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 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. 

 

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