Increasing students’ vocabulary mastery in reading through short story (A Classroom Action Research at the Eighth Grade Students of MTs Negeri 2 Mataram in the Academic Year of 2012/2013)

Oleh :
Agung Guritno - S891108004 - Sekolah Pascasarjana

This research aims at describing: (1) whether and to what extent short stories are able to increase the students? vocabulary mastery in reading, (2) the most significant improvement in terms of the use of vocabularies drawn from short stories, (3) the strengths and weaknesses of implementing short stories in increasing the student?s vocabulary mastery in reading. The students have limited vocabulary that causes another difficulty such as in spelling and pronouncing the words; determine the meaning of the words and using the words into the sentence form. The research was conducted in MTs Negeri 2 Mataram. The subject of the research was the eighth grade students of class VIII C. That consisted of 38 students; 16 males and 22 females. Classroom Action Research was conducted in three cycles and each cycle consisted of four meetings. Each cycle implemented four steps; planning, acting, observing and reflecting. There were two kinds of data in this research, qualitative and quantitative. The qualitative data were collected through observations, interviews, questioners and diary. The quantitative data were collected through the students? score in pre-test and post-tests. The qualitative data were analyzed using Constant Comparative Method (CCM) while the quantitative data were analyzed using Descriptive Statistics (DS). The research findings show that: 1) short stories can increase the students? vocabulary mastery in reading. The domain of vocabulary mastery itself covers four indicators; spelling, pronunciation, meaning and words in use, 2) the most significant improvement among the indicators used is in the meaning aspect, 3) the strengths of the implementation of the short stories were; a) the students? ability to spell, to pronounce, to determine the meaning of the words and construct the sentence using the words was increased, b) short stories could enrich students? knowledge and understanding about Indonesia culture, c) short stories provide enjoyment for the students in learning English, d) the students? motivation, interest, concentration and self awareness became higher when they were taught English by using short stories. While the weakness of implementing the short stories were the time constraint. Therefore, the use of short stories is very promising especially for the teachers who need an alternative material to increase their students? vocabulary mastery in reading. Keywords: vocabulary mastery, reading, short story, classroom action research.