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??? ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
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