1 ELT FORUM 4 (1) (2015) Journal of English Language Teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt DEVELOPING QUARTET CARD GAMES FOR TEACHING VOCABULARY (A Case of the Eighth Grade Students of SMP Islam Al Madina Semarang in the Academic Year of 2014/2015) Lutfiana Ilma Annisa Rohani, S.Pd., M.A. English Department. Faculty of Languages and Arts. State University of Semarang Aticle Info ________________ Article History: Received in Juni 2015 Approved in Juli 2015 Published in Agustus 2015 ________________ Keywords: Quartet Card Games, vocabulary, teaching media development. ____________________ Abstract ___________________________________________________________________ Vocabulary is an important aspect of language development. Teaching vocabulary is getting crucial nowadays especially in junior high school. However, some English teachers cannot provide appropriate English teaching media. Commonly some English teachers taught vocabulary in random topics. The vocabulary teaching media was less interesting. This study has three aims. First, to explain the problems of the English teacher and the eighth grade students of SMP Islam Al Madina Semarang. Second, to explain the needs vocabulary of the English teacher and the eighth grade students of SMP Islam Al Madina Semarang. Third, to show how to develop effective Quartet Card Games to enrich vocabulary. There are two subjects of the research. First, the eighth grade students of SMP Islam Al Madina Semarang in the academic year of 2014/2015. Second, the English teacher of SMP Islam Al Madina Semarang. R&D (Research and Development) approach was adopted in this study. The study revealed that the problem faced by the English teacher was lack of media for teaching vocabulary. The students were bored of vocabulary learning. The need analysis showed that the students needed various vocabulary items. The English teacher believed that the vocabulary teaching media should be interesting and colorful. Through the process of drafting, trying out, and refining the Quartet Card Games it was found that some cards contained ambiguities. To avoid any ambiguity check (√) and cross (x) signs were added to some cards. It is suggested that the teacher choose appropriate vocabulary teaching media. It is also suggested that further research is conducted to gain better understanding of the vocabulary teaching media. © 2015 Universitas Negeri Semarang  Correspondent Address: B3 Building FBS Unnes Sekaran, Gunungpati, Semarang, 50229 E-mail: unnes_english@yahoo.com ISSN 2252-6706 INTRODUCTION According to Hatch & Brown (1995) vocabulary is the list of words that speakers of a particular language use. A language, like English, has millions vocabulary that rise time after time. People who want to learn it, moreover non- natives, have to master its vocabulary first, especially basic vocabulary, like nouns, verbs for daily activity, and common adjectives emotion because it is impossible for one to master a language without knowing any vocabulary of it. Moreover, the number of one’s vocabulary will impact his study speed of particular language. For a second language teacher, to make students understand vocabulary is a very basic Lutfiana Ilma Annisa / Journal of English Language Teaching 4 (1) (2015) 2 task in language teaching, but sometimes difficult in practice. There should be such creative techniques in vocabulary teaching to help teacher’s explanation. There are some tips to teach vocabulary as what have been suggested by Marry Slattery and Jane Willis (2001) as follows: a. Make class displays of pictures and other memory aids to support new vocabulary. b. Prepare to teach new words and phrases in a meaningful way by linking with a topic that the students are familiar with. c. Show the students how to play vocabulary games and give instruction in English while doing the games. d. Use lots of different games but use the same vocabulary to help the students become familiar with it. e. Need new words and phrases to be used a lot after introducing them so that the students learn to use them actively. According to those vocabulary teaching tips, a language classroom basically needs teaching media that support the English teaching and learning. The observation result that was done in the SMP Islam Al Madina Semarang shows that the school does not have any vocabulary teaching media which is actually very important to enrich the students vocabulary and support the English teaching and learning. The only vocabulary teaching media provided by the school are word cards made by the English teacher in which the number is very limited. However, the word cards are still less effective to be used during the teaching and learning process because of some problems: (1) The word cards are made manually using carton and board marker, so that they are less interesting, too fragile and have a high risk of typo. (2) The word cards are too small and are in random topics. (3) The word cards are often misused by some students. Once they get bored in guessing the meaning of the words, they use the word cards to play improperly. Hence, the writer is interested in developing teaching media to enrich Junior high school students’ vocabulary called Quartet Card Games which contains a lot of picture cards with various topics and fun games possibilities. This will enable the students to learn new vocabulary repeatedly without feeling bored quickly. Besides, this teaching media will be designed to be played in group to make the vocabulary learning more effective. This game combines picture cards with a game. By using Quartet Card Games, it is hoped that the teacher will be able to motivate the students to learn and pay attention to the material well. It can also avoid student’s feeling of boredom. The writer’s considerations are supported by the statements suggested by Finocchiaro (1974: 163) who said that the students understand and retain better when they have been shown or have touched some objects associated with it. Using a variety of media will increase the probability that students will learn more, retain better what they learn, and improve their performance of the skills they are expected to develop. Quartet Card Games can be used as one of many teaching media in which students are given a chance to learn English more fun and they will be more motivated. Moreover, the students will have more chance to learn the vocabulary actively at their leisure time. METHODS OF INVESTIGATION This study used R&D (Research and Development) as the research design since the objective of the study was to develop vocabulary teaching media. The product that was developed in this study was material object. The designed material was hardware. The material was designed to meet the educational need. The objective of the material was based on the standard competence and basic competence in the curriculum. Subject of the Study The subject of the study was the students of eighth grade students of SMP Islam Al Madina Semarang in the academic year of 2014/2015. Instrument of the Study Lutfiana Ilma Annisa / Journal of English Language Teaching 4 (1) (2015) 3 This study used two kinds of instrument which were questionnaire and interview. Stage of Media Development In this study, the researcher use the model of development research from Borg & Gall (2003: 775), which has been simplified into a simpler model of development, and become the foundation for this research. Basically, the model can be seen from the diagram below. Data Analysis Techniques The data which had been collected gave us a series of scores. To make them valuable, they must be computed and analyzed by means of certain techniques in accordance with the method used. The data to be analyzed in this study were taken from the questionnaire (students, teacher and expert lecturers), interview (teacher) and test or try-out (students). The method of data analysis used in this research was the qualitative descriptive method. This was a procedure to solve the research problem by describing the condition of the object factually at the present time. The data have to fulfill the requirements of students’ need in using vocabulary teaching media and the evaluation concerning with the draft of Quartet Card Games for the eighth grade students. The paired-samples t test was used to determine whether the media was quiet significant or not to be used as the vocabulary teaching media for junior high school students. RESULTS The Problems of Teacher and the Students in the Vocabulary Teaching and Learning This study consists of two main parts, they are research and development. The research was done by having an interview and need analysis from the English teacher and the students about the vocabulary teaching and learning in the Eighth grade of junior high school. After doing the research, the next step was developing the vocabulary teaching media based on the research done before and having an assessment, try-out (limited testing) and revision towards the media. The interview towards the English teacher as the beginning research was conducted on January 6th, 2015. Seeing this fact, the English teacher had an expectation that her students would have vocabulary teaching media which has good quality, easy to use, and fun to be played inside the classroom. Therefore, a new form of vocabulary teaching media which can meet the expectation of both the English teacher and also the students is really necessary. The interview was also done towards the Eighth grade students of SMP Islam Al Madina Semarang to support this research. The main problems were that the teacher was lack of such a development in using the vocabulary teaching media. The students were actually interested in every meeting of the English teaching and learning, especially at the moment of having lots of chances to enrich their vocabulary. However, they were usually obstructed by the condition in which they had to learn lots of vocabulary in random topics and also played the word cards in group. Some of the group members usually played the word cards properly, but some others got bored easily then separated themselves and played the word cards improperly. The other probems are; 1) The word cards are made 58 Lutfiana Ilma Annisa / Journal of English Language Teaching 4 (1) (2015) 4 manually using carton and board marker, so that they are less interesting, too fragile and have a high risk of typo. 2) The word cards are too small and are in random topics. 3) The word cards are often misused by some students. Once they get bored in guessing the meaning of the words, they use the word cards to play improperly. Due to this condition, the goal of the vocabulary teaching and learning in which to enrich the students’ vocabulary could not be achieved successfully. Hence, the research and development of new vocabulary teaching media is needed and appropriate to be effective used in the classroom during the English teaching and learning process. The product which was proposed in this study was Quartet Card Games; a compilation of some popular vocabularies teaching media used to teach English to the junior high school students. The needs vocabulary of the English Teacher and the Students After finding some problems faced by the English teacher and the Eighth grade students of SMP Islam Al Madina Semarang in the vocabulary teaching and learning process, the research was continued by having a need analysis of the product towards the subjects of the study. It was conducted on January 13th, 2015. The results of the need analysis and the explanation were as follows (see appendix for the details): 1) The first question showed that 73.7% of the students wanted to have vocabulary teaching media likes Quartet Card Games. 2) The second question showed that 52.6% of the students agreed that vocabulary teaching media would support the teaching and learning process. 3) The third question showed that 78.9% of the students wanted the various vocabularies teaching media, it is not only the vocabulary based on the English curriculum (syllabus) for the Eighth grade students of junior high school, but also the other vocabularies. 4) The forth question showed that 73.7% of the students wanted to have an interesting vocabulary teaching media with bright colours. 5) The fifth question showed that 63.2% of the students liked a medium size card of vocabulary teaching media. 6) The sixth question showed that 84.2% of the students believed that the vocabulary teaching media should be completed with pictures which are appropriate with the vocabulary. 7) The seventh question showed that 57.9% of the students believed that the vocabulary teaching media should be categorized based on its topic. 8) The eighth question showed that 89.5% of the students agreed that ivory is the most appropriate material for the cards of the vocabulary teaching media. 9) The ninth question showed that 57.9% of the students agreed that Quartet Card Games is an interesting game for teaching vocabulary. 10) The tenth question showed that 89.5% of the students expected that the vocabulary teaching media Quartet Card Games would be a teaching media which supports the English teaching and learning process. Meanwhile, the need analysis result of the English teacher of SMP Islam Al Madina Semarang was quite the same. Some different points were only in vocabulary used and appearance of the vocabulary teaching media. The teacher thought that it would be better to have various vocabularies at once in order to enrich the students’ vocabulary. Moreover, she suggested that the vocabulary teaching media should be interesting and colorful. Those differences could be solved by mixing those things in order to be varied and giving the portion appropriate with the need. Overall the students and teacher had the same idea about the vocabulary teaching media to be developed; Quartet Card Games. The Development of Effective Quartet Card Games Lutfiana Ilma Annisa / Journal of English Language Teaching 4 (1) (2015) 5 There were some important steps in developing Quartet Card Games as a vocabulary teaching media. This process needed to be done systematically in order to get the significant result of the product. The writer had conducted and supervised the process of developing Quartet Card Games starting from analysing the purpose of English learning process until doing the product validation and revision, so that the product could be valid and credible to be used in learning and enriching vocabulary for the Eighth grade students of junior high school. The way to develop Quartet Card Games was by following some systematic steps. It was started by observing and interviewing the English teacher of SMP Islam Al Madina Semarang, Citra Isna Norlaili, S.Pd. about the problem faced on teaching and learning process recently. It was conducted on January 6th, 2015. After doing that, the process was continued by planning the data collecting instrument of vocabulary teaching media. The main consideration was based on the English curriculum (syllabus) of the Eighth grade students of junior high school. Moreover, the data collecting instrument was arranged into two main parts which included the need analysis of the students and English teacher of SMP Islam Al Madina Semarang. The need analysis contained some points to be considered by the subjects of the study. Those points were as follows: 1) The media-display of Quartet Card Games including the colour composition, font type, the size of the card, the shape of the card, colour arrangement, picture choice, and the meaning of the pictures. 2) The content of Quartet Card Games including the content suitability, vocabulary choice, grammar, the ability to motivate the students, and the ability to encourage the students. 3) The teaching and learning process of Quartet Card Games including the student-centered action, the students’ participation, and the interactive communication. The above points were also used in the assessment form of Quartet Card Games prototype. It was just added with the point essay of suggestion from the reviewers to improve the quality of the media and also as the criticism to revise it in order to be better and qualified. The further step was designing the prototype of Quartet Card Games as a vocabulary teaching media to enrich junior high school students’ vocabulary. The vocabulary was taken from many sources, for example dictionaries and internet. There were thirteen topics in the Quartet Card Games. They were clothes, classroom, stationary, size, height, description, adverb, notice, notice 2, notice 3, holiday, hobby and daily activities. The development process was then followed by other steps; product validation, try- out (limited testing) and revision of Quartet Card Games. This was to get the review from the English teacher of SMP Islam Al Madina Semarang and expert lecturer as a subject of product validation of this media and also to know whether this media was appropriate or not for the students. They were asked to give the review by fulfilling the assessment form about the prototype of Quartet Card Games. After doing so, the review was determined as the consideration to revise the media, so the prototype could be used by the junior high school students, if the prototype is already valid, as soon as possible during the English teaching and learning process. To make the explanation clearer, the following pictures were the examples of the designs of Quartet Card Games. It was designed like that in order to be more attractive and able to represent the essence of Quartet Card Games. The Analysis of the Use of Quartet Card Games To get the significant responses from the eighth grade students of junior high school towards the use of Quartet Card Games in Lutfiana Ilma Annisa / Journal of English Language Teaching 4 (1) (2015) 6 vocabulary teaching and learning, researcher held a limited testing in the form of try-out. The data obtained from the pre-test and post-test are valid to be analyzed by using paired-samples t test. From the data above, it showed that the degree of freedom (df) = 17 with the 95% confidence interval of the difference based on the T-table results in t=1.740 which is smaller than t=9.696. Therefore, it could be concluded that the media had significant effect towards the learning process of the students and could be used as the vocabulary teaching media.. The researcher asked the expert lecturer and the English teacher to be the evaluators of Quartet Card Games. The score range was one up to five (1 = very less/VL, 2 = less/L, 3 = enough/E, 4 = good/G, 5 = very good/VG). Meanwhile, the average score range was one up to ten (1-2 = very less/VL, 3-4 = less/L, 5-6 = enough/E, 7-8 = good/G, 9-10 = very good/VG). The points were as follows. The assessment of media-display showed that the product of Quartet Card Games had a very good quality in the points of colour composition, font type, size of the card, shape of the card, colour arrangement, picture choice, and the meaning of the pictures. The average score for this part of assessment was 8 (good). The assessment of content showed that the product of Quartet Card Games had a good quality in the points of the content suitability, vocabulary choice, grammar, the ability to motivate the students, and the ability to encourage the students. The average score for this part of assessment was 9 (very good). The assessment of games showed that the product of Quartet Card Games had a good quality in the points of the student-centered action, the students’ participation, and the interactive communication. The average score for this part of assessment was 9 (very good). Regarding the validation and assessment from the teacher and expert lecturer and also the limited testing done by the students, the product of Quartet Card Games is valid to be used as the teaching media for the Eighth grade students of junior high school, especially in terms of vocabulary as the main concern in this research and development. CONCLUSION Based on the analysis, the researcher makes some conclusions. Firstly, there were some problems faced by the teacher and the eighth grade students of SMP Islam Al Madina in the vocabulary teaching and learning process. The current vocabulary teaching media used by the teacher are somehow fragile and quite boring. Hence, the research and development of new vocabulary teaching media is needed and appropriate to be used inside the classroom during the English teaching and learning process. Secondly, there were some needs of vocabulary. The need analysis showed that the students needed various vocabulary items. The English teacher believed that the vocabulary teaching media should be interesting and colorful. Through the process of drafting, trying out, and refining the Quartet Card Games it was found that some cards contained ambiguities. To avoid any ambiguity check (√) and cross (x) signs were added to some cards. Thirdly, there were important steps to develop Quartet Card Games as a vocabulary teaching media. It started from analysing the purpose of English learning process until doing the product validation and revision, so that the product could be valid and credible to be used in the vocabulary teaching and learning for junior high school students. Lastly, to get the significant responses from the eighth grade students towards the use of Quartet Card Games in the vocabulary teaching and learning, the writer held a limited testing in Lutfiana Ilma Annisa / Journal of English Language Teaching 4 (1) (2015) 7 the form of try-out. Besides, the assessment was given by the teacher and expert lecturer. Therefore, it can be concluded that Quartet Card Games has a good prospect to be used in the vocabulary teaching and learning for junior high school students. From the result of the research, the writer would like to offer some suggestions to be considered by the English teacher and future researchers. Firstly, the English teachers should be able to choose appropriate vocabulary teaching media to be used in the English teaching and learning process. Secondly, the future researchers should conduct the better research and development of vocabulary teaching media to enrich junior high school students’ vocabulary by improving the games and expressions used in the vocabulary teaching and learning process. REFERENCES Arikunto, Suharsimi. 2010. Prosedur Penelitian Suatu Pendekatan Praktek. Jakarta: PT. Rineka Cipta. Borg, Walter R. & Gall, Meredith D. 1983. Educational Research an Introduction. New York: Longman. 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