MAHFUZAH BT SHAMSUDIN
1.0 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Reflection on Teaching Experience
Based on past teaching experience, as a researcher, I had found
out that dictation had played an important role in the English
language curriculum in Malaysia, particularly in primary schools.
Dictation often acts as a memorization exercise or a
spelling-checking assessment in which teachers read the text,
pupils dictate it, and then the teachers read the text the third
time for pupils to check through their work
Plus, based on passed teaching experience, when I read a passage
to the pupils phrase by phrase, the pupils copied the phrase or
words and the passage then got corrected by teacher. This sort of
procedure was actually ineffective in promoting communication,
interaction or creative language use, and other skills that we
value highly in todays world of ESL classroom. Pupils, especially
the less capable pupils, either work under stress or give up in the
boring and threatening lesson. They gradually develop a negative
attitude towards dictation lessons that pressure their
learning.
Actually, after a period of time teaching the pupils, as a
researcher, I realize that rather than mechanical drilling or
assessing, dictation can also be treated as a teaching and learning
exercise in which pupils learn to improve their language learning.
I can
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use of different genre and a number of dictation activities to
conduct lessons so as to change a boring, threatening and stressful
classroom atmosphere into a relaxing and supportive and enjoyable
learning environment which subsequently brings a positive influence
on pupils performance to master the vocabulary.
1.2 Review of Related Theory1.2.1 VocabularyBased on my past
teaching experience, I found out that vocabulary is very important
to communicate with others and understanding what he is reading. We
cannot take the words we know just for granted. Instead, we need to
master the words to use in other contexts as well. Course books and
teachers tend to treat vocabulary only for granted while the
grammatical skills take centre stage. As a teacher, the pupils need
to know and understand what we are saying so that they can
communicate with us.
However, Ellis in Goodridge (2010) states that knowing the word
in a piece of discourse facilitates understanding which in turn
allows the grammatical patterning to become more transparent. In
addition, it is possible to communicate very effectively with
imperfect grammar if the correct vocabulary is known; indeed
research suggests that lexical errors affect comprehension more
than grammatical errors. It makes vocabulary important in our daily
life especially for young learners because they who have better
vocabularies are often able to think more deeply, express
themselves better, and learn new things more quickly. McCarten
(2007:2) explains it is equally important to help pupils with how
to learn vocabulary as well as what to learn. It can be said that
teaching vocabulary is important and how to lead the students to
study vocabulary. Pikulski (2004) states that the vital importance
of vocabulary for success in life means people are able to express
themselves clearly and effectively if they have adequate
vocabulary. Having better vocabulary can improve pupils ability to
think or express their mind. Furthermore, having many vocabularies
will make the pupils be able to reveal something that is needed to
communicate. They should be taught equally and more attention
should be given to teach vocabulary in order to arrange some words
into a sentence even a paragraph.
In line with the above statement Carter & Nunan (2001:42)
write that English teachers learn to ignore the significance of
vocabulary in their teaching. In fact the use of suitable
vocabulary can cancel out structural incorrectness. Based on this
authenticity, recently, linguists have increasingly turned their
attention to vocabulary, learning stressing their importance in
language teaching and reassessing some of the ways it is taught and
learned. It means that vocabulary plays very essentials task in
language teaching. As the objective of language teaching is to
develop pupils skills namely: listening, speaking, reading and
writing; the acquisition of meaning also influences the performance
of students.
Based on the preliminary observation that I had done before
doing the research, I identified that many pupils does not
understand when teacher spoke and gave instruction to the pupils in
the classroom. I also had conducted a simple and basic dictation
activity to see their performance and level in spelling the words.
So, the as the result, many of them did not have enough vocabulary
and couldnt spell the words correctly. Many of them also did not
focus and had seems to lose interest when they learnt English in
the school. It caused many pupils unable to communicate and write
words correctly in English very well.
1.2.2 DictationDictation is the process of writing down what
teacher has said to the pupils; dictation offers a way for a
teacher to record pupils thoughts or ideas when the writing demands
surpass writing skills. Wilson (2005) states that dictation
activities allow pupils to practice their listening and writing
skills in very controlled setting. Dictation provides a chance for
the students to model many writing behavior including handwriting,
matching sounds-to-letters to spell words, and sentence
formation.
Dictation has been used in language assessment for a long time,
but its benefit in language teaching and learning has been
questioned by some language teachers. Currently dictation seems to
be undergoing a revolution as a useful teaching device. It is
thought that dictation can help develop all language components,
such as vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation. However, there are
no data on the usefulness of dictation at tertiary level.
In its simplest form, dictation refers to a person reading some
text aloud so that the listener can write down what is being said.
When used in the language classroom, the aim has traditionally been
for students to write down what is said by the teacher, word for
word, later checking their own text against the original and
correcting the errors made. While this certainly has its uses,
there are countless variations that can make it more interesting
and learner centered.
Dictation is a decoding-recoding activity. It is the act or
process of dictating material to another for transcription. Oller
(1979) defines it as a psychologically real system that
sequentially orders linguistic elements in time and in relation to
extra linguistic context in meaningful ways. According to the
statement above, the researcher uses the dictation to practice and
motivate students vocabulary mastery so their mastery in this
language feature can be effectively improved.
1.3 Review of Related Literature1.3.1 The Concept Of
VocabularyFor many pupils, vocabulary is regarded as the basic
ability that is used to understand the meaning of words that the
pupils read and hear throughout their life. Mastering vocabulary is
one of the main abilities that influence the success in learning
language. Vocabulary is assumed as the language component that is
used an aid to the four major skills, but nonetheless the role of
vocabulary in learning English cannot be ignored. Thornbury
(2002:22) states that vocabulary is not an all-or-nothing
phenomenon on, that is a case of either knowing or not knowing. The
success of learning vocabulary is related to the vocabulary size
that is mastered by pupils.
A second language learner needs longer time to learn enough
vocabulary compared to someone who live in a natural setting. Every
learner has different amount of vocabulary, depending on the
demand. In the daily conversation, there are so many words that
English user usually uses; it is including the suffixes and the
word itself. It has difference quantity of every person because it
also affects by the environment and the habit of user itself.
In addition, Linse & Nunan (2005:121) state vocabulary is
the collection of words that an individual knows. Every individual
has their own words collection that they use to communicate. The
process of taking and adding words into their own word items have
begun from the young age. In the school environment, the young
learners are usually taught vocabularies beginning from the noun.
This is the most simple word class that is easy to understand and
teach because it is very easy to illustrate and students found it
easier to imagine. Meanwhile, for other kinds of word classes, such
as verb, adverb, adjective, noun, pronoun, conjunction, preposition
and determiners will be taught coincide with it.
Besides that, McCarten (2007) states that learning vocabulary is
largely about remembering. Remembering is the main concept in
leaning vocabulary that cannot be ignored. English learners have to
be able to remember most of words that they find. Not only
remembering, they have to understand about the meaning of those
words. Remembering a lot of vocabulary will give many benefits to
the learner to improve their other language ability because knowing
more vocabulary means the good ability in using many varieties of
words in producing or accepting language. It will make the transfer
of information more accurate and faster. Therefore, learning
vocabulary needs the good teaching methods or techniques that are
used in teaching-learning process in order that student can
remember it well.
Furthermore, Preszler (2006) mentions that vocabulary or word
meaning is one of the keys to comprehend. In linguistic, basically
information is sent through groups of coherence words that are
narrow into single certain information. It means knowing a lot of
vocabulary for the learners who are mastering. A text or speech
will be easier to comprehend if the reader or listener understands
every word that the writer or speaker wants to convey. Without
mastering enough vocabulary, it is definitely difficult for the
pupils to accept the information.
In addition, McCharthy et al. (2010) state learning new word
meanings comes over time. English has thousands of words and it
still increases which make it unlimited to be learned. Learning
English vocabulary will be never finish because the language is
always developing as the development of its user. Learners will
find the new meaning of words merely even until they die because
every time the new language terms in communication always appear.
Moreover, English is used by many countries in the world; each of
those countries have different English style, which makes English
has many vocabularies.
Thus, Hiebert & Kamil (2005:3) also mention that vocabulary
as knowledge of words and word meanings in both oral and language
and in productive and receptive forms. However, vocabulary is more
complex than its definition. It has significant roles especially in
understanding the words meaning in oral form, such as when we are
speaking and listening. It is also useful when we are working with
form of word such as when we are reading or writing. Furthermore,
vocabulary is also used in productive and receptive form. In
productive form, vocabulary is used when we are delivering the
language in order it can be accepted well by the receiver.
Conversely, in receptive form, vocabulary is used when we are
trying to accept information.
So, vocabulary is the basic language which has significant
function in developing language skill. It is about the word
function and meaning of word and become the basic medium to express
their ideas. It is used as a basic for beginners to start their
study in learning a language in order their knowledge can be
improved gradually appropriate with learning language steps. The
good ability in using words and understanding of its meaning is the
basic ability will help the learner to be easier to produce and
accept information. In this research, I focused on a set of
vocabulary list that is in the document standard of the Year 5 Kssr
English subject. The list of words and vocabulary are the words
that are in the text book of Year 5 English of the topic 6 and
7.
1.3.2 The Importance of VocabularyVocabulary is an important
language component that must be learned. It has a significant
effect in learning English as second language. In order to know how
importance the vocabulary mastery in learning English, the
researcher tries to stretch it through the opinions from some
compatible resources.
Vocabulary is the language component that is introduced earlier
in learning English and it is learned before grammar and structure.
Learning vocabulary involves the mastery of word meaning where the
words are the basic that construct a language. It is regarded being
able to give alteration towards the pupils language development as
the reinforcement in learning the language basic skills. Daller et
al. (2007:1) state that vocabulary is a vital area of innovation in
academic approach. It is assumed as the most important phase that
influences the success in mastering English. Although it is heard
easy just to mastery the word meaning, but the things that make the
pupils have to work harder is the quantity of word that exist on
English.
In addition, Pikulski & Templetion, (2004:5) state that one
reason teachers are concerned about teaching vocabulary is to
facilitate the comprehension of a test which pupils will be
assigned to read. If pupils do not know the meaning of many of the
words which they will encounter in a text, their comprehension of
that selection is likely to be compromised. When the purpose of the
vocabulary instruction is to facilitate the comprehension of the
selection, it is obvious that this instruction must take place as
an introduction before the reading of the selection.
Therefore, vocabulary is not a developmental skill or one that
can ever be seen as fully mastered. The expansion and elaboration
of vocabularies is something that extends across a lifetime Hibert
a& Kamil (2005:2). Most of teaching program has a major aims as
a process for helping the students to gain more vocabulary of
useful word. As a teacher, we have to introduce the new words or
vocabulary and the pupils need to do some practice by relating a
word to another words or making in a sentence.
Vocabulary is exactly important in mastering English, because
many vocabularies which are mastered, it means more ideas they can
express or many ideas of people. So the pupils will realize that a
word can show many meanings and many words have one meaning. If
pupils has know about that, they will try to make a sentence in
other form and try to look for a new word which the meaning almost
same or synonym.
1.3.3 Teaching Vocabulary through DictationIn relation to this
study, dictation technique is used to improve the pupils vocabulary
mastery and acquisition. The vocabulary item that is taught to the
pupils can be presented in various ways and context. The
presentations of the words or vocabulary are given through context,
so the pupils are asked to look for and also to understand the
meaning of those words by relating them to their context.Brown
(2004) states dictation seems to provide a reasonably valid method
for integrating listening and writing skills and for tapping into
the cohesive element of language implied in short passage.
Dictation is the process of writing down what someone else has
said with the pupils, dictation offers a way for a teacher to
record a pupils thoughts or ideas when the writing demands surpass
writing skills. Dictation provides a chance for the pupils to model
many writing behaviors including handwriting, matching
sounds-to-letters to spell words, and sentence formation.
In this research about partial dictation, running dictation and
vocabulary mastery and acquisition, I had choose a text from the
text book that isnt too long or about 12 lines and it should be
enough. I divided the text into 2 equal parts; each part was on a
different piece of paper. So, basically partial dictation and
running dictation was almost the same. The differences are in
running dictation it involves group work and pupils need to be
running.
Then I divided the class into pairs. Pupil A dictates and pupil
B is the 'dictate'. Pupil A gets up and went to read the first
sentence or phrase of the text, and then he returned to pupil B and
says what he has just read. Pupil B writes this down. They continue
this process until the entire first half has been written down.The
pupil now change roles: B dictates and A then becomes the
dictate.
The activity can be used to write down questions that will be
used for a listening or reading activity, giving classroom
instructions, explanation of a grammatical point, a summary of what
was done in the previous lesson or simply as an activity in itself.
A benefit is that running dictations use the 4 skills of reading,
writing, speaking and listening; albeit in a controlled sense.
Partial and running dictations are good to use with pupils. They
may need some encouragement at first, but they soon get into it.
Before doing the activity, teacher could remind pupils of phrases
such as how do you spell ... ? could you say that again please ?
could you please check that last part ? A quick look at names given
to punctuation symbols (comma, full stop etc) is also useful.
1.4 Definitions Of Terms
The following are some operational definitions in relation to
the topic of the study. In order to avoid misunderstanding, the
researcher needs to operationally define the following terms; they
are as follows:
1. Vocabulary refers to the list of words from the year 5
textbook from unit 6 and 7 that will be studied by the year 5
pupils of the school which located in Ayer Hitam, Kedah
2. Dictation is a teaching activity that focuses on increasing
the pupils ability by dictating a page material. Dictation is the
process of writing what teacher is saying. In this research, I
change and replace the tradition method of dictation and carried
out partial dictation and running dictation
