Improving Students’ Vocabulary Mastery Through the Keyword Technique At The Tenth Grade of SMAN 2 Tulang Bawang Tengah

The aim of this research was to improve students‘ vocabulary mastery of the tenth grade through the use of Keyword technique. This research is categorized as classroom action research. The subject of this research was the tenth grade students of SMAN 2 Tulang Bawang Tengah in the academic year of 2021/2022. The data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics and quantitative data analyses. This research was conducted in two cycles where each cycle consisted of three meetings. Based on the analysis of the research findings, the students‘ vocabulary mastery was improved by using Keyword technique based on the quantitative and qualitative data. From quantitative data, the result showed that the mean score of each cycle was increased from post-test of cycle 1 to cycle 2. The mean score of cycle 1 was 62.07, there were 13 students or 46.43% who passed Minimum Mastery Criterion, while in cycle 2 was 77.93, there were 21 students or 75% who passed Minimum Mastery Criterion. Moreover, this improvement can also be seen from qualitative data, such as the results of students‘ observation sheet from cycle 1 to cycle 2. The mean score of cycle 1 was 6.41, while in cycle 2 was 7.31. The improvement of students‘ learning activity from cycle 1 to cycle 2 was 0.90. It showed that the students seemed to be more motivated and confidence in learning vocabulary. Therefore, it can be concluded that the implementation of the Keyword technique can improve students‘ learning activities and vocabulary mastery.


INTRODUCTION
Vocabulary is the basic element of language which someone needs in learning a language.People need to have various vocabularies to help them in all language skills.They are speaking, reading, listening and writing.Some students still find the difficulty in learning vocabulary due to various factors.Therefore, teacher as the facilitator needs to find good solution and strategy to make students interested and enjoy in learning vocabulary by offering various learning techniques.Teachers also should know how to design good material to improve students' achievement in the learning process.
Vocabulary is central to English language teaching.Murcia (2001) states that -Vocabulary learning is central to language acquistion, whether the language is first, second or foreign‖.Richard and Rodgers (2001) states that -Vocabulay is one of the most important aspects of foreign language learning‖.
Meanwhile, Hiebert and Kamil (2005) give their ideas about the definition of vocabulary.They stated that -Vocabulary is the knowledge of meanings of words.‖They also divided two types of vocabulary: active vocabulary that is used in speech and writing and passive vocabulary (receptive) that is known but not used by a person.People understand it when it is heard or read.Cameron (2001) states that -Vocabulary development is not only about learning words, but it is much more than that.Vocabulary development is also about learning formulaic phrases or chunks, finding words inside them, and learning even more about those words‖.
Keyword technique is one of technique or methods to enrich students' vocabulary mastery.It is a technique that can be used by teacher to improve students' memory in learning vocabulary.This technique requires students to think and find new words from a keyword given by teacher which uses visualization to organize and recall information.Based on the description above, the researcher interested in using strategy to teaching vocabulary used Keyword technique to improve the students' vocabulary mastery.Foster (2009) stated that Keyword technique is a way of organizing information to make it easier to remember, typically by using codes, visual, imagery, or rhymes.According to Thornburry (2012), keyword or mnemonics are ‗trick' to help retrieve items or rules that are stored in memory and that are not yet automatically retrievable.Hayes ( 2009) also states that -Keyword technique is a design formulation to support memory and students can encode better data by using the mnemonic order, so that is easier to remember later on‖.This technique has a formula on how students can improve and find new words from keyword concept that will be given by teacher.
According to Redjeki Agoestyowati (2010), in implementing keyword technique, there are seven steps of keyword technique as follows: (1) Start the class by asking the students this question: -Do you know KRISDAYANTI?‖(The writer believes the students know her well).(2) Ask students to write down one word each about her on the board (It can be adjective, verbs, names of something, names of place, etc.).(3) It migh be like this : Beautiful,Rich,Sexy,Malang,Diva,Singer,Etc. (4) Then ask the students to make a presentation orally about Krisdayanti by using the words above, like this : Krisdayanti is not only a sexy woman but I think she is very beautiful.She is quite rich, too.She comes from Malang.She is a singer and she is one of the Indonesian's Divas.(5) Another students may have different opinion like this : Do you know Krisdayanti ?She is a beautiful and sexy woman.This sexy woman is not from Jakarta but she is from Malang.This time, she often sings, so I can say that she is a singer and she is one of the Indonesian's Diva, because of that she is quite rich.(6) Ask the students to give their individual presentations in front of the class.(7) All students will have different sentence but a least they are using some similar words.
According to Amiryousefi and Ketabi (2011), elaborate the advantages of keyword technique as explained below.a) Students are able to imagine the target words.b) Students are able to understand the meaning of the target words and also use it well.c) This technique is very effective in helping students to remember about things such as nouns, adjective and so on.d) This technique will make students think more critically and creatively to find more words in learning vocabulary.e) This technique has a good strategy for improving vocabulary mastery and can make students more interested in learning vocabulary.
Amiryousefi and Ketabi (2011) also state that keyword technique has some disadvantages as explained below: a) The teaching learning activities take more time.b) Teachers should be creative in enhancing students' imagination.c) Students' understanding may be lower when teacher explains startegy about this technique.d) This technique only focus on a few aspects and students might be less able to think further.e) The class needs at least one dictionary for pairs of students.
Regarding to the advantages and the disadvantages of implementing the keyword technique in teaching vocabulary, it can be concluded that keyword technique is able to improve the students' vocabulary mastery and students' retention in memorizing.This technique also enables students to use the vocabulary properly.So, the aim of this research is to improve students' vocabulary mastery of the tenth grade through the use of Keyword technique.

METHOD
This research used Classroom Action Research as the research design.Classroom Action Research to improve students' vocabulary through Keyword technique.According to Tomal ( 2003) -Action research is systematic process of solving educational problems and making improvement.‖Classroom Action Research is research conducted by teacher in the class itself through self-reflection, with the purpose of improving perfomance as teacher so that students learning outcomes to be increased (see Creswell, 2014;Irawati, 2008;Jondeya, 2011;Larsson, 2017;Nasrollahi et al., 2015;Smith, 1978;Widiati & Cahyono, 2006;Wood, 2008;Yasuyo Matsumoto, 2008).As Burns (2010) stated action Research involves taking a self-reflective, critical, and systematic approach to exploring your own teaching contexts.
The sample of this research is the students at tenth grade of SMAN 2 Tulang Bawang Tengah.Instrument of collection the data are: 1.The writer gave form of multiple choice test which consists 50 questions, in each number consisted of five options a, b, c, d and e. 2. Field notes were intended to be read by the writer as evidence to produce meaning and an understanding of the culture, social situation, or phenomenon being studied.3. The observation sheet is used to observe the students' learning activities during the learning process in each cycle.Students' observation sheet is concemed with the students as the subject in implementing the technique.It is given to know the students' activity in every meeting.
In this research, the writer used quantitative and qualitative data as the technique collecting data.The quantitative method was used to analyses data from instrument test by using mean statistical formula.While, the qualitative was analyzed by using the descriptive qualitative method.

Research Findings
This research was conducted at the tenth grade of SMAN 2 Tulang Bawang Tengah, consisting of 28 students.The writer implemented Keyword technique to improve students' vocabulary mastery.It was divided in two cycles.Every cycle was held in three meetings.Based on the table above, it can be seen that in the cycle 1, the percentage of students who passed the test were 13 students in the percentage was 46.43%.It increased in cycle 2, the students who passed the test in was 21 students in the percentage was 75%.It can be concluded that the implementation of Keyword technique could improve students' vocabulary mastery.Based on the table above, it can be seen that the mean score of total score in cycle 1 was 62.07, while in cycle 2 the mean score of total score was 77.93.The improvement of students' learning activity from cycle 1 to cycle 2 was 15.86.Therefore, it can be concluded that the students' learning result in the class was improved from cycle 1 to cycle 2.Based on the table of the students' observation sheet above, it can be seen that the mean score of total score in cycle 1 was 6.41 (poor), while in cycle 2 the mean score of total score was 7.31 (fair).The improvement of students' learning activity from cycle 1 to cycle 2 was 0.90.Therefore, it can be concluded that the students' learning activity in the class was improved from cycle 1 to cycle 2.

Discussion
Based on the observation of this research which had been done by the writer, the writer concluded that the students in tenth grade of SMAN 2 Tulang Bawang Tengah were difficult to express and respond something written and spoken in English.The students found some difficulties to understand the reading text and applying appropriate vocabulary in their sentences or pharagraphs because of limited vocabulary.The other problem came from students' attitude, they tended to be passive in the class.Some students also did not want to raise their hands when the writer or the teacher asked some questions.It was because of students' lack of self-confidence.They were shy and afraid to make mistakes in learning English.They would look down to their table and pretend not to see the teacher.The students were also lazy to memorize the words and mostly depend on their teacher to find the meaning of the word.Moreover, the students had low motivation in learning English because the stigma of difficult English subject.From these problems, the writer tried to solve the problem by doing treatment to the students in the school using Keyword technique.
Keyword technique is a technique that can be used to improve students' memory in learning vocabulary.This technique requires students to think and find new words from a keyword given by teacher which uses visualization to organize and recall information.Foster (2009) stated that Keyword technique is a way of organizing information to make it easier to remember, typically by using codes, visual, imagery, or rhymes.According to Thornburry (2012), keyword or mnemonics are ‗trick' to help retrieve items or rules that are stored in memory and that are not yet automatically retrievable.It means keyword as a technique can be used by teacher to teach and help the students to retrieve or to recall the information.In implementing keyword technique, the teacher can use various ways and also medias in teaching vocabulary to the students.This technique will help students to make it easier to remember words by using codes, visual imagery, pictures,cards, and many more.The objective of this technique is the students who will be given a new word as a keyword.The students are encouraged to find related words of the keyword.In this research, the writer used pictures, paper or card as tools in implementing the keyword technique.The students were also devided into group to work together.In finding the new words, they would also learn and know the aspects of vocabulary.
According to Damiri (2013) One of the components which are very important is vocabulary.Without vocabulary, somebody cannot express something that she/he wants to.And we cannot develop the four skills without vocabulary.According to Lado as cited in Mardianawati ( 2012), there are five aspects of vocabulary which are needed to be learned by the students.The first aspect is meaning.Meaning becomes one of the essential aspects that should be learned by the students because meaning refers to how the word give its meaning to the language users.Frequently, a word may have more than one meaning when it is used in different context.For example, the word -present‖ as a noun means a period of time that is happening now.The word -present‖ as a noun also can be defined as something that you give to someone, usually for a particular ocassion.Therefore, it is really important for the students to know the meaning of the word, because it will help them to use and understand the message from that word when it occurs in different context.
The second aspect is spelling.When the students encounter a word for the first time, they need to know how to spell that word.Spelling refers to what a word looks like (its spelling).By knowing the spelling of a word, the students will know how to write a word correctly in written form.Therefore, it is really important for students to know the spelling of the word.
The third is pronunciation.When the students learn vocabulary, they also need to know what a word sounds like (its pronunciation).It will help the students to understand what the other means to say.If a word sound incorrectly, it will be difficult for someone to understand it.Therefore, it is really essential for students to know how to pronounce a word correctly because it will avoid misunderstanding in spoken communication.
The forth is word classes.Word classes can be defined as categories of words.It is an important feature in semantic feature analysis.The categories of words can be classified in some categories such as noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and preposition.The clarification of the words of a language in this was depends on their function in communication.
The last aspect is word use.Word use refers to how a word is used in a language.word use may also involve grammar and thus be the subject of profound analysis.
Based on the statements above, it can be concluded that the use of Keyword technique in vocabulary is good technique to improve students' vocabulary mastery.This technique also help students to remember larger pieces of information.The more related word of keyword the students get, the more new vocabularies they get.The students also will get larger information which help them to know and understand the text they read.Finally, and perhaps most important, Keyword technique improves their vocabulary.Besides from the statements above, the improvement of students' vocabulary mastery also can be seen from the result of students' vocabulary test in the class.
In conducting this research, the writer used two cycles where each cycle consisted of three meetings.The writer used one class of the tenth grade at SMA Negeri 2 Tulang Bawang Tengah which consisted of 28 students.In the second cycle, generally the condition of class in teaching and learning process was better than the previous cycle.It could be seen from the students who ready to follow the lesson, and most of them were enthusiastic and also eager to answer the question given by the writer.In learning process by using Keyword technique, they were seemed enjoy.In the third action of cycle 2, the writer held a post-test 2. Based on the result of the post-test 2, the mean score of the class in vocabulary test gained 77.93 which were 21 students from 28 students who passed the KKM.
The result of students' vocabulary test from two cycles showed that the implementation of Keyword technique could improve students' vocabulary mastery.It can be concluded by analyzing the students' mean score of each cycle.In the cycle 1, the mean score of the test was 62.07, while in the cycle 2, the mean score of the test was 77.93, the improvement of the mean score in cycle 1 and cycle 2 was 15.86.Also the result of students' learning activity in the class showed that there was an improvement from cycle 1 to cycle 2.The mean score of students ' learning activity in the cycle 1 was 6.41 and in the cycle 2 was 7.31.The improvement of students ' learning activity from cycle 1 to cycle 2 was 0.90.Based on the result of students' vocabulary mastery, the data showed that the students had the improvement in vocabulary mastery.From the explanation above, it can be seen that the students' score was improved in the second cycle.The writer can conclude that the implementation of Keyword technique in teaching vocabulary could improve students' vocabulary mastery at the tenth grade of SMA Negeri 2 Tulang Bawang Tengah in the academic year of 2021/2022.

CONCLUSION
After conducting the research of teaching English vocabulary at SMAN 2 Tulang Bawang Tengah, it can be shown that the implementation of Keyword technique can improve students' vocabulary mastery.There were several improvements reached by the students, not only on their academic scores, but also on their behavior in teaching and learning process.

SUGGESTION
From the conclusion above, there are some suggestion as follow; for the teacher, the writer would suggest the teacher to apply Keyword technique in teaching vocabulary.This technique will motivate the students to find new words related to the keyword, they will not get boring easily in implementing this technique.The teacher should prepare, master also explain the materials clearly so that the students are able to understand the material well.For the further researchers who want to conduct the research through Keyword technique can do research with different materials.It also can be used with different design, not only qualitative but also quantitative design.