previous studies have suggested. Interestingly, researchers found that very few students in the study were actually aware of the academic and professional networking opportunities that the Web sites provide. Making this opportunity more known to students and it is just one way that educators can work with students and their experiences on social networking sites.
Ahmad Mujahid with research title “Teaching Vocabulary Of Transportation Through Facebook To Improve Student’s Memorizing” finds that vocabulary is one of the language components which play an important role in learning a language. The need of studying vocabulary is essential even though it is not the main goal of the learning process itself. We can use Facebook as one of the alternatives of the technique in teaching vocabulary. Facebook is part of creating environment of the students’ because they can see, hear, say and write the words in the power point. It can make students more exits in learning vocabulary. Teaching vocabulary of transportation through Facebook can make student enthusiastically to learn vocabulary because it can make happy and enjoy with color and picture. The use of Facebook method as media technology is very simple and also makes the students easier to learn the new vocabulary about the type of transportation and memorize it. Then there are no difficulties that face by teacher, even sometimes she fells little bit lazy and difficult to prepare material such as laptop or computer and projector.
Concept of Vocabulary
The Meaning of Teaching English Vocabulary
In a teaching learning process, there is a process of transformation of knowledge the teacher to the learner and the teacher’s role is to facilitate the learner to earn until they can receive and absorb the material as well as possible. It is supported by Gagne’s (1974: 4) statement that, “Instruction or teaching is a set of events which effect learners in such a way that learning is facilitated”. Moreover Kasihani Kasbolah (1993: 9) states that teaching is showing or helping someone to learn how to do something, providing with knowledge, causing to know or understand.
It means that teaching is the teacher’s effort to create situation or teaching behavior in such a way that there is an instruction between learners and environmental which includes teacher, teaching aids, and so forth called learning process in order to achieve the determined goal in teaching English, especially teaching English to young learners.
The Nature of Vocabulary
Vocabulary is a component of language that maintains all of information about meaning and using word in language. Vocabulary building is really important in any language learning especially for the second language learners. This opinion is supported by Schmitt: “One of the keys in learning a foreign language is mastery the second language’s vocabulary“(2000:19). We have known that as long as we live we always find even produce new vocabularies. It is clear enough that everybody who learns a language as a foreign language has to learn about vocabulary if he/she wants to mastery their second language. In the fact, vocabulary becomes one of major problem in learning English, teachers of Elementary School emphasizes on this matter earlier. In teaching vocabulary, generally the teacher teaches new words taken from reading text or takes from dictionary when doesn’t know how to transfer their first language to English. It means that he integrates vocabulary with reading and translation. This integration will lead to integrative lesson plan.
It seems almost impossible to overstate the power of words; they literally have changed and will continue to change the course of world history. Perhaps the greatest tools we can give students for succeeding, not only in their education but more generally in life, is a large, rich vocabulary and the skills for using those words. Our ability to function in today’s complex social and economic worlds is mightily affected by our language skills and word knowledge.
The writer defines vocabulary as a group of word in a language which is constructed to the meaningful states. Every learner should build up their vocabulary because it is a basic to know and to understand about English. As Thornburry says; “That vocabulary and comprehension have powerful relationship” (2002:15). Therefore, mastery in English skills include speaking, writing, reading and listening means we have to have knowledge in vocabulary.
Vocabulary, much more than grammar, is the key to understanding what we hear and read in school; and to communicating successfully with other people. For this reason it is very important for her to quickly build up a large store of words. Research studies have shown the strong links between having an extensive vocabulary and achieving school success.
Moreover, The Importance of Vocabulary may consist of several cases the follow:
The singular importance of vocabulary has become a powerful insight to raising achievement.
The words we know help us organize our learning.
The creation of labels (words) is our tool for increasing learning.
Vocabulary instruction should be a focal point of learning, especially for students impacted by poverty.
Vocabulary instruction is an excellent advance organizer but also must be taught in context.
In the first level of a course, the starter even beginner, the active vocabulary is more prominent. But, when the students in higher level of study such as intermediated or advanced level passive vocabulary is more useful because they will find so many complicated words. Based on this statement, it brings us to the fact that every expert in every book is different in classifying the kinds of vocabulary, because every person has different ways in showing and expressing their opinions and ideas. Therefore, vocabulary is containing of two kinds function and content words.
Kinds of Vocabulary
A student of a foreign language must know about the words and word formation in order to be able to understand the form and meaning of words as well as to be able to use the correct form of word. English vocabulary is divided into two different parts that is active vocabulary and passive vocabulary.
1). Active Vocabulary
The students develop their vocabulary if they try to express their idea in active class and teacher can support the students by presenting the dialogues demonstrated by two or more students or by teacher and the students. Furthermore, the teacher can ask her students to write a short story about their daily activity or about their family. By this way, they can improve their vocabulary in real situation. According to Hornby (2000:1447) “Active vocabulary is the words that you see”. It means that vocabulary can be said active if we can use it for speaking and writing everyday.
2). Passive Vocabulary
The students usually find the meaning of the words in listening and reading materials. They will know the meaning of the unknown words on the text. The teacher can help their students to find out the meaning of the new words by explaining the meaning. The students can increase their vocabulary by themselves. Hornby says (2000:1447) that passive vocabulary is the word that you understand but do not use. It means that passive vocabulary is the words which we recognize and understand when listening or reading materials.
The next discussion is about the definition of word, word classes, and word formation.
Definition of Word
There are some definitions of the term word. Longman dictionary of American English stated that word is written representation of one or more sounds which can be spoken to represent an idea, object, etc. Crowley et.al (1995:7) stated that the term word is a unit of linguistic analysis which has these characteristics: (1) isolability, means that words can be pronounced in isolation from other words, (2) mobility, means that words are item which can be moved around within a sentence to form new sentences, and (3) phonological independence which means that words are correspond to the minimal units of phonological analysis.
Class of Word
The classes of word can be divided into eight different classes such as nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and determiners. Thornbury (2002:3) mentioned that there are two crude division of word that is content words (lexical words) and function words (grammatical words). Content words are those that carry high information load such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. The membership is unrestricted and still allow for the addition of new members. Meanwhile function words are words that mainly contribute to the grammatical sentence such as prepositions, conjunctions, determiners, and pronouns. The membership is restricted and definite.
Formation of Word
There are many ways of words formation. These develop and enrich vocabularies of a language. In English, the common word formation processes are (1) derivation, (2) compounding, (3) acronyms, (4) back formation, (5) blending, (6) clipping, (7) coinage, (8) functional shift, (9) false etymology, and (10) proper names. (Fromkin, 1988). Below is the definition of each process.
Derivation
It is the process that derives new words by using prefixes and suffixes. Some common prefixes are anti-, dis-, in-, pre-, post-, un-, and re-. Some common suffixes are –ation, -able, -al, -er, -ed, -ful, -ity, -ing, -ly, -ness, and –y. For instance, from the word believe (verb) can be derived into some adjectives by adding prefix and suffix like follow: believable, unbelievable.
Compounding
It is the process that forms new words by putting together two or more existing words. For instance by combining noun and noun like girlfriend, landlord, or mailman.
Acronyms
It is the process that forms new words by uniting the initial sounds or letters of words then pronounceable as a new separate word. For example the word laser from light amplification through the stimulated emission of radiation or UN from United Nation.
Back Formation
It is the process that uses analogy in a rather backwards manner to derive new words. For instance the word revise is derived from the word revision.
Blending
It is the process that combines parts of two words, usually the initial part of a word and the last part of another word. For example the word brunch is the blending from breakfast and lunch.
Clipping
It is the process that derives new words by shortening the words so it is easy to be pronounced without paying attention to the derivational morphology of the word. For instance the word dorm from the word dormitory and the word lab from laboratory.
Coinage
It is the process that derives new words by using no morphological methods but just take the brand of some products to name the things refer. For example the word aqua to name all bottled mineral water and the word Kodak to name any kind of camera.
Functional Shift
It is the process that derives new words by moving the part of speech of a word and no changing of its form. For instance the word run can be used as noun and also as verb.
Morphological Misanalysis
It is the process that derives new words by introducing new words taken from similar words. This can be because of actual misunderstanding, or intentional (creative) extension of morphemes. For instance the word workaholic derives from alcoholic.
Proper Names
It is the process that derives new words from names of persons connected with them. For example the word watt from James Watt the name of the person who invented electricity.
These processes of words formation can be introduced to students in order to give them the rule of deriving new words which they can apply and to improve their vocabularies. The knowledge of words and words formation processes is beneficial to help the students in learning vocabularies. First, they can learn the principles in forming words. Then, the knowledge leads them to be productive and creative that is by applying the principles in order to ‘create’ words. As the result, they may improve their vocabularies.
Vocabulary Learning and Acquisition
The questions relate with vocabularies acquisition are what kinds of words one needs to know and how many words he must know. The vocabularies that should a student know first are the high frequency words. These are words that he uses most often in communication either in classroom activities or outside classroom. The high frequency words are called the general service vocabulary. Next, he also should know the academic or sub technical words which are not in general service vocabulary but occur frequently over a range of academic texts.
Research in first and second language acquisition suggest that initial teaching priorities for language areas should be vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. Deep strategies take more time but ensure greater retention and ease of retrieval from memory. They include learning lists, reading a variety of texts on the same theme so as to ensure multiple exposures to relevant items, making extensive use of dictionaries, building up deep knowledge through word associations and revising to ensure retention.
Teachers may have little role to play where a learner is using shallow strategies appropriately. But they have a clear and ongoing role both in using deep strategies in class work and in training learners in their use. This is especially true for weaker learners, who tend to use even shallow strategies ineffectively: they guess inaccurately from context and do not later modify wrong guesses, and they do not read widely enough. Therefore, the English teacher has to be able to organize teaching and learning activities; they have to give materials by using a suitable technique and master the lesson effectively. Especially in learning vocabulary, teachers must make the students able to memorize such words in English language and group of new words. The statements above mean, vocabulary is important to teach and teachers must try to find the most effective way to teach it.
The questions relate with vocabularies acquisition are what kinds of words one needs to know and how many words he must know. The vocabularies that should a student know first are the high frequency words. These are words that he uses most often in communication either in classroom activities or outside classroom. The high frequency words are called the general service vocabulary. Next, he also should know the academic or sub technical words which are not in general service vocabulary but occur frequently over a range of academic texts.
Teaching Vocabulary
Basically, teaching vocabulary is presenting new words to the students. Teaching vocabulary can help the students to learn the meaning of the words, understand the connection between the form and the meaning and how to use them. Students always deal with vocabularies in learning English because it has a related in any language skills. Having more vocabularies can make them able to know more about listening, speaking, reading and writing. Schmitt states that students who haven’t ability to recognize or product a word, any other kind of knowledge and language skill are virtual useless.
Teacher who teaches about vocabulary exactly knows that teach this knowledge needs a lot of creativity and fresh ideas. In order to make them easily to understand and to learn new vocabularies. Schmitt cites that factors can be related to the word itself (intra lexical factors) or they can involve how well the first language learners matches the second language learners (cross linguistic factors). (2000:148). That means when the teacher teach vocabulary, they probably face the problem from many factors related to the word itself and also the first language learners matches the second language learners.
Ahmad Mujahid (2011) has assumption to fit explanation on some principles of teaching vocabulary as a follow:
The teaching of vocabulary should be based on the students’ ability.
The teaching of vocabulary should be suitable with student’s capability.
The words are taught from easiest to the difficult.
In his research entitled “Teaching Vocabulary Of Transportation Through Facebook To Improve Student’s Memorizing” comments that one of the principles that had been found useful in all methodological decisions is the principles of time effectiveness. The key in all, vocabulary teaching is to keep motivation high while encouraging students to develop strategies that they can continue to use once they leave the classroom.
According to the assumption above, he infers that to know a word in a language as well as the native speakers knows it needs the ability to:
Recognize it in its spoken or written form.
Recall it will.
Relate it to an appropriate object or concept.
Use it in the appropriate grammatical form.
In speech, pronounce it in a recognizable way.
In writing spell it correctly
Use it with the words it correctly goes with i.e. in the correct collocation.
Use it at the appropriate level of formality.
Aware of its connotations and associations.
In the next discussion of teaching vocabulary will concern with the Methods of Teaching Vocabulary and technique of Teaching Vocabulary.
Method of Teaching Vocabulary
The vocabulary mastery should be developed and planned in the teaching program. Some techniques of presenting new words can be applied affectively using pictures, songs, games, etc. the teacher should choose the most suitable method in teaching learning process. According to Jack C Richards and Theodore S. Rodgers (1986:15) in approaches and methods in language teaching, “Method is an overall plan for the orderly presentation of language material, no part of which contradicts and all of which is based upon the selected approach”.
An approach is a set of correlative assumptions dealing with the nature of language teaching and learning. An approach is axiomatic. It describes the nature of subject matter to be taught. It is particular trick, stratagem, or contrivance used to accomplish an immediate objective. Techniques must be consistent with a method, and therefore in harmony with an approach as well.
2). Techniques of teaching vocabulary
Technique is implementation and strategies done by the teacher students in classroom which is suitable with the method that is used. A number of teachers have said that they are not impressed with the efficiency of workbooks. The best way for someone to improve their vocabulary is by reading words and using them daily on a regular basis. The student has to practice these words many times. Nevertheless, by reading a book, it is not only a guaranteed that we can master vocabularies. Even tests have become subject to know our capability in mastering vocabulary. Most students will memorize the word before the test, and after they have taken it, they will forget about it. However, improving vocabulary from the things that we read is very important. For example, if we are reading a book that deals with a scientific subject, the difficult words should be noted in that book. If we are reading a fiction book, and an uncommon term is used, a definition of that term should be listed.
According to the statement above, the English teacher should be creative and imaginative so that they many ideas to make the students enjoy and interested in their lesson.
Definition of Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. However, overusing sound effects and transitions will probably do more to annoy your audience than draw their attention.
Facebook has affected the social life and activity of people in various ways. Especially with its availability on many mobile devices, Facebook allows users to continuously stay in touch with friends, relatives and other acquaintances wherever they are in the world, as long as there is access to the Internet. It can also unite people with common interests and/or beliefs through groups and other pages, and has been known to reunite lost family members and friends. One such reunion was between John Watson and the daughter he had been seeking for 20 years. They met after Watson found her Facebook profile. Another father-daughter reunion was between Tony Macnauton and Frances Simpson, who had not seen each other for nearly 48 years.
Correlating with education, we might find that Facebook is provided the class in every where without distance trouble. The students who is being sick or can’t join in a class because of particular reason may join in a class by accessing Facebook. This media also supports for another teacher who wants to teach voluntary in your class. Imagine, when teach about some expressions and we are the teacher who also non-English native speaker. For the better pronunciation or usage, we might invite such as our native friend or acquaintance to give us more information about those words, and it just by clicking video chat on Facebook. Therefore, it’s really helping.
As time goes on, facebook has completed by several educational applications support that provide us to teach easily in this social media networking. Copying from K. Walsh’s article “Facebook In The Classroom. Seriously”. Shows so many examples of American teacher do their job by using facebook, these are some examples of their arguments that was taken from K. Walsh article:
Professor Gideon Burton’s work with Facebook: His experiment has a comment by his student Kristen Nicole. She commented, “In my British Literary History course last winter semester, my professor created a class facebook group which we all joined. We’d finish our reading for class and then get online and write a paragraph about what we’d read, focusing our comments on the specific course aims that my professor had created for the class. We would then go to class where my professor would note the ways in which we’d covered the material well and he’d teach anything we missed as well as anything else he wanted us to know.”
University of South Florida teacher uses Facebook in class: according on article of USF graduate student Alessandro Cesarano, who teaches a Beginning Spanish class, and uses Facebook for homework assignments and class discussions in lieu of Blackboard says, “I like the Facebook page better than Blackboard because students have more access to authentic cultural material, and I don’t have to waste class time teaching them how to use a new program because many of them already use Facebook.”
Texas Kindergarten Teacher communicating with Parents via Facebook: Kindergarten teacher Matt Gomez wrote a couple posts on his blog, mattgomez.posterous.com, about his use of Facebook as a tool to communicate with parents. In this post, he explained that he had, “been toying with the idea of the page for several months. The main reason is Facebook has 500 million+ users. This is a tool that most parents know how to use and use on a consistent basis. Why struggle to make parents visit your website or blog when you can meet them in a place they already visit online?” In this post, he provides some observations about how it worked out.
Jason Graham comments “I’ve been using FaceBook with grade 1 …….yes grade 1. Most of the parents are on Facebook so its a convenient way to communicate with them, and they can send private messages as well. Most of the parents are busy on the go people who use their Blackberries and FaceBook, Twitter etc to communicate. Its convenient for all. Plus it provides a digital record.”
Anne De Manser says “I use facebook with my students in several ways. I find it is a great way to provide positive role modelling in an online environment by making positive comments on their facebook walls and by providing them a window into the way my ‘public ‘ face looks online. It’s just another way of communicating and building relationships with our school community.”
In briefs, several advantages of Facebook are:
Facebook is intended to social communication that’s why it’s fun to operate it.
Facebook can accommodate all learners' needs if you use it correctly.
It has a English spell-check function. Something our black boards and overheads lacks.
It motivates students when used in moderation.
It motivates teachers.
Facebook can make an easier each student to communicate.
Facebook can make an easier for teacher to give the task for student.
Facebook is provided translation tool to make the students easily to translate the words that they want to know without looking for this word in the dictionary, instead.
The Usage of Facebook
Utilizing Facebook effectively in teacher education courses will help facilitate perspective teachers to model what they have learned in their own classrooms. Teacher education students will not only benefit by the classroom advantages of using Facebook, but also by learning professional Facebook etiquette. Based on the explanation above, we may conclude that teaching vocabulary by using facebook isn’t only for increasing the student’s vocabulary but also their knowledge about technology.
Nowadays, facebook has given a lot of attention for the club or group which wants to socialite with their member or even just a small forum. This feature for English learners has used for accommodating the English learners into a discussion about English include vocabulary discussion. Based on Lorie Vela’s article, these several steps that can we use to teach Facebook:
Creating a teacher/educator profile
Creating groups, i strongly recommend creating groups according to several topics:
Coursing (add the students into the group)
Giving them several vocabularies In a day.
Working groups and/or activities.
Establish the rules
If the students do not want to share their “personal” profiles and don’t know how to manage privacy, we may encourage them to create another profile for educational purposes.
Create events: maybe we want to share some events with the students… meetings, concerts, seminars, or simply notify an extra activity like readings, tests… we instantly get to know who is interested in it and get some great feedback on which events are more popular among students.
Using games feature: a virtual farm or restaurant could be very attractive for students if they have their own community.
Make questions and use forums to engage students in conversation
We might use Youtube to share some interesting videos not just about your subject, but some funny ones to connect with them. We may also use videos to make discussions that can relate to a topic and make questions to make them share their opinions.
Let students know they can also send the private messages for specific topics, but can encourage them to share their questions in the wall, so that everyone else can answer. This way to exchange roles with students and being a facilitator, let the lead to students.
Turning Facebook into that other “space” is a better way to make them feel comfortable with and be the Community Manager of your own courses.
Improving Vocabulary by using Facebook
In building up students’ vocabulary achievement, the students must learn it well. The Facebook can be more effective if the student can interact with the Facebook; this interaction includes the activities that can expand the students’ understanding of the words and the use of them in any language skill. In addition, Facebook can add a new dimension to learning allowing teachers to explain abstract concepts, while accommodating all learning styles. Used properly, Facebook can be one of the most powerful tools for disseminating information ever known. Employed inappropriately, Facebook could potentially confuse students and make learning a difficult process.
Students will not feel that they are studying while using Facebook because they feel such as playing their hobbies. Giving them new vocabularies to make those words as popular topics in Facebook forum will make them accustomed with those words and they can be easily to memorize them without intended to memorizing purposely. Not only build up their vocabulary as a final result but also students may be helped by using vocabulary to improve their vocabulary ability moreover their skills in English such as writing and reading.
Conceptual Framework
The focus of this research is vocabulary ability using Facebook media. The conceptual framework of this research as follows:
Note:
Directly related to this researcher
Indirectly related to this researcher
Hypothesis
Based on the previous explanation, the researcher formulates the hypothesis as follows:
The students’ vocabulary ability can be better by using Facebook.
There are more advantages when Facebook is used to teach about English Vocabulary.
Research Method
Research Design
The method applied in this research is pre-experimental method because it only has both one group pre-test/post-test and treatment. The success of the treatment is determined by comparing pre-test and post-test score because there is no control variable. And then researcher applied quantitative descriptive in order to find out what extent Facebook improves the students’ vocabulary ability at the first semester of English education program In STAIN Parepare. This design is presented as follows:
E=O1xO2
Which:
E: Experimental
O1:Pre-Test
O2: Post-Test
X: Treatment
Furthermore the research uses planned observation to know in what way Facebook improves the students’ vocabulary at the first semester of English education program In STAIN Parepare.
In planned observation the researcher uses sheet observation that contains some types of students’ activities or behaviors that is observed.
Research Variable
There are two variables involved in this research namely:
Independent variable
Independent variable is a variable which is influences or causes an apparent change or simply affect for dependent variable.
Independent variable in this research is Facebook, where Facebook will influence students’ vocabulary ability.
Dependent variable
Dependent variable is a variable which is influenced by independent variable. Dependent variable in this research is students’ vocabulary because students’ vocabulary will be influenced by implementation of Facebook activity.
Operational definition of variable:
Facebook is a popular free social networking website that allows registered users to create profiles, upload photos and video, send messages and keep in touch with friends, family and colleagues.
According to definition above, we may infer that Facebook is a media to communicate with the other people in this world which supports us to make acquaintance and befriend with every people in the world which is completed with several features such as application and forums that very useful for any aspect in daily life.
Student’s vocabulary knowledge
Vocabulary knowledge is defined as the ability to go from the printed form of a word to its meaning.
Students is person who studying at college, university, secondary school, and particular subject.
According on the meaning above, it can be inferred that student’s vocabulary knowledge is the ability of students to know more about vocabulary from its form and meaning. That’s why we will know whether students lack of vocabulary or not. It can be graded excellent, good, enough or poor.
3. Population and Sample
a. Population
Population is a group of individuals or items that share one or more characteristic from which data can be gathered and analyzed. The population of this research is the first semester students at STAIN Parepare in academic year 2011/2012 which is consist of 5 classes.
b. Sample
Sample is a set of individuals or items selected from a population for analysis to yield estimates of, or to test hypotheses about, parameters of the whole population. This research determines 1 class which is consisted of 35 students as sample.
Technique and instrument of collecting data
Technique of collecting data
Technique of collecting data that is used in this research is:
1). Test
Test is an examination of a person’s knowledge and ability. The research uses pre-test and post-test to find out the students’ vocabulary knowledge before and after treatment. so that, this test will answer the question whether Facebook can improve students’ vocabulary or not.
2). Observation
Observation is act of watching something carefully for a period of time. Observation is done during teaching and learning process. The researcher took notes in the teacher’s journal to record the teaching and learning activities and the students’ mastery on vocabulary. While the result of the exercises and tests were recorded to know the students’ mastery on vocabulary
Instrument of collecting data
In this research will use three instruments such as pre test/ post test to find out the students ability, observation which is used note and media to connect to the internet such as PC (notebook, netbook, laptop and gadgets) and Modem.
Procedure to collecting data
The research will conduct test and observation in collecting data. Testing will conduct twice, pre-test and post-test. The pre-test will be given to find out their vocabulary knowledge before conducting the material. The post-test is held to find out their vocabulary knowledge after presenting the material (teaching vocabulary using Facebook media). The observation is done to write down all students’ behaviors during learning process. So that, the research will notice in what way Facebook media improves the students’ vocabulary.
The procedure is presented in chronological order as follows:
Pre-test
Pre-test is the test before treatment. The classified of vocabulary test is individual test. The test item is answered by despondence in written test. There are 40 test items covering the 30 of matching test items, the 5 of completing test items, and the 5 of true – false test items.
Treatment
After giving a pre-test, the research will give treatment for 10 times, and each times will take 60 minutes. The research will teach about vocabulary by using Facebook. The vocabularies that the research will give to them are educational terms, idiomatic expressions, and advance vocabulary.
The steps in teaching pronunciation using Facebook media are:
The first meeting:
1). after introducing and greeting, the research explains about the vocabularies and Facebook media that used to build up their vocabularies. Approximately 20 minutes.
2). the research will make a group and ask them to follow that’s group.
3). Giving several vocabularies on that group’s wall and ask them to give their comments about those words meaning according to them. Approximately 10 minutes.
4). Ask one of them to write down some vocabularies and the other friends have to give their comments.
5). Posting an article or story about education and ask them to find the vocabulary that they don’t know and those vocabularies will be discussed together. Approximately 30 minutes.
6). Addressing some questions and/or status in order to make them to answer or reply (All of activities are using English). Approximately 5 minutes.
7). the research ends this class.
The second ‘till tenth meeting
1). The Class will begin with several vocabularies games that are available on Facebook. Take times approximately 20 minutes.
2). Chatting time, approximately 15 minutes. In this part, research will give several idiomatic expressions.
3). Posting several advance vocabularies and ask them to translate and make into the sentence. Approximately 15 minutes.
4). Addressing some questions and/or status in order to make them to answer or reply (All of activities are using English). Approximately 5 minutes.
5). The research ends the class.
Post-test
Post-test will be given on the tenth meeting. The activity intends to know the students progress in vocabulary knowledge after treatment by 8 times, and the steps will be same with the pre-test.
Observation
Observation is held to observe the activity of students and teacher during the teaching and learning process. The criteria of success of this part are by using observation sheet. The result of this observation will be seen the percentage.
Technique of analysis data
The data will be collected trough the test are score into raw score by using the following criteria:
Scoring the result of the test:
The data collected from of the both of test, pre-test and post-test are classified based on the following classification.
Standardized score Standardized Value
4
3
2
1 Very Good / Excellent
Good
Fairly Good
Poor / Bad
The criteria of success in this action are decided as follow:
75 % < MS ≤ 100 % = very good
50 % < MS ≤ 75 % = good
25 % < MS ≤ 50 % = Good enough
0 % < MS ≤ 25 % = not good
Finding out the mean score will use the formula:
X=(∑X)/n x
Where:
X = Mean
n = The amount of students
∑X= total score
One of the most widely used statistical methods for testing the difference between means, and the one we’re going to get you up-to-speed on, is called the t-test. We will find the difference between the mean score between the pre-test and post-test by calculating the value of the t-test, the formula is,
Where:
D: the means score of difference.
∑D: the difference score of two tests (pre-test and post-test).
∑D2: the sum of the differences score both of tests.
n :the total sample
Calculation standard deviation, the formula is:
SD= √SS/N, Where SS=∑X2 – ((∑X)^2)/N
SD: the standard of deviation
n : the number of subject
SS: the square root of the sum of squares
∑X2: The sum of all of squares
(∑X)2: the square of the sum of the scores.
http://www46.homepage.villanova.edu/john.immerwahr/FTP101/Facebook.pdf
hkr.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:228945/FULLTEXT01
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