An Analysis of the Second Year Students’ Vocabulary Matery Through Cloze Test at English Department of Bung Hatta University

Abstrak

Vocabulary is one of the essential language components in studying the language. Hornby in Alqahtani (1995) says that vocabulary is total number of words in a language. Vocabulary is the first way to be mastered if they want to achieve their goal in learning English skills. Based on the researcher’s observation, the researcher found some problems which happened to the students in learning vocabulary. Firstly, many students got difficulties to memorize new vocabulary. Secondly, the students felt confussed to use some vocabulary in the right position. The last problem is understanding the meaning of words. Related to this, this research focused on the mastery in vocabulary, especially in using noun, verb, adjective and adverb. The purpose of this research was to describe the students’ vocabulary mastery through cloze test at English Department of Bung Hatta University. This research was limited to the problem on analyzing vocabulary mastery through cloze test by using noun, verb, adjective, and adverb.

The researcher used descriptive design in this research. The population of this research was 24 students at the second year students at English department of Bung Hatta University. They were distributed into one class. The researcher used random sampling techniques to select the sample. The number of sample for try out test was 10 students and the sample of real test was 14 students. The instrument used to collect the data was 40 items vocabulary test in the form of cloze test (Rational cloze and semantic / content word cloze). The researcher used content validity in this research. The researcher found the reliability index of this test was .90 (very reliable).

In general, the result of the data analysis revealed that 42.86 % of the second year students of English Department Bung Hatta University had good vocabulary mastery. In specifically, 42.86 % of them had good vocabulary mastery in using noun, 42.86 %  of them had good mastery in using verb, 57.14 % of them had good vocabulary mastery in using adjective, and 35.71 % had low vocabulary mastery in using adverb.

Finally, from the findings, it could be concluded that the students’ vocabulary mastery of the second year students of English Department Bung Hatta University was good. Consequently, based on conclusions the researcher suggests to the lecturer to give more exercises in learning vocabulary. For students, to improve their mastery in vocabulary mastery, they should practice new vocabulary, listen English songs, read English book, and understanding basic words. For the researcher, this research could be a guidance to another researcher.

Key words : Vocabulary, Cloze test, Vocabulary Mastery