The Effectiveness Of Using Alphabet Games to Young Learners in Acquiring English Vocabulary

Abstract

Over the last few decades, teaching English become a phenomenon in Indonesia especially for young learners. English is taught as a additional subject in kindergarten and elementary schools. Like any other children, Indonesia accept new foreign languages easily, but they get bored very fast if the teacher is teaching them using the old conventional methods and techniques. The aim of this research is to prove that games are effective tools when devised to explain vocabularies and they make it easier to remember their meanings. This research deals with a literature review of teaching English vocabulary to young learners using games especially alphabet games. This research use an experimental method consisting of three stages: pre-test, treatment, and post test. The subjects of this study at SDS Al-WardahMedan,Tembung. In collecting data, researcher use tests (pre-test and post-test) ,observation and documentation. The results of this research indicated that alphabet games had positive effect in acquiring English vocabulary for young learners of the second grade students’ of SDS AL-WARDAH Medan Tembung. This could be proven based on the results of research in the experimental group, the highest student pre-test results are 95 and the lowest is 55, the highest student post-test results were 90 and the lowest is 45. The average of the experimental group is 10 and 20 standard deviations. And the results of the research in the control group, the highest student pre-test results were 90 and the lowest was 45. Meanwhile, the highest student post-test results were 95 and the lowest was 55. The average control group was 15.67 and 15.7 standard deviations. It showed that the students gainedmuch difficulties in acquiring English vocabulary from the alphabet games. The further researcher is needed to elaborate and find more technique to solve this vocabulary learning problem.