A CASE STUDY OF THE IMPLEMENTATION OF SEMANTIC MAPPING AS A PRE-TEACHING VOCABULARY ACTIVITY

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION

1.1  BACKGROUND

  One of the major problems most Thai students encounter when they read any
texts  is  the  lack  of  vocabulary  knowledge  or  struggling  with  unknown  words.
Therefore,  readers  begin  to  panic  and  stop  reading  to  look  them  up  in  dictionaries
which  interrupts  the  normal  reading  process,  then  destroys  their  chances  to
comprehend much of the text. The relationship between knowledge of word meanings
and  comprehension  has  been  well  documented  by  researchers  and  acknowledged  by
students.  Many  of  them  admit  that  sometimes  they  do  not  understand  what  they  are
reading because the words are too hard for them Biemiller (2001) also pointed out that
what is missing for many children who master phonics but do not comprehend well is

vocabulary,  the  words  they  need  to  know  in  order  to  understand  what  they  are
reading. Thus vocabulary is the “missing link” in reading instruction.
  Hirsch (2003) claimed that students who already know 90-95 percent of words
in a text are allowed to get the main idea of the text and therefore to guess correctly
the  remaining  unfamiliar  words’  meaning.  On  the contrary, those who know only 10
percent  of  words  in  a  text  do  not  comprehend  the  passage;  they  thus  miss  the
opportunity  to  understand  the  text  and  learn  more  words.  Vocabulary  knowledge
increases  when  new  words  are  encountered  repeatedly  in  context  through  reading  or
listening, have a significant link to students’ prior knowledge, and are connected with
other words that are semantically related. 
   In order to gain meaning for new words while reading, it is necessary to use
prior knowledge making predictions about meaning and gradually refine that meaning
(Blachowicz and Fisher, 1996). An important part of teaching background knowledge
is  teaching  the  vocabulary  related  to  it;  on  the  other  hand,  learning  vocabulary  also
means  learning  the  conceptual  knowledge  associated  with  the  word.  Comprehension
is  facilitated  when  vocabulary  is  taught  in  depth  before  reading  begins  and  while
reading.  To  be  more  effective,  an  extensive  and  vocabulary  development  program
accompanying a schemata development program is called for. Instead of pre teaching???  ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

DAPATKAN PROPOSAL AND CONTOH SKRIPSINYA DI SINI
 


EmoticonEmoticon