1

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

This chapter presents a brief description of the study that is conducted by the

writer. In this chapter there are six subtitles. They are : (1) background of the study, (2)

problem of the study, (3) purpose of the study, (4) research hypothesis, (5) Significance

of the study, (6) scope and limitation of the study, and (7) definition of key-terms.

A. Background of The Study

Basically, English is an international language that should be learnt since a

person was still a kid. In Indonesia, English is one of foreign languages that is taught in

primary school. It is not only known as a foreign language, but also learnt from school

to university live.

Most of Indonesian peoples complain that English is hard to understand. Aini

(2017) stated that many native speakers even agreeing about English is a "bad"

language. It is caused not only by its different word construction but also the

pronunciation, the grammar, the writing and the vocabulary mastery. Between all of

them, vocabulary mastery is the most important thing. In the writer personal experience

in primary school, the writer often faced hard time while studied English. Now, primary

school teachers should recognize what kind of teaching technique can be used to attract

student interests in learning English.

Talking about the importance of vocabulary, Lessard-Clouston (2012:1) stated

that without enough vocabulary, no one will understand each other. Indeed, people need

to use words in order to express themselves in any language. Most learners know the
 2

importance of vocabulary skill. In the writer experience as a teacher, the writer noticed

the fact that students usually find it difficult to speak English fluently. The students

think that speaking and writing activities are tiring because they use the same

expressions and words and very soon their conversation interrupted caused by missing

words.

Lack of vocabulary is the main reason for some communication problems.

Another reason that also happened is the problem of forgetting the words immediately

after the teacher tell the meaning or after they read the words in the dictionary book, and

this also a cause of the lack of vocabulary. The more words students learn, the easier

they memorize them.

Ayuningtyas (2008:1) states that learning a foreign language with something

like song is helpful enough because it is familiar in our daily life. Miranti, Engliana and

Hapsari (2015:171) also said that a song as a media is giving a good impact in

developing students' vocabulary mastery. Law (2014) also said that children ages are

active learners not only at home but also at school. Recine (2015) said that to improve

the vocabulary, students have to read transcripts as they listen. Since listening popular

English song is one of students interests, they will enjoy while reading the transcript and

unconsciously improving their vocabulary. Borisai and Dennis (2016:91-92) already

prove this by their conclusion in their study that a song could help students to improve

their vocabularies, even attracting their interest to study English and enjoyed it.

Muflihah (2017:372) also states that using English song is profitable for

improve students vocabulary mastery. Bloomsbury International (2013) states that using

songs as learning material is helpful for learn and remember new vocabulary
 3

and idioms. Singing along using popular English songs will help students to remember

new words better than read aloud in the class.

Koteva-Mojsovska (2014:70) stated that using students senses such as sight,

touch, smell, taste, hearing (sound) is the easiest way to learn. By listening to a popular

song, the students are using the sighting sense and hearing sense. They also can both

learn and have fun in the relax atmosphere. The students easily remember their

experiences that connected with physical involvement. These experiences are the

activities happen in the classroom, which involves the senses, what they feel, what they

see and what they hear. They can get these experiences through songs.

So far, to master English skill the students must be able to apply one of the

components of language “Vocabulary” in sentence, because it can help the students

understand what people say or write in English so it very important to be considered.

Vocabulary is an important component of English, because by means of correct and

accurate vocabulary students can speak and write meaningful English.

Alchieri (2017) said that listening to song is a great way to learn English. When

listening to a song, new words that the students never heard before will be obtained by

them. Also, some words that have different context and meaning will be noticed by the

students. Music in the other hand will help their brain more receptive to hearing

English.

Zazulak (2015) stated that between music and memory there is not only have a

strong link but also have a similar areas of the brain that activated when listen or play

music and speaking or processing language. Research from the University of

Edinburgh by Ludke, Ferreira, & Overy (2013:50-51) found that get longer memories is
 4

the benefit of learning foreign languages through songs and the pitch structure to verbal

learning and memory is a help.

In teaching of new vocabulary, especially through listening English popular

song, the teacher should appeal to all the physical senses. The students should both hear

and see all new words. However, listening to the music to the students is better way to

attract their interest in English word, because it is important and necessary for student’s

language development especially in increasing their vocabulary mastery.

Based on the explanation above, the writer wants to find the influence of

listening popular English songs to the students’ vocabulary mastery of the fourth grade

students of SDN 005 SAMARINDA in 2018 / 2019 academic year. The writer chooses

the fourth grade students of SDN 005 SAMARINDA as the sample study because they

just learn it for the first time.

The writer choose two English popular song as the media of this study because

a numbers of reasons. The first reason is the students of SDN 005 SAMARINDA have

limited vocabulary. Well, as the writer said before it is the first time they introduced

into English, so it will be a little bit strange for them to learn. They also like to listen to

song so it will be an attraction for them to learn English much and more. Then these

songs are quite popular among the students. After that, the songs are easy to memorize,

simple and limited in number of characters. Also, these songs are the original

soundtrack of Disney Movie, which suitable for all ages. Last, the vocabulary of the

songs has been suitable with the English curriculum of the school.

B. Problem of The Study

 5

Based on the background of the study above, the writer formulates the problem

of the study as follow: “How is the influence of teaching listening by using popular

English songs to the students’ vocabulary mastery of the fourth grade students of SDN

005 SAMARINDA in 2018 / 2019 academic year?”

C. Purpose of The Study

Based on the problem as mentioned above, the writer would like: To find out

the influence of listening popular English songs to the students’ vocabulary mastery in

form of scores attained by the fourth grade students of SDN 005 SAMARINDA in 2018

/ 2019 academic year is.

D. Research Hypothesis

There are two hypotheses used in this study as follows:

1. The Null Hypothesis (Ho) “Listening to popular English songs does not improve

students' vocabulary mastery of the fourth grade students of SDN 005

SAMARINDA in 2018 / 2019 academic year”

2. The Alternative Hypothesis (Ha) “Listening to popular English songs improves

students' vocabulary mastery of the fourth grade students of SDN 005

SAMARINDA in 2018 / 2019 academic year.”

E. Significance of The Study

There are some contributions to be gained from this study as follows:

1. For the English teachers

 6

It is expected that this study can give information to the primary school

teachers that one of useful technique in teaching English is listening English

popular songs.

2. For the English Curriculum designers

It is expected that this study can be an input data and as a consideration

in designing the English curriculum of primary school.

3. For the English learners

It is expected that this study can give fundamental facts for further

writers about listening English popular songs in primary school.

F. Scope and limitation of The Study

Due to limited time, fund and energy (facilities), the scope of this study is only

focused on listening English popular songs to improve the student’s vocabulary mastery

and given listening English popular songs to the students about three times for each

song.

The population is taken from fourth grade students of SDN 005 SAMARINDA

in 2018 / 2019 academic year and the song are Idina Menzel “Let It Go”, lyrics written

by Kristen Anderson-Lopez / Robert J. Lopez and Ariana Grande featuring John Legend

“Beauty and The Beast”, lyrics written by Alan Menken / Howard Ashman.

G. Definition of Key-Terms
 7

1. Influence in this study means the effect or result of listening English popular

songs to the students vocabulary mastery whether it is good result or not.

2. Listening English popular songs means to only give a media with sounds but not

with any visual media. The teacher also gave the students some papers that they

can fill in and completing the lyrics. This method is used to improve the

student’s vocabulary mastery.

3. Mastery means to the scores achieved by the sample of students in given test on

English vocabulary.

4. Vocabulary mastery means the words which have been mastered by the students

of the vocabulary arranged in K13 curricula.