Jumbled-Letter Game for Vocabulary Teaching
IMPROVING STUDENT’S VOCABULARY BY USING JUMBLED-LETTER GAME IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING CONTEXTS By: Nora Fudhla
A. Background
For some language teachers, teaching vocabulary is challenging, especially in English Language Teaching classroom. Nowadays, the teacher should provide a vocabulary teaching which avoiding vocabulary list memorization or vocabulary translation. Besides, the teacher also should consider about the students’ different ability to master vocabulary. Some language students may master new vocabulary faster than others and some of them may find many difficulties to master new vocabulary. On the other side, some students may master or memorize some vocabulary but they cannot spell the word correctly.
Although teaching vocabulary is now less emphasized due to communicative approach in language teaching, it can not be neglected that without having a big scope of vocabulary mastery, the language learner would face some obstacles to master the language learned. Vocabulary is one of the components of language that may help language learner acquire the target language. Due to this condition, the teacher should find appropriate methods or techniques to teach vocabulary to the students.
Apparently, there are so many ways to teach vocabulary. In conventional teaching, some teachers usually give a list of vocabulary to be memorized or give a list of vocabulary which uses both native and target language (L2). But, it is assumed that this way of vocabulary teaching method burdens the language students with a list of unused vocabulary memorization. It is because the students only focus on memorizing the vocabulary without knowing appropriately how and when to use the vocabulary in daily speaking. Another way to teach vocabulary that had been proposed by some language teachers is using language games. Language games are kind of games used to help both teacher and learner to teach and learn the target language. It is believed that by applying
A. Background
For some language teachers, teaching vocabulary is challenging, especially in English Language Teaching classroom. Nowadays, the teacher should provide a vocabulary teaching which avoiding vocabulary list memorization or vocabulary translation. Besides, the teacher also should consider about the students’ different ability to master vocabulary. Some language students may master new vocabulary faster than others and some of them may find many difficulties to master new vocabulary. On the other side, some students may master or memorize some vocabulary but they cannot spell the word correctly.
Although teaching vocabulary is now less emphasized due to communicative approach in language teaching, it can not be neglected that without having a big scope of vocabulary mastery, the language learner would face some obstacles to master the language learned. Vocabulary is one of the components of language that may help language learner acquire the target language. Due to this condition, the teacher should find appropriate methods or techniques to teach vocabulary to the students.
Apparently, there are so many ways to teach vocabulary. In conventional teaching, some teachers usually give a list of vocabulary to be memorized or give a list of vocabulary which uses both native and target language (L2). But, it is assumed that this way of vocabulary teaching method burdens the language students with a list of unused vocabulary memorization. It is because the students only focus on memorizing the vocabulary without knowing appropriately how and when to use the vocabulary in daily speaking. Another way to teach vocabulary that had been proposed by some language teachers is using language games. Language games are kind of games used to help both teacher and learner to teach and learn the target language. It is believed that by applying
References: 1. Cross, D. 1992. A Practical Handbook of Language Teaching. London: Prentice Hall 2 3. Huyen, Nguyen Thi Thanh and Khuat Thi Thu Nga. 2003. Learning Vocabulary Through Games. Asian EFL Journal 4 5. Martin, D. 2000. How to be an Effective EFL Teacher. Okegawa City: EFL Press. www.eflpress.com/how_to_be_an_effective_efl.html 6 7. Mei, Yin Yong and Yu Jin Jang. 2000. Using Games in an EFL Class for Children. Daejin University. ELT Research Paper. Fall 2000 8 9. Xanthos, Nicholas. 2006. Wittgenstein 's Language Games. Université du Québec à Chicoutimi. http://www.signosemio.com/wittgenstein/language-games.asp 10