ANIMATION AND VOCABULARY AS ENGLISH LEARNING ASPECTS

ANIMATION AND VOCABULARY AS ENGLISH LEARNING ASPECTS

English as used all over the world. People in some countries speak English as their first language and some other use it as their foreign language. In Indonesia English become one of the subjects at school and as the compulsory subject in each of the school. The government has conducted this to increase the human resource. Beside that, there are many English courses to support the students in mastering English.

Vocabulary became central of language teaching and learning English. Vocabulary is the important thing to comprehend the language skill. The learners can perform and practice their skill, if they learn many vocabularies,  the student will able to produce many sentences. If the student have limited vocabularies, they will find any difficulties in mastering their language skills.

Now days, English has been introducing from elementary school, junior high school, senior high school until university. Especially in Junior High School, there are many school which have involved English subjects one of local content. Teaching student in Junior High school is very different from teaching adult in university. Student in Junior High school have certain characteristic and need a particular treatment in teaching learning English. Some students think that English is very difficult to learn, so they feel bored and loss motivation in learning English and do not pay attention to the materials.

The cause of the problem is the teachers still use the conventional method in teaching the material of English. The teachers just explain the media only text books and black board. This method makes the students sometimes feel bored and sleepy especially when is taught in the last session. The other cause is that the student never practice the language whether when they are in the classroom or at home. They are afraid of making mistakes when they speak English. They prefer to speak Indonesian or Javanese language to their teacher or friends.

For the slow learners it is difficult for them to memorize the materials and need more time in understanding and accepting the materials. Besides, they need explanation in understanding the instruction when doing the test. Lack of vocabulary mastery, lack of facilities in teaching media and lack of students’ motivation to master English are the other cause that possibly make the problem occur. Considering that, the writer wants to give a solution especially in increasing the students’ vocabulary mastery, so that later the students will be able to study English language well. The one of solution that the writer will give is animation video.

In addition, students’ problems are not only from the classroom environment but also from the students themselves. The reality we often see is that, in fact, many students master the theory better than practice. For example, in speaking, they may have the knowledge of how to speak, but in practice they find difficulties. They lack self confidence. To build their confidence, students need more practice so that teachers are suggested to create and use interesting method. One of such the methods is story retelling. Generally, comics is liked by the students because they like animation. It is also an appropriate method for the students at their age.

Animation video is one of the many media to teach vocabulary. Animation videos are an art  form using a series of static images in fixed sequence. Using English animation video as a means for teaching animation video can be very pleasing and interesting for the students. By using English animation video students will be more interested and more active in learning. They will feel something new and different from what they usually get in their class. The writer hopes that with the use of English animation video they will be active as participants and they have more a chance to express their minds, emotions, feelings and attitudes.

As mentioned in the background, selecting a good medium to teach English is very important. The phenomena we have for many years are that teachers use particular text books, which are stated in the curriculum, without trying to find some other suitable sources. They, in this case, do not attempt to find other materials that support and motivate students’ interest in their English class. The writer assumes that animation video is a kind of text that will attract students’ interest and stimulate them to enjoy vocabulary. As Walt Disney says, animation, an element of visual video , offers a medium of vocabulary and visual entertainment which can bring pleasure and information to people of all ages everywhere in the world. Although the animation video is written in English, the students of Junior High School will enjoy watching it for the following reasons:

1. Animation video is a light and easy-to-understand teaching material. It has pictures and contains  conversations in “simple” of speech. The vocabulary used there can be inferred from both pictures and the context, so the students do not waste their time to look up the meaning of difficult words in a dictionary.

2. The sentence structures, which are used in animation video are simple. They enable students to understand what the sentence means.

(Taufik, 2006: 3)