Improving Vocabulary of Fourth Grade At Miftahul Huda Dawung

Keywords: improving, inquiry method, vocabulary achievement. English as a foreign language has been learned by Indonesian students since they were in Elementary School. At the elementary school, English is taught as local content subject. The importance of English as the key to the international communication and commerce makes it compulsory subject for students from the Junior High School up to the Senior High School. Vocabulary is the basic competence that must be reached by students in order to get other competencies like reading, writing, listening, and speaking. It is difficult to master the other competences without mastering and understanding the vocabulary This study was designed to improve the students’ vocabulary using inquiry method. The method was selected because it was believed to be effective in making the students actively involved to improve the students’ vocabulary. The research problems formulated for this study were: “How is the process of applying inquiry method for the fourth year students in MI MIFTAHUL HUDA?” and” How can inquiry method improve student’s vocabulary in MI MIFTAHUL HUDA? The design of the study was classroom action research. The subjects of the study were the fourth grade. This study focused on vocabulary learning before and after used inquiry method in teaching to the fourth grade at Mi Miftahul Huda Dawung. In CAR those are 4 steps: planning, implementing, observing and reflecting. Planning used some instruments were prepare before teaching and learning, implementing and observing was applying the method to get information, and reflecting was the result of applying the method. The findings show that after applying inquiry method for two cycles in this study, two criteria of success were achieved. The students made improvement in their vocabulary. It was indicated by the increase of the mean score of students’ task from 56.9 in preliminary study, 61.9 in cycle I and finally 75 in cycle II. The percentage of students who got equal or higher than 70 for their task also increased from only 40% in preliminary study, 50% in cycle I to 83% in cycle II. The students’ involvement in the doing task process improved too. It was shown by the percentage of the students’ participation in the class. In cycle I, only 60% of the students were actively involved in inquiry teaching while there were 76% of the students doing so in cycle II. In conclusion, inquiry method implemented in this study was effective in improving students’ vocabulary. So, it recommended for other researcher to implement inquiry method in English class especially teaching vocabulary. The students were also suggested to apply such technique independently for the improvement of their vocabulary