English Vocabulary Mastery of Eleventh Grade Students of SMA Negeri 5 Malang

The study is intended to find out the current English vocabulary mastery of eleventh grade students of SMA Negeri 5 Malang. The school is chosen after considering its students are heterogeneous. They have an average level in terms of academic achievement among public high schools in Malang. The eleventh grade students are chosen as subjects of this study under the consideration that the result of the study will be useful for the teachers to make decision on what to do with the students’ vocabulary mastery in the next grade. The design of this study is descriptive quantitative. There is only one variable in this study, namely English vocabulary mastery. The subject of the study is all students of eleventh grade at SMA Negeri 5 Malang in 2005/2006 academic year. The instrument of this study is an objective vocabulary levels test (VLT). There are four levels in the test: 1000-word level, 2000-word level, 3000-word level, and university word level. Each level consists of 60 words to be tested. This VLT uses matching format. Each section of the test consists of six words, three of which have to be matched with their equivalent in the students’ mother tongue, Indonesian. The data obtained from the administration of the test are in the form of raw scores. These are analyzed by first, arranging the scores from the highest to the lowest; second, presenting the frequency distribution; third, identifying the maximum and minimum score; fourth, counting the number of students who are categorized as mastering a certain level; and finally, classifying the students on their mastery in each level. The results of the data analysis show, in general, that the students’ vocabulary mastery is at 2000-word level. This can be seen from the number of students mastering each level. There are 266 (99.6%) students mastering the 1000-word level, 188 of them (70.4%) mastering the 2000-word level, 12 (4.5%) students mastering 3000-word level, and no students mastering the university word level. Since almost all students master 1000-word level and most master 2000-word level, generally speaking it can be concluded that the students’ vocabulary mastery is at 2000-word level. Based on the result of the study, it is suggested that teachers of senior high schools in general encourage students to improve their vocabulary mastery. In the teaching and learning process, the teachers can apply appropriate strategies to teach vocabulary by applying both indirect and direct vocabulary teaching. Teachers should spend more time to teach all 2000 high-frequency words plus further 1000 high frequency words and the academic words (university word list) to help the students to be able to cope with any English materials and to prepare vithem to continue study at university. It is also suggested that teachers administer vocabulary test regularly to monitor students’ progress in vocabulary learning. The teachers of the subject of the study who are now teaching them at twelve grade are suggested to occasionally review the words included in 1000 and 2000-word level and to focus more on 3000-word level and general academic word. The students are suggested to improve their vocabulary mastery by applying both direct learning, such as using word lists, and indirect learning, such as learning from context, doing extensive reading or extensive listening. Future researchers are suggested to replicate this study to verify the present findings with some modifications, such as by using other material sources taken for the test, using another sampling technique in selecting the words to test, adding more vocabulary items to test, and administering the test in more convenient time. They are also suggested to conduct research to see the development of the students’ vocabulary mastery from the first, second, and third year, or to see the students’ vocabulary mastery at the beginning of tenth grade so that the teachers can decide what to do with the students’ vocabulary mastery