EEJ 2 (2) (2012) English Education Journal http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/eej DEVELOPING MODIFIED INDONESIAN CHILDREN SONG LYRICS TO TEACH VOCABULARY TO ELEMENTARY SCHOOL THIRD GRADERS Eka Nur Intani  Prodi Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris, Program Pascasarjana, Universitas Negeri Semarang, Indonesia Abstrak Lagu merupakan salah satu alat edukasi yang membantu penguasaan bahasa peserta didik. Lagu menyediakan media yang menarik dan instruksional pada pembelajaran. Ini menarik karena siswa akan lebih menikmati pembelajaran. Atmosfer yang mendukung dari lagu telah membuktikan bahwa lagu merupakan media yang sangat kondusif dan efisien. Kebanyakan siswa sekolah dasar tidak dapat mengingat kosakata dengan membaca buku atau mengulang guru. Mereka akan merasa bosan dan tidak memperhatikan karena materi tidak menarik. Guru sSekolah Dasar yang menggunakan lagu sangat membantu siswa untuk meraih full mental, potensi intelektual, dan kreatif. Karena siswa belajar melalui pengulangan dan akitifitas multi sensorik, lagu sangat membantu dalam mengingat konsep bahasa mulai speech sampai kecakapan mendengarkan dan berbicara. Dengan menggunakan lirik lagu, diharapkan guru dapat memotivasi siswa buntuk belajar dan memperhatikan materi yang guru sampaikan. Abstract Songs become one of the most valuable educational tools that aid the language ac- quisition as well as the whole learner’s physical and mental development. Song can provide attractive and instructional media in learning activities. It is attractive be- cause the children will have more fun in learning processes. The pleasant, relaxed atmosphere fostered by songs has proven to be highly conducive to efficient learning. Most of students in elementary school are unable to memories vocabulary easily by read the textbook or by repeating the teacher. They feel bored and do not attention be- cause the material which is presented by the teacher is not interesting and attractive. Elementary educators who add songs to the language arts classroom help students achieve their full mental, intellectual and creative potential. Because children learn best through repetition and multi-sensory activities that engage the full body, sing- ing familiar songs and doing activities set to music help kids memorize and retain language arts concepts from parts of speech to proper listening and speaking skills. By using songs lyric during the teaching learning process, it is hoped that the teacher will be able to motivate the students to learn and pay attention to the material the teacher presents. © 2012 Universitas Negeri Semarang Info Artikel Sejarah Artikel: Diterima Agustus 2012 Disetujui September 2012 Dipublikasikan November 2012 Keywords: Children songs Vocabulary Research and development  Alamat korespondensi: Kampus Unnes Bendan Ngisor, Semarang 50233 E-mail: jurnalpps@unnes.ac.id ISSN 2087-0108 Eka Nur Intani / English Education Journal 2 (2) (2012) 184 INTRODUCTION Language has sound, forms, vocabulary, and grammar. Thus, it is reasonable that language is interesting to analyze. There are many pheno- mena of language use which happened around people. Song is one of those phenomena. Song consists of lyrics. Meanwhile, a song lyric can be used as another way for people to communicate to the other, to the young people, or to old people and vice versa. There are song lyrics, which become mo- del especially for children. The children song ly- rics can help them to acquire their language. The authors of children song lyrics specially compose song’s lyrics for children. It means song lyrics for children have special intonation and forms which are easy to be understood by children. Teaching English to elementary level is not easy and needs more patience. The process of teaching children or young learners is different from the process of teaching adults. It needs such method to make it easy in delivering the material. For elementary level, English is the first foreign language to learn, and the students just learn simple English pattern. As the beginner, the students have very limited knowledge of English. Most children enjoy singing songs, and they can often be a welcome change from the routine of learning a foreign language. For the te- acher, using songs in the classroom can also be a nice break from following a set curriculum. Songs can be taught to any number of students and even those teachers with the most limited resources can use them effectively. Songs can play an im- portant role in the development of language in young children learning a second language. Yet songs may be used relatively ineffectively and the potential for language learning is not maximized. The teacher needs an appropriate English material in order to make the students to be active and creative in vocabulary. The use songs lyric in teaching and learning process will help the teach- er and students engage together to get the achie- vements much better and also help the students to learn vocabularies by themselves by sing a song. Teaching vocabulary plays an important role in language acquisition. Therefore, young learners need to acquire useful vocabulary. The goal is to make them become word-savvy and to help them develop their language skills, i.e. liste- ning, speaking, reading, and writing. Since teaching English to elementary school students is the same as teaching English to children, thus teaching vocabulary to elementary school students should be in simple way. Teachers should be able to explain every word as clearly as possible in order to make the students be able to catch the meaning. The first thing to think in teaching voca- bulary is matching the vocabulary materials with the students’ level, whether they are in the begin- ner level, in the intermediate level, or in the ad- vanced level. The second thing is the decision of the technique used in the teaching and learning of vocabulary. Teachers should find suitable techni- que to teach vocabulary, so that the students will have fun while learning and their vocabulary achievement will improve. Teachers should realize that learning voca- bulary means memorizing numbers of words to support the skill of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Thornbury (2002: 23) stated that learning vocabulary is not only learning numbers of words, but also remembering them. Learning vocabulary is remembering them. This study aims to developing modified In- donesian children song lyrics to teach vocabulary for elementary school third graders. The material development is related to the students’ level, cur- riculum and it involves them to learn actively. METHODS In Developing Modified Indonesian Children Song Lyrics to Teach Vocabulary for Elementary School Third Graders, research and developing approach by Borg and Gall is used. Principally, the objective of R & D is developing products applied at schools. This is started from administering and observation that is valuable in deciding what materials will be developed and on what grade the materials will be consumed. The major purpose of research and development is not to formulate or to test, but to develop a pro- duct for its use in classroom. Based on Borg and Gall (1983:772) a research and development is a research in which focused on developing and va- lidating the use of the product of education. The writer uses the quantitative and qualitative appro- ach to describe the result of the research. I used Material Development Model adapted from Borg and Gall (1983: 775) to De- veloping Modified Indonesian Children Song Ly- rics to Teach Vocabulary for Elementary School Third Graders. The research and development of Borg and Gall (1983:775) is conducted in ten steps. I reduced the steps from 10 to only 8 steps. They were: (1) need analysis, (2) planning, (3) de- velop preliminary form of product, (4) prelimina- ry field testing, (5) first product revision, (6) main 185 Eka Nur Intani / English Education Journal 2 (2) (2012) field testing, (7) second product revision, and (8) producing the final product. It started from mapping of the students and teachers’ need analysis which was beneficial to give information to the development of the product, namely Developing Modified Indonesi- an Children Song Lyrics to Teach Vocabulary for Elementary School Third Graders. The second stage was developing preliminary form of pro- ducts, including the syllabus, student’s book and compilation of song. The third stage was preliminary field tes- ting. The products were validated by the experts and English teachers, and then they were revised based on the experts’ and the teachers’ judgments and suggestions. After that, the next stage was main field testing which the products were trying out in one class to see the clarity of the materials and the songs, attractiveness, level of difficulty, practicality, and effectiveness of the products. To conduct this research and development on developing modified Indonesian children song lyrics to teach vocabulary for elementary school third graders, I did survey in SD Al-Irsyad Sema- rang as the preliminary research. The first step of preliminary research to collect information, I interviewed Mr. Sutarman as an English teacher of SD Al-Irsyad Semarang who has been working and teaching English sin- ce 2008 in SD Al-Irsyad Semarang. The result of the interview showed that he used two supporting books and worksheet provided by the school; the school provides limited facilities and media in teaching; since he is a new teacher, especially te- aching English he found difficulties in developing a teaching material for his class because actual- ly he is not an English teacher. In improving his skill in teaching he takes an English course in an educational institution and shared with another English teacher. Besides, I also discussed the character buil- ding with all teachers who teach grade third as one of the preliminary research. We analyzed some characteristics of third graders which were needed to gain. Therefore, I paid more attention to four characters, namely: trustworthiness, cou- rage, diligence, respect, and responsibility. To collect information from students, I conducted the interview with students during the classroom observation when they were working in groups. I set the interview guideline and no- ted down their responses. Based on the interview, most of students loved English and songs. 70 % of the students preferred “animals” theme than the other two themes I proposed, namely fruits and color. As one of the preliminary research, a class- room observation was done. In this activity, I fol- lowed the flow of the teaching learning process for two meetings. I noted down some important points: most of students were passive; teach- er took the role; no song taught; no media used for teaching instead of teacher’s book; and no character building inserted in the lesson plan. It seemed to me that students experienced a boring classroom activity. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION The materials were developed into four products. There were multimedia, student’s book, and teacher’s book. The first multimedia was in the form of VCD/DVD and consisted of compi- lations eight songs by developing modified Indo- nesian children song lyrics related to the theme of the material which can support the learning pro- cess. They were: (1) Going to the zoo, this song is like cicak-cicak di dinding song; (2) At the zoo, this song is like kring-kring ada sepeda song; (3) Move of animals I, this song is like cicak-cicak di dinding song; (4) Move of animals II, this song is like pelangi-pelangi song; (5) Farm Animals, this song is like naik ke puncak gunung song; (6) Sound of animals I, this song is like naik kere- ta api song; (7) Sound of animals II, this song is like cicak-cicak di dinding song; and (8) Place of animals, this song is like tik-tik bunyi hujan song. The audio were taken from the voice of a singer, and then edited and mixed using computer soft- ware called “sony sound forge pro 10”. The video were taken from the pictures of animals, text, and video YouTube from internet. The pictures, text, and video YouTube were then arranged into vi- deo using computer software called “ulead video studio”. The songs were provided with subtitles to enable teacher/ students in learning. The re- sults were then burned into compact disk (CD) with VCD/DVD format. The second multime- dia was in the form of VCD to listening section in student’s book. The sounds of native speaker in listening section were taken from computer software called “balabolka”. The materials of student’s book were taken from the syllabus and they were arranged based on the syllabus too. In addition to the student’s book, there was teacher’s book which was supported by multimedia. I observed the students during the teaching and learning process to obtain the data needed. A number of important points showed that the product including the songs were effective; they were: (1) All students enjoyed the learning acti- vities; (2) All students were eager to sing and do Eka Nur Intani / English Education Journal 2 (2) (2012) 186 the gestures; (3) Most students paid attention to teacher’s explanation; and (4) Most students un- derstood the materials. There were also some characters building which were included during the process of te- aching and learning. They were courage, diligence, respect, and activeness. Courage can be seen when students expressed or share opinion and did the instruction in front of the class. Diligences can be seen when the students presented in the class- room. Respect shows when students appreciated teacher and friends and paid attention to teacher’s explanation. Activeness appeared when students asked questions, responded to any instruction and take part actively in every learning activity. Responsibility can be seen when students did the homework and any tasks given by the teacher. In general, the result can be seen in the Table 1. In the first meeting, the character courage, diligence, activeness, and responsibility did not ap- pear yet. However, in the last meeting, all of the characters seemed to develop. The Students Opinion about the Materials and the Songs After the tryout was conducted, the stu- dents were asked to respond to the questionnaire about the effectiveness of developing modified In- donesian children song lyrics. The questionnaire which was used in this study had five questions. There were three choices in each question, a, b, and c. Students should answer the questionnaire by crossing one of the choices. The score of each choice was different since each had a different quality for each indicator. The score gained was based on the following criteria: Table 2. Point Ranges Choices Score Meaning a b c 1 2 3 Low Medium High The table above explains that if the stu- dents choose a, the score is 1. The grade of the answer is low while if the students choose b, the score is 2. It means that the grade of the answer is medium. Then, if the students choose c, the score is 3. The grade of the answer is high. The result of the questionnaire can be seen in the table be- low. After analyzing the questionnaire, I made a conclusion as follows: The students’ interest in learning the ma- terial using developing modified Indonesian children song lyrics was high. Students seemed to have high interest in learning English using the song since the result of the students’ interest was 2.95. Student’s motivation to learn English was high. It is proven by the result of students’ moti- vation which was 2.65. The songs taught were useful to help stu- dents in understanding the material. It could make the students engaged in learning English optimally. The score of the answers to the questi- on about the advantage of the song was 2.65. The practicality of the song got a high point, 2.70. It means that the level of difficulty of the song was low. Learning English using developing modi- Table 1. The Characters Building of the Students Character Meeting 1st 2nd 3rd 4st Courage Not yet Appeared Appeared Developed Diligence Not yet Appeared Appeared Developed Respect Appeared Appeared Appeared Developed Activeness Not yet Appeared Appeared Developed Responsible Not yet Appeared Appeared Developed Table 3. Questionnaire Results Issue Mean Category Students’ interest 2.95 High Students’ motivation 2.65 High The advantage 2.65 Help students very much The practicality 2.70 Practical Sustainability 2.60 Compulsory 187 Eka Nur Intani / English Education Journal 2 (2) (2012) fied Indonesian children song lyrics was impor- tant for students. Students regarded that it was necessary to keep on using the songs as a part of learning activity. The score of this last point was 2.60. The students’ score of the test (multiple choice, reading aloud, and writing) were col- lected from the tryout. Based on the agreement of the school stakeholders, the minimum pas- sing grade of English subject which consists of four language skills i.e. listening, speaking, rea- ding, and writing is 65. It means that a student is considered to have achieved individual learning mastery when he/she already masters 65% of the materials. In addition, the classroom learning maste- ry should also be taken into consideration. The classroom learning mastery is achieved when 80% of the students in a classroom already gain the minimum passing grade. However, the stu- dents who have not achieved the minimum pas- sing grade should join remedial program. From the results of the students’ evaluati- on, it was found out that the developed materials using developing modified Indonesian children song lyrics have achieved the criteria of the ap- propriate materials for third graders of elementa- ry school. From the multiple choice question, the average score was 96.00, from the reading aloud test, the average score was 87.05, and for the lis- tening test, the average score was 89.00, and for the integrated skills, the average score was 87.25. There were 19 students or 95% of the students who passed, and only 1 student or 5% of the stu- dents failed and needed remedial teaching. CONCLUSION In the need analysis of the define stage, the result of interview between the teacher and I show that the teacher used two supporting books and worksheet provided by the school. In the other hand, the school provides limited facilities and media in teaching. The teacher also found diffi- culties in developing a teaching material for his class because actually he is not an English teach- er. In improving his skill in teaching he takes an English course in an educational institution and shared with another English teacher. Besides, the result of interview shows that the students have difficulty in memorizing vocabulary by repeating the teacher. They feel bored and do not attention because the material which is presented by the teacher is not interesting and attractive. The use of various media will also attract their attention, and motivate them in learning English. Third graders are regarded as young learners. They love and enjoy songs as a part of their learning activi- ty. Therefore, teacher needs to be creative in pro- viding them with songs which can promote and support their learning. In developing the material, I used the pro- cedure proposed by Borg and Gall (1983). I simp- lified the step into: (1) Need analysis; (2) Plan- ning; (3) Develop preliminary form of product; (4) Preliminary field testing; (5) First product re- vision; (6) Main field testing; (7) Second product revision; (8) Producing the final product. The ma- terials were developed into four products. There were multimedia, student’s book, and teacher’s book. The first multimedia was in the form of VCD/DVD and consisted of compilations eight songs by developing modified Indonesian children song lyrics related to the theme of the material which can support the learning process. The audio were taken from the voice of a singer, and then edited and mixed using computer soft- ware called “sony sound forge pro 10”. The video were taken from the pictures of animals, text, and video YouTube from internet. The pictures, text, and video YouTube were then arranged into vi- deo using computer software called “ulead video studio”. The songs were provided with subtitles to enable teacher/ students in learning. The re- sults were then burned into compact disk (CD) with VCD/DVD format. The second multime- dia was in the form of VCD to listening section in student’s book. The sounds of native speaker in listening section were taken from computer software called “balabolka”. The materials of student’s book were taken from the syllabus and they were arranged based on the syllabus too. In addition to the student’s book, there was teacher’s book which was supported by multimedia. The picture of animals and text in the textbook were then arranged into a layout using computer soft- ware called “corel draw X5”. The use of developing modified Indo- nesian children song lyrics gives some positive influences for the students in the teaching and learning process. It is proved by the result of the questionnaire given to the students. It shows that the use of the VCD/DVD can increase their inte- rest and motivation in learning English. Based on the experts and teacher validation, the students’ opinion, and the result of the study, the develo- ping Indonesian children song lyrics to teach vo- cabulary which were supported with books and songs compilation in the form of VCD/DVD were effective and appropriate for teaching the third graders. It is shown from the results of stu- dents’ evaluation; 95% of the students passed. Eka Nur Intani / English Education Journal 2 (2) (2012) 188 It is necessary to conduct further studies dealing with developing modified Indonesian children song lyrics to provide more positive re- sults which are possible to have significant impact to Educational field. The reader will be able to use the result of the study as one of references for the further studies. Developing modified Indonesian children song lyrics to teach vocabulary show a positive result during the tryout in the classroom. The results of the study also show that transforming children song lyrics are easy to apply in the clas- sroom. For those reasons, it is suggested that the teacher would like to try use transforming children song lyrics in her/his teaching to make the students active and motivated. REFERENCES Badan Standar Nasional Pendidikan. 2006. 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