IMPROVING ENGLISH VOCABULARY MASTERY OF THE FIFTH GRADE STUDENTS OF SDN GURAWAN SURAKARTA BY USING CONTEXTUAL TEACHING AND LEARNING (CTL)

Muhammad Fitriyanto, IMPROVING ENGLISH VOCABULARY MASTERY OF THE FIFTH GRADE STUDENTS OF SDN GURAWAN SURAKARTA BY USING CONTEXTUAL TEACHING AND LEARNING (CTL) ( A Classroom Action Research). Thesis, Surakarta: Teacher Training and Education Faculty, Sebelas Maret University Surakarta, April 2010 This research was carried out to show how Contextual Teaching and Learning (CTL) is used to improve the students‟ vocabulary mastery. The researcher conducted a classroom action research from January to February 2010 at Class 5 SDN Gurawan Surakarta. The researcher conducted the teaching learning activities in two cycles. Each cycle consisted of four steps: planning, implementation, observation, and reflection. In cycle one, the researcher tried to make the students more enjoyable in doing the activities in the classroom and to make them beco me more interested with the lesson so that their vocabulary mastery might increase by applying CTL. In this cycle, the students‟ vocabulary mastery increased but not optimally yet. Moreover, there were still problems that arose in this cycle; some students were still shy and were confused with some of the teacher‟s commands. In cycle two, the researcher tried to solve the previous problems by focusing on the students‟ comprehension toward the commands to make the teaching and learning process more effective and doing the activities in group first before in individually. The researcher gave more meetings and repetition to ensure that the students were ready to speak and were not shy anymore. In this cycle, the researcher was able to solve the problems and the lesson run well. From the explanation above the researcher concluded that after he conducted the actions the students‟ vocabulary mastery increased optimally. Before he conducted the actions the mean score of the pre-test was 55.4, and after doing the actions the mean score of the post -test was 81.6. The result of the research shows that after implementing the CTL, the students‟ level of enjoyment in doing the activities in the classroom increased. The students were not shy any longer and enjoyed in doing the activities. Finally, their vocabulary mastery improved well