Developing students' vocabulary through contextualized explanation in reading passages

Based on the 1984 English curriculum for SMA, the elements and skills of English to be taught are structure, vocabulary, reading, conversation, and composition. Vocabulary is one of the important elements in reading. If the reader does not know the meaning of the word in the reading text, they will not understand what they read or they cannot comprehend the content of the reading passage. Actually there are many ways in teaching vocabulary. Teaching vocabulary can be done through pictures, realia, demonstration, anagrams, word analysis, and contextualized explanation. But the most effective technique in teaching vocabulary is through contextualized explanation. Because through context, the students can guess the meaning of a sentence more easily and they can memorize the meaning of the word for longer time. Teaching vocabulary through contextualized explanation can be done using four contextual-clue techniques, namely: definition, experience, antonym and synonym. The writer hopes that this suggested teaching techniques is useful for the English teaching