II.

LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter explains about concept of vocabulary, kind of vocabulary, concept of

teaching vocabulary, concept of riddle game, teaching vocabulary through riddle

game, and the advantages of using riddle game in teaching vocabulary.

2.1 Concept of Vocabulary

Vocabulary has an important role in learning language because it allows you to

communicate clearly with other people. Vocabulary is a tool that must be

mastered by people to express their feelings, ideas, thought, opinion, etc in both

spoken and written (Edge, 1993).

Vocabulary is a list of words which is used to build up a language. Vocabulary is

a list of words usually arranged alphabetically and defined, explained, or

translated into the range of language (Webster, 1988:110). This idea is supported

by Hornby (1984:959) who states that vocabulary is a total number of words with

role of combining them to make a language.

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In learning language, students use vocabulary to communicate, share their ideas

and opinion with others. On the other hand, language is nothing without knowing

the vocabulary.

Schmitt (1997) gave the definition of vocabulary as follows. Vocabulary is a basis

of language which is very important to be mastered first. We cannot speak well

and understand written materials if we do not master it. Schmitt stated that no

matter how successfully the sound of the foreign language is mastered, without

words to express the wider range of meanings, communication in a foreign

language just cannot happen in any range of meaning.

Vocabulary is a set of lexeme including a single word, compound word, and

idiom. Simple word is a single word that may not have a prefix and suffix,

example: book, pen, bag, etc (Lamb, 1963). Compound word is two or more

existing words, which are simply combining. Idiom is a group of words with

meaning which is different from the individual words and often difficult to

understand, for example: move on, look up, look at, look in, etc.

2.2 Kind of Vocabulary

As stated by Fries (1974:4), vocabulary can be classified into some types namely:

2.2.1 Content Words

a. Name of subject or things, that is: nouns.

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Nouns are words used to identify people, places, things, and ideas. It

also word which occurs as a part of subject o a sentence or an object of

a verb. Crystal (1995: 206) defines eight kind of noun as follows:

1. Adjectival Noun

Adjectival noun is an adjective that functions as a noun. The

examples of adjectival noun are highlighted, 1) The other is still on

the way, 2) The poor asked any food from the rich.

2. Animate Noun

Animate noun refers to a person, animal, or other creature. This

sometimes has different noun endings which make the gender

clear. Examples of animate noun are: 1) The actor act perfectly, 2)

The teacher is writing in the white board.

3. Collective noun

Collective noun is a word used to define a group of objects, where

the objects can be people, animals, emotions, concept or other

thing. It is a noun that refers to things or people as a unit. Example:

1) The team joins the match; 2) The audience gives their applause

to the singer.

4. Concrete noun

Concrete noun refers to entities which can be observed and

measured. Example: 1) She holds many books. 2) My parents buy a

house. 3) They drive the motorcycle quickly.

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5. Abstract noun

Abstract noun refers to unobservable nations, such as difficulty,

idea, certainty, etc. Example: I put my sister’s art up on the fridge.

6. Countable noun

Countable noun refers to individual, countable entities, such as

books, houses, flowers, for example: He bought three books of

psychology.

7. Uncountable noun

Uncountable noun refers to an undifferentiated mass or notion,

such as butter, water, sugar. For example: I add some sugar in his

coffee.

8. Proper noun

Proper nouns are names of specific people, place, time, occasions,

events, publications and so on. Proper nouns are not usually used

with the determiners. It is also written with an initial of capital

letter. The examples of proper nouns are: 1) I love Indonesia 2) I

went to a beach on Sunday 3) They watch the FIFA World Cup

Championship.

b. Action done by with those things, that is: verb.

It is the words which express an action or help to make a statement.

The verb is perhaps the most important part of sentence. A verb or

compound verb asserts something about the subject of the sentence and

express actions, events, or state of being. It occurs as a part of

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predicate of a sentence and sometimes carries numbers of grammatical

categories, such as tense, aspect, and mood. There are some types of

verbs. They are:

1. Auxiliary verb

Auxiliary verb is also called as helping verb. This helping verb

assists the main verb in a clause to express several basic

grammatical contrasts, such as in a person, number and tense. They

do not follow the same grammatical rules as main verb, which is

why they must be considered as a separate class.

Auxiliaries can be used before the word “not”. It is also put before

the subject in order to ask a question. The examples are: 1) They

do not understand what he said. 2) Does she have a boyfriend? 3)

Sinta does not want to meet her anymore.

2. Inchoative verb

Inchoative verb is a verb that describes a change of state. The

examples of inchoative verb are freeze, dry, burn, rise, etc. The

examples in the sentences are: 1) The refrigerator freezes

everything in it. 2) The fire burns the wood.

3. Modals

Modal verbs convey a range of judgments about the likelihood of

events. The function of modals is only as an auxiliary verb,

expressing meaning which is much less definable, focused, and

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independent than those of lexical verbs. There are nine verbs in this

class: can, could, may, might, will, would, shall, should and with

dare, need, ought to and used to having a very similar function.

Here are the examples of using modals in sentences: 1) I will go to

the beach. 2) You should obey your parents.

4. Phrasal verb

Phrasal verb is a set of verbs which demonstrate some unique

properties. It appears with what looks to be a preposition,

traditionally referred to as particle. Here are the examples of

phrasal verb: 1) The plane took off. 2) I am looking for my watch.

5. Regular and irregular verb

A regular verb is the verb that follows the pattern of taking –ed for

the past tense and past participle or –d if the word ends in e, such

as walk=walked, for example: He walked alone to school.

An irregular verb is the verb that does not take the –ed ending for

the past tense and past participle forms. Some irregular verbs do

not change: put=put=put, while others change completely: drink,

drank, drunk, for example: 1) He put my book on the table, 2) She

drank a cup of milk.

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c. Qualities of the things, that is: adjectives.

It is the word used to qualify noun and pronoun. An adjective modifies

a noun or a pronoun by describing, identifying, or quantifying words.

An adjective usually recedes the noun or the pronoun which it

modifies.

In the following examples, the italic words are adjectives: 1) The small

boat foundered on the wine dark sea. 2) The back room was filled with

large, yellow rain boots.

An adjective can be modified by an adverb, or by a phrase or clause

functioning as an adverb in the sentence, for example: 1) My husband

knits intricately patterned mittens.

1. Possessive adjective

A possessive adjective (my, your, her, his, its, our, and their) is

similar or identical to a possessive pronoun; however, it is used as

an adjective and modifies a noun or a noun phrase, as in following

sentences: 1) I can’t complete my assignment because I don’t have

the text book. 2) What is your phone number?

2. Demonstrative Adjective

The demonstrative adjective this, these, that, those, and what are

the identical to the demonstrative pronouns, but are used as

adjectives to modify nouns or noun phrases, as in the following

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sentences: 1) When the librarian tripped over that cord, she

dropped a pile of books. 2) This apartment needs to be fumigated.

2.2.2 Function words

Function words are those words which one is used as a means of

expressing relation of grammar or structure, such as conjunction (and,

however, but), e.g.:

a. Andi is cleverer than Indah but Ronnie is not like him.(conjunction)

b. Dian and Desy have a cat.

2.2.3 Substitute words

Substitute words are those words which represent the individual things or

specific action as substitutes for whole form classes of words (anybody,

anyone, somebody, and someone), e.g.:

a. Everyone has left the room.

b. Nobody is perfect

2.2.4. Distributed words

Distributed words are those word that distributed in use according to

grammatical matter as the presence or absence of a negative, such as any,

either, etc, e.g.:

a. You do not allow to pass this line and neither do I.

b. She cannot finish the task and I don’t either.

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Based on the all the kinds of vocabulary above, the writer focused on content

words that consist of noun, verb and adjective. Those three kinds of content word

were considered as the most important word in the part of speech or word order.

As mentioned by Yuliana (2011) the vocabulary items for SMP students based on

2004 English Curriculum are divided into two kinds. Those are the classification

of word according to the theme and class. The theme for the second year students

according to Department National Education are: Flora and Fauna, Friendship,

Travel, Health, Teenage life, Recreation, Seasons.

Vocabulary items based on the theme consist of words that should be learned in

context. It is also taught in a different theme. The theme which was related to

vocabulary is considered to fill the competence target. Moreover, vocabulary

items are produced from genre: descriptive, narrative, recount, procedure, report,

etc. For the second grade student of SMP, genre is classified based on the

semester. In the first semester for example, students are learning narrative text and

for the second semester, students are learning descriptive text. In descriptive text,

the social function is to describe flora and fauna, place or thing.

2.3 Concept of Teaching Vocabulary

In teaching vocabulary, the teachers have responsibility to make their teaching

successful. Scoot (2007) says that there are four ways of teaching vocabulary.

1. Definitional methods include anything where a student is given a word and

a definition. The students may be given a list of words and have to look

them up in the dictionary or the teacher may simply give an oral definition
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for new vocabulary words without discussing the meaning beyond the

definition. According to Nagy & Scot (1997), traditional practices of

vocabulary leaning are based on the definitional approach. The focus of

this approach is to learn the meanings of the words either looking up in

dictionary or glossary or by drill. It is considered the easiest and less time

consuming approach to vocabulary learning. It saves time of teacher as

well the students and makes them able to study maximum words in

minimum time. However, it is not a guarantee that this approach improves

comprehension of the students and increases the active vocabulary of the

learner. Sometimes, learning definition does not necessarily helpful in the

integration of the knowledge. There is a need of background information

for the integration of the knowledge.

2. Contextual methods of vocabulary instructions ask the students to create a

meaning for a word based on the rest of sentence or paragraph. The

instructional method also teaches students how to use a new vocabulary

word in the right context by writing original sentences using the new

word. According to Weatherford (1990), Context Based Approach of

vocabulary learning is the most effective, and it saves lot of time of the

learner that is wasted in going to dictionary again and again. Contextual

evidence helps the learner to find out the meanings of the new words. It is

based on teaching the meanings of new words by having them used in

different contexts surrounding the words. There are two types of context:

Pedagogical context/ instructional context and natural context. The

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instructional context refers to sentences specifically written to introduce

the meanings of the new words. The natural context refers to text

sentences written to communicate ideas of the text. To understand the

meanings of the new words, the students need to know the information

related to the topic in which the words are embedded. Difficult words can

also be explained by giving summary of it. For example, she speaks

without break and do not give chance to anybody else to speak in the

meeting. She is really a loquacious lady. In this respect, referent words,

synonyms, antonyms, hyponyms, definitions, alternative and restatement

help to reach at the meanings of the words. Context based approach not

only helps the reader to know the meaning of the words but also help and

facilitate in the use of them. It develops independent learning habits,

inculcate problem solving approach and promote active learning process.

The words that have got different meanings with the same spellings and

pronunciation are very difficult to be learnt without context based

approach. For example, the word pen is also used as a noun and verb, and

at the same time it has also got the meanings a shed where poultry birds

are kept. In the same way, the sentence such as his fur coat was coated

with ice; He left her alone on the left bank of the river; There is no point in

drying your clothes if they are already dry; She pointed at me and made a

very pointed remark. She drew the curtains to make the room lighter, and

then lighted her cigarette with a lighter; After he had drunk the whisky, the

drunk was very drunk indeed; The referee who refereed the match

matched the toughness of the player. It is very difficult to memorize the

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meanings of the words without any context. The contextual information

helps the learner to understand the meanings of the words that have got

different meanings.

3. Organizational or semantic framework instruction, students learn

relationship between and among similar words. This type of instruction

includes the use of concepts maps, semantics maps, and other graphic

organizer. When semantic maps are used as a vocabulary teaching

technique, the teacher chooses a central word from the text, and key ideas

together with new related vocabulary words grouped and listed by

categories. During discussion of the map, students become aware of the

meanings of the new words, learning new meanings for old words, and

discover the relationships that hold between the various vocabulary items

and the ideas discussed and mapped (Hague, 1987; Johnson & Pearson,

1984). Semantic processing techniques such as semantic mapping are

characterized by two processes: first, learners focus on the meaning of the

new words under study; second, they integrate these new words into their

existing semantic system and their previous experiences (Brown & Perry,

1991; Hague, 1987). In sum, semantic mapping enables learners to

understand the relationships among words by helping them use their prior

knowledge since the right “interpretation of new information hinges on its

congruency with the schemata currently activated” (Nassaji, 2007, p. 82).

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4. Mnemonic instructional methods make use of vital images as a way of

help students learn and remember new terminology. Instead of

memorizing abstract definitions, students are encouraged the picture

something that helps them associate a word meaning. Structural methods

of vocabulary instruction show students how to look at the parts of the

word for clues about what the new word means. A previous study which

claims that this type of morphological word study is especially useful to

the students who are learning English as an additional language (Scoot,

2007). According to Filmore and Snow (2000), structural approach of

teaching vocabulary is based on the morphological analyses of the word. It

is process of breaking the words into prefixes, root and suffixes to

illustrate the meanings. It is considered easy and practical approach of

vocabulary building. The morphological features of the language such as

prefixes, suffixes, and root help the learner to identify the meanings. The

students do not analyze the sentences to find out the meanings of the word

but analyze the word to follow its meanings. Knowledge about the root

form of the word helps them to build up their vocabulary in logical and in

sequenced way. After getting command over the root form of the word,

there is no more difficulty to modify it as different parts of speech and

build up the vocabulary. The words that are generated by the learner can

be recalled easily as compared to merely listened or read. It is, therefore,

necessary that the students must be provided opportunities to generate new

words from the given exercises. For example, the students might be asked

to form adjectives and adverbs from nouns or verbs. These exercises will
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greatly improve the vocabulary of the students. In the same way

punctuation marks also help the reader to understand the meanings of

difficult words such as Full stop indicates the completion of the thought,

comma indicates continuation of the thought and semi colon, colon

indicate the reversal of the thought.

All of the ways above is good to teach vocabulary, but in this research the

researcher used the contextual method because the researcher assumed that those

learning method helped the students to memorize the vocabulary and it was also

suitable with riddle game.

2.4 Concept of Riddle Game

In teaching vocabulary, unless there is a challenging way or technique, the

students may not be interested in learning. But riddle game gave the students

chance to improve the student’s vocabulary.

There are many definitions of riddle. According to Evan (1957), riddle is the

nouns all refer to something baffling or confusing which is to be solved.

According to Brassell (2008) a riddle is a statement or question or phrase having a

double or veiled meaning, put forth as a puzzle to be solved.

A riddle, sometimes called a "brain teaser," is usually a question that requires

clever or unexpected thinking for its answer. In general conversation, someone

typically presents a question to another person who accepts the challenge of

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guessing the correct response. The guesser may get one or multiple guesses and

sometimes the asker gives clues, but this is not required. Riddle usually has only

one correct answer, and it is commonly provided in the end, even if the guesser

does not think of it.

In general, riddle can be divided into two main sections namely enigmas and

conundrums. The enigmas are a type of a question that is presented in a

metaphorical language. These can be cracked or solved only after careful

observation of the problem statement. Most of the ancient English poems had

these kind of enigmas embedded within them. Conundrums are similar to enigmas

but for the fact that the answer lies hidden in the question itself and application of

the concept of punning can bring out the real answer hidden within the question.

The usage of different meanings with a common spelling too, can extract the

hidden truth (Rashid, 1951).

The structure of a riddle typically uses one of several techniques to create a twist,

which makes it difficult to guess. One common technique involves double

meanings. If the double meaning is in the words of the question, then the language

creates intentional confusion. The asker intends one meaning and hopes that the

guesser will understand the words differently. Here is an example: It has three

eyes, all in a row. When the red one opens, all freeze. In this riddle, the asker

intends for the guesser to understand the word “eyes” as a connotative, so the

“eyes” is not as the real eyes. The eyes here are the light in traffic light, and the

answer of the riddle is “traffic light”.

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According to Nation (1990:24) the characteristic of a good game are:

1. Game should be suitable in all students’ level.

2. Game should motivate students to enlarge their vocabulary.

3. The materials of game should challenge to the students.

Riddle game is appropriate with three steps in teaching vocabulary. Riddle is also

challenging for the students, because to correctly solve a riddle, students need:

to listen carefully and correctly interpret linguistic subtleties

to learn to ask precise and effective questions

to precisely articulate a logical and convincing solution

Riddle requires higher level critical thinking skills, which are often needed in

language learning, especially in the early stages of language acquisition where a

significant amount of time is devoted to memorization and repetition. Riddle not

only ask students to think logically and creatively, but also are a fun challenge to

students, who will be motivated to solve the puzzle the riddle provides.

Wright (1984) said that riddle game provides an entertaining way for students to

identify vocabulary words, use the definition of a vocabulary word to create a

riddle, for example, a riddle for the word "umbrella" might go, "When the drops

start to fall, you protect me to keep dry”. Vocabulary riddle work as an oral

activity for the class or as a written assignment in the form of a worksheet. Based

on that statement, riddle can be used as an oral activity or as written assignment

for the students.

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2.5 Teaching Vocabulary through Riddle Game

According to Haycraft as cited by Hidayatul points out that there are many ways

of presenting new vocabulary. They are:

1. Creating a context or situation from which the students can then

deduce the meaning.

2. Describing, defining object and drawing if it is necessary.

3. Taking the students out and introduce words for things seen in a shop

windows, or in the street.

4. Using word game. There are large varieties of these, e.g. riddle which

it is useful for practicing and revising vocabulary after it has been

introduce.

Using word game is the way that the researcher chooses to play with. In teaching

vocabulary, the researcher will used three stages: pre viewing, while viewing, and

post viewing.

Pre viewing

The purpose of pre viewing activity is to stimulate the student’s background

knowledge or developing learner’s comprehension strategies. The activities which

would be done are:

Telling the students that they are going to play with riddle presented in English

and asking them some questions to stimulate their background knowledge, for

example give them a riddle in Indonesian.

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While viewing

In this step, the riddle would be presented more. The purpose of this activity was

to make the students more active and challenging in answering the riddle which

has been given by the teacher. The activities that could be done are:

First viewing is as global understanding. Give the first riddle in English, and try to

solve it together and helped by the teacher. This is to make the students know how

to solve the riddle. So in solving the next riddle, it will be easier. And also ask the

students to guess the topic and content.

Second viewing is presentation of language. After first viewing, ask the students

several questions to check their understanding of the context of the riddle.

Post viewing

Post viewing activities were often connected to the idea of using language that

comes from the riddle. The activity that could be done are asking the students

some questions about their understanding about the topic after being taught by

using riddle and having them do the vocabulary task.

2.6 Advantages of using Riddle game in teaching vocabulary

As we know that there are many techniques in teaching vocabulary and game

could be one of them. Some expert says that games used for teaching vocabulary

have many advantages. Gertrude in her book said that: Games have proven to

have advantages and effectiveness in learning vocabulary in various ways:

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1. Games bring in relaxation and fun for students, thus help them learn and

retain new words more easily.

2. Games usually involve friendly competition and they keep learners

interested.

3. Vocabulary games bring real world context into the classroom and

enhance students' use of English in a flexible, communicative way. Games

are highly motivating and they give students more opportunity to express

their opinions and feelings.

4. Games add diversion to the regular classroom activities," break the ice",

but they are also used to introduce new ideas.

As a kind of game, the advantages of using riddle in teaching vocabulary are:

1. Students are more interested in learning the material. When they are

interested with the material, they will pay more attention to the lesson.

2. Students also feel more challenged, because to solve the riddle need a

critical thinking.

3. The teacher also doesn’t need to explain more about the topic, because the

students will know it by themselves by answering the riddle.