Proceedings of the 5th INACELT ISSN: 2656-4432 (online)

(International Conference on English Language Teaching)

Using Word Wall Medium to Improve Students’ Junior Secondary

School Vocabulary Mastery

Nurul Humairah Kahar

[email protected]
Sultan Baa
[email protected]
Universitas Negeri Makassar, Indonesia

Abstract

This research aimed at finding out whether or not the use of wordwall media improves
EFL junior secondary school students’ vocabulary mastery. The study applied pre-
experimental research design. The population of this research was the seventh grade
students of SMP Negeri 1 Campalagian Polewali Mandar West Sulawesi. Twenty three
(23) students were taken as samples of the study by using cluster random sampling
technique. The instrument of this research was a writing test which administered as a pre-
test and post-test. Descriptive statistic was used to analyze the data. The result of data
analysis showed that the t-test value for vocabulary was 114.1 and t-table was 2.074. It
means that t-test was greater than t-table or 114.1>2.074. The alternative hypothesis (H1)
was accepted and the null hypothesis (H0) was rejected. Therefore, it can be concluded
that the use of word wall media could improve students’ vocabulary mastery of the EFL
junior secondary school students in Polewali Mandar West Sulawesi.

Keywords: wordwall, EFL students, vocabulary mastery

INTRODUCTION

The use of English as an international language plays a significant role in

globalization era. At the present time, we are required to be able to communicate in
English. Meanwhile, Indonesian education approves the use of Indonesian language as
the national language. The evidence of its importance is to put English as one of the
subjects to be tested in the national examination. In teaching English, there are four micro
abilities: Listening, Reading, Writing, and Speaking. In addition to four language skills,
vocabulary mastery is also important for English language learners.
Vocabulary also is part of language learning that need continuing growth and
development by both native and nonnative speakers after grammar and pronunciation.
Learning vocabulary as a foreign language seems easy but some students seem difficult
to memorize. The students also seem that study English make them bored in learning it
in the class. Beside that, the teacher teaches vocabulary by repeating the word and uses
the same strategy in every meeting. So, it makes students bored and are not interested to
follow vocabulary class. Without having enough vocabulary, students will have
difficulties to know the meaning of what they listen and read as well as to express their

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aim in communication. On the other hand, if they have a lot of vocabulary, they can
expand their ability in English since a great number of words are needed for the real
language use.
Harmer (2008) cited in Wahyuningsih, (2011, p. 185) “vocabulary is the art of the
language teacher themselves. Students need to know the words in context to see how they
are used in the process of communication”. Vocabulary is very important a language,
when we learn a language like English, we learn the words of language. The vocabulary
is needed to master the four skills in English. Through vocabulary, we convey our ideas,
emotion, and efficiently. Without mastering it, people will not be able to use English
effectively. In language teaching, students must continually learn vocabulary as they learn
structure.
The curriculum used today competence-oriented, meaning that the students are
required to have certain competencies or skills as a result of the learning process in
schools. In the implementation process of learning the English language, researcher often
find students in SMP Negeri 1 Campalagian have difficulty in achieving a basic
competence. This is because the students’ mastery of English vocabulary is inadequate
so very disturbing achievement of competence as specified in the curriculum. They often
have difficulty in understanding the meaning of a word as understanding their vocabulary
relatively inadequate so that the process of achieving a basic competence will run longer.
The students also still have limited vocabulary mastery. Besides having different
development, some of them have high motivation and develop rapidly; some others have
low motivation and develop slowly to learn, so their development slowest than their
friend. Of course, they have differences in mastering on vocabulary.
To increase students’ motivation especially for young learners in learning
vocabulary, teacher should choose good strategy. As a result of playing use media, the
students are highly motivated by the variations of media that are used by the teacher. One
of the media that can be used to teach vocabulary is Word Wall. A word wall is a group
of words that are displayed on a wall, bulletin board, chalkboard, or whiteboard in a
classroom. There are words printed in a large font so that they are easily visible from all
students seating areas. The advantages media is they will learn vocabulary by what they
hear and read, sure the students unsuspected also learning listening and reading from the
teacher teach. They also enjoy it from the word that the teacher brings to make sentences.
In student ages, it cannot be apart from the fact that really needs happiness beside
their seriousness to study in the school. So that, media can be a method to learn something
besides they feel happy and interest. By using media, students will enjoy to learn because
they always have the media in their world.
Furthermore, the main purpose of a word wall is to help students to build sight
word recognition so they can recognize them at glance. In addition, word walls are also a
visual that help students remember connections between words, retain knowledge of the
word, and ultimately read them with automaticity. In addition, Word wall is influential to
mastery of the English vocabulary proficiency of students, where media word wall is
designed to enhance learning and group activities can also involve the students in the
creation and activity of its use. By using the word wall it is expected that the students will
increase their English vocabulary comprehension without having to always depend on the
use of a dictionary or meaning of the word given by the teacher. So that students can

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easily mastering English vocabulary and be able to apply the learning activities into every
day.
According to Marzano (2004), Word Wall is an ongoing, organized display of key
words that provides visual reference for students throughout a unit of study or term. These
words are used continually by teachers and students during a variety of activities. There
are ways to make efficient wordwall, practical and memorize easily. Word wall is
interactive media in classroom to advocate learning of listening, speaking, reading and
writing.
A word wall is a group of words that are displayed on a wall, bulletin board,
chalkboard, or whiteboard in a classroom. There are words printed in a large font so that
they are easily visible from all students seating areas. The advantages media is they will
learn vocabulary by what they hear and read, sure the students unsuspected also learning
listening and reading from the teacher teach. They also enjoy it from the word that the
teacher brings to make sentences.
In his book, Word Savvy discusses additional purposes for using word walls. First,
wordwalls support students' vocabulary development. In the content area classroom, word
walls can be used to develop academic vocabulary. Word walls provide example words,
which highlight difficult concepts. Many teachers create word walls that support students'
learning of high frequency words. Students are able to include words that are important
to them. And finally, word walls provide a space for students to sort and categorize words
and phrases.

METHOD

1. Research Design

This research used quantitative research. Quantitative is a research that focuses on

the collection of data and analysis of numerical data or statistic. It means the researchers
collect the data which contains numbers and it will be analyzed by statistical method. This
research is intended to investigate the improving of word wall as media in teaching
vocabulary for the seven grade students of SMP Negeri 1 Campalagian. The research
design used by the researcher was pre-experimental design in the form of one-group,
pretest-posttest design.

2. Research Instrument

Instrument has important function in this research. Instrument is one of the

significant steps in conducting this research. The researcher used one kind of instrument
that was vocabulary test. The aim to do test was to know Word Wall Media effective or
not for the students to learn vocabulary. The material of the test was taken from English
book and other resources to add more vocabularies which related to their subject and
based on Junior High School curriculum.

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FINDINGS

1. The frequency and rate percentage of the student’s pre-test and post-test score

In pre-test, there was 1 student (4.34%) classified into good, 12 students or

52.17% classified into fairly good, 5 students or 21.73% classified fairly, 3 students or
13.04% classified in to poor, and 2 students or 8.69% classified into very poor. None of
23 students got excellent and very good score.
While in post-test, there was 2 students or 8.69% classified into excellent, 9 students
or 39.13% classified into very good, 3 students or 13.04% classified into good, 3 students
or 13.04% classified into fairly good, 2 students or 8.59% classified into fairly and 4
students or 17.39% classified into poor.

2. Frequency and rate percentage of the student’s vocabulary about adverb, noun
and adjective in post-test.

The frequency and percentage of students vocabulary especially about adverb,

noun and adjective in the pre-test of 23 students were good but needs to be improved
more. Students vocabulary adverb score there were 1 student or 4.34% classified into
good, 1 student or 4.34% classified into fairly good, 9 students or 39.13% classified into
fairly, 8 students or 34.78% classified into poor and 4 students or 17.39% classified into
very poor. In term of noun, there were 7 students or 30.43% classified into excellent, 5
students or21.73% classified into good, 4 students or 17.39% classified into fairly, 3
studentsor13.04% classified into poor and 4 students or 17.39% classified into very poor.
In term of adjective, 1 student or 4.34% classified into good, 7 students or 30.43%
classified into fairly, 9 students or 39.13% classified into poor and 6 students or 26.08%
classified into very poor.

3. Frequency and rate percentage of the student’s vocabulary about adverb, noun
and adjective in pre-test.

The frequency and percentage of students vocabulary especially about adverb,

noun and adjective in the post-test 23 students was good but needs to be improved more.
Students vocabulary verb score there were 9 students or 39.13% classified into excellent,
1 students or 4.34% classified into very good, 5 students or 21.73% classified into good,
4 students or 17.39% classified into fairly, 2 students or 8.69% classified into poor and 2
students or 8.69% classified into very poor. In term of noun, there were 15 students or
62.21% classified into excellent, 2 students or 8.69% classified into good, 5 students or
21.73% classified into fairly and 1 students or 4.34% classified into very poor. In term
of adjective there were 2 students or 8.69% classified into excellent, 8 students or 34.78%
classified into good, 10 students or 43.47% classified into fairly and 3 students or 13.04%
classified into poor.

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4. The improvement of the students’ vocabulary in pre-test and post-test

The students improvement to post-test in which post-test was greater than pre-
test. Where is pre-test adverb was 50.39 and post-test was 76.47 the improvement from
pre-test to post-test was 51%. Where is pre-test noun was 66.95 and post-test was 86.08
the improvement From pre-test to post-test was 29% and there were pre-test adjective
was 42.60 and post-test was 67.82 the improvement from pre-test to post-test was 59%.

5. Hypothesis testing

T-test value was greater than the t-table value (114.1 > 2.074). It means that there
was an improvement in the students’ vocabulary mastery before and after use word wall
media to the students’ vocabulary of the seventh grade of SMP Negeri 1 Campalagian. it
can be concluded that the until Hypothesis (H0) was rejected and alternative hypothesis
(H1) Was accepted.

DISCUSSION

At this stage, the results of research on vocabulary mastery of seventh grade

students in SMP Negeri 1 Campalagian, mastery of seventh grade students in SMP Negeri
1 Campalagian, by referring to the research objective, are to explain the process of
applying WordWall vocabulary learning media in increasing vocabulary mastery of
seventh grade students in SMP Negeri 1 Campalagian and also describes the improvement
of students’ vocabulary mastery by applying WordWalls vocabulary learning media.
Based in the result of data, it was found that the application of wordwalls media
had successfully improved students’ vocabulary achievement. The finding of this
research is that Word Wall media can help the students improve their vocabulary
achievement. By applying this media, the score of the students in vocabulary increased
significantly.
The description of the data collected through was explained in the previous
sections showed that the mean score of students on pre-test adverb was 50.39, pre-test
noun was 66.95 and pre-test adjective was 42.60 and the mean score of the students on
the post-test adverb was 76.47, post-test noun was 86.08 and post-test adjective was 67.82
and from pre-test to post-test can improve adverb with 51%, can improve noun with 29%
and can improve adjective with 59%. The score of standard deviation from pre-test was
7.23 and the score of standard deviation from post-test was 71.33 and t-test value was
114.1. Therefore, it indicated the students tested achieved a higher score by word wall
media.
The data taken from the questionnaire sheet also showed that students interest in
vocabulary by using word walls media because word walls media can be a solution for
the difficulties of vocabulary learning. The students looked enjoyed the class and applied
the technique well. The media was very useful to help the students to improve their
vocabulary which was lack of stocks of English words the use of Word Walls vocabulary
learning media in improving

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CONCLUSION

Based on the result to there research that had been in The Use of WordWalls
Media to Improve Students Vocabulary at the Seventh Grade of SMP Negeri 1
Campalagian was improved. The researcher analyzed the data consisted of the result on
pre-test and post-test. The data consisted of the result on pre-test and post-test. This result
proved that this method was effective to improve the students’ vocabulary.
The use of word walls media in teaching vocabulary can improve the students’
vocabulary because at the time before and after given the treatment, the students
comparison, before given the treatment the students had weakness in vocabulary and after
the treatment, and word wall media can improve the students’ vocabulary.
The result of t-test showed that the t-test value was higher the t-table value
(114.1>2.074). It means that the improvement to the students’ vocabulary before and after
used word walls media to the students’ vocabularyy of the seventh grade of SMP Negeri
1 Campalagian. It can be concluded that the null hypothesis (H0) was rejected and
alternative hypothesis (H1) was accepted. It means that the application of word wall as
media for teaching vocabulary is effective to increase the student vocabulary mastery of
the students of SMP Negeri 1 Campalagian Polewali Mandar West Sulawesi.

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Authors’ Brief CV
Nurul Humairah Kahar is a final year student of English Department of Universitas
Negeri Makassar

Sultan Baa is a lecturer at the Faculty of Languages and Literature, Universitas Negeri
Makassar, Indonesia. He has done several researches in the area of Bilingual Education
and TEFL. His research interest includes Bilingual Education, CBI, CLIL, TEFL,
language testing and evaluation, and English writing.

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