CHAPTER II

LITERATURE REVIEW

A. Vocabulary Mastery

1. Definition of Vocabulary

In learning English, there are languange elements that English

learners must master namely pronunciation, grammar, spelling and

vocabulary. The latest element is regarded as the most crucial one.

Vocabulary refers to list or sets of words which individual speakers of

language might use, since vocabulary is a list, people may think that the

only system involved is that of alphabetical order (Hatch and Brown, 1995:

368). Without vocabulary, English learners are unable to develop the other

language elements either pronunciation, grammar or spelling.

Based on the definitions above, it can be concluded that vocabulary is

all the words which exist in a language that is basic elements, in this case

English.

2. The Importance of Vocabulary

Tarigan (1984: 2) points out the importance of vocabulary in language

learning. He states that language skill mostly depends on the mastery of

vocabulary. Thus, the more vocabulary is mastered, the bigger possibility is

that someone can skillfully use the language.

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Nunan (1983: 125) argues that the acquisition of an adequate

vocabulary is essential for succesful language use because without an

extensive vocabulary, people will be unable to use structure and function

they may have learned for comprehensible communication. It forms an

important element in learning a second language.

Vocabulary is very important for the students. The students are

expected to master the skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening.

The vocabulary can help the students or the learners to acquire the

considerable understanding of a large number of words.

As the explanation above, vocabulary becomes an important thing in

learning English. Students have to master vocabulary more and more

because the lack of vocabulary often brings trouble for English learners.

When they are writing something in English, sometimes they get trouble

because they don‟t know how to express their ideas in written language.

Therefore, the conclusion is it can‟t be denied that vocabulary is one of the

important things in English communication.

3. Vocabulary Mastery

Vocabulary mastery refers to the number of words someone knows.

The term mastery is not restricted to simply recognize the meaning of

certain words. In other words, it is more precisely defined as „to know a

word‟ because the learners are said to have a good vocabulary mastery if

they are able to recognize the meaning but also to know form, grammar,

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collocation, meaning and word formation (Ur, 1991 : 60). In relation to

writing subskills, vocabulary mastery can be defined as a number of

vocabulary or words in the memory of users or learners.

The vocabulary test which will be utilized to measure the learners‟

vocabulary mastery is dealing with the measurement of productive skills

that is the vocabulary knowledge required for writing (Nation, 2012 : 1)

4. Kinds of Vocabulary

According to Nation (2001), there are two kinds of vocabulary. They

are receptive and productive vocabulary. Receptive vocabulary refers to the

words that students recognizes and understand when they read or listen to

something. Productive vocabulary are words which the students

understands, can pronounce correctly and use constructively in speaking

and writing. Listening vocabulary is generally larger than his speaking

vocabulary while his reading vocabulary is relatively larger than his writing

vocabulary. Therefore it can be concluded that vocabulary can be presented

in four units. They are reading, listening, speaking and writing

vocabulary. Reading vocabulary consists of the word found by people

when they are reading. While listening vocabulary is the words that people

hear and understand when they are talking to others or listening to radio

and television. Speaking vocabulary includes the words people used in their

daily life and conversation. The last is writing vocabulary that consists of

the word people use in writing essays, reports, letter, etc.

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Nation (2001) also states that there are four kinds of vocabulary in

the text. They are :

a. High frequency words. These words are almost 80% of the running

words in the text.

b. Academic words. Typically, these words make up about 9% of the

running words in the text.

c. Technical words. These words make up about 5% of the running

words in the text.

d. Low frequency words. These are the words of moderate frequency that

did not manage to get into the high frequency list. They make up over

5% of the words in an academic text.

5. The Classification of Words

The basic classification of words in terms of part of speech are

divided into two class. According to Halliday (1985) as cited in Hatch and

Brown, (1995: 252) English vocabularies are classified into:

1.) Lexical or content words. The content words can be learned in small

group around life situation. Word contents include:

1. Nouns

Noun refers to a person, place, or thing. It can be divided into

subclasses. They are proper nouns (Betsy, Ohio and the Mormon

Tabernacle Choir), common nouns (woman, state, and choir),

concrete nouns (disk, table and chair), abstract nouns (hope,

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understanding, and love), count noun (books, birds, and pianos),

mass noun (applesauce, gravy and rice), and group nouns (bank,

government, board)

2. Verbs

Verbs are words that denote action. Nouns that name states,

processes and events are not as noun like as physical objects that

exist in time and space. For examples: do, write and listen

3. Adjectives

Adjectives are used to highlight qualities or attributes.

Certain adjectives are typically used to describe particular nouns.

For example: light, dark, bright and dull are used with color names.

4. Adverb

Adverbs are similiar to adjectives in many ways altought they

typically assign attributes to verbs, to clauses, or to entire sentences

rather than to nouns.

b. Grammatical or function Words

1. Prepositions

Prepositions are all those words that help locate items and

action in time and space. For example: above, ahead, behind.

2. Conjunctions

Conjunctions are sometimes called logical connectors

because they clarify the relation between the linked clauses. For

example: because, while, unless, and, or, but.

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3. Pronouns

Pronouns refer to nouns that have already been mentioned in

the discourse or point ahead to a noun that are about to mention.

For examples: me, he, him.

4. Article and demonstratives

The articles ( a, an, the) and demontratives (this, that) are

important to help point out object and bring them to the attention of

the listeners.

6. Evaluation of Vocabulary Mastery

In testing vocabulary mastery, it is needed to determine type of test

which will be used. According to Hughes (1989 : 147), there are two kinds

of evaluation namely recognition and production. Those are described as

follows :

a. Recognition

This is a type of testing vocabulary in which the test takers are

provided with several alternatives to which they only need to recognize

and choose which one is suitable with the word that is being asked. This

is one testing problem for which multiple choice can be recommended

without to many doubtfulnesses. In this kind of evaluation, items may

involve a number of different operations as follows:

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1.) Synonyms

The test-takers are supposed to choose the alternatives which

has the closest meaning to the words being asked. It is suggested

that all the options are the words that the candidates are expected to

know.

2.) Definitions

It is a type of recognition test in which the test-takers need to

know the notion or description of the word that is being asked.

What the test writer needs to note is that all the options must have

the same length.

3.) Gap Filling

It is the test in which the test-takers are required to fill the gap

in a sentence having certain context with available options. The test

writer needs to notice that the context should not contain itself

words that the test takers are unlikely to know.

b. Production

It is a type of vocabulary testing which different from the first one.

The testing of vocabulary productively is so difficult that it is

practically never attempted in proficiency test. Several types of

productive vocabulary testing are described as follows:

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1.) Pictures

By using pictures, the test takers are expected to write down

the name of given pictures. This method of testing is restricted to

concrete nouns which can be unambiguously drawn.

2.) Definitions

This method requires the test-takers to give a definition or a

term of given clues.

3.) Gap Filling

This is a bit similar to the gap filling method in recognition

vocabulary test, but there is no alternatives here. The test takers

need to find the missing word by themselves. To avoid unexpected

answer from the test-takers, it is suggested to give the first letter of

the missing word or an indication of the number of letters.

The vocabulary mastery test which will be utilized in this research is

the Vocabulary Level Test which is often called Vocabulary Size Test in

controlling productive vocabulary that is developed by Batia Laufer &

Paul Nation. This kind of test is designed to measure both first language

and second language learners‟written size in English (Nation, 2012).

B. Essay Writing Skill

1. Definition of Writing

Writing is a system of recording language by means of visible or

tactile mark, so that poeple can read, perform or use it (Coulmas, 2004:1).

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It means that beside using the spoken language, human being also using

written language to express their feeling , idea and thought.

It is in line with Tarigan (1994:21) says that writing is the activity

describing grapic symbols that depicts a language that can be understood

by somebody, so that the others can read that graph symbols, and

understand the language and the graph description. Writing will help

someone to explain their feelings. In writing, there is any ideas that must

be supported with specific reasons or details.

Bell and Burnaby (1984) point out that writing is an extremely

complex cognitive activity which requires the writer to demonstrate

control of several variables at once. At the sentence level, these include

control of the content, format, sentence structure, vocabulary,

pronounciation, spelling and letter formation. Beyond the sentence, the

writer must be able to structure and integrate information into cohesive

and coherent to master, not only for foreign language learners but for

native speakers as well.

2. Definition of Essay Writing

Essay is a short of writing about particular subject, especially one

written by a student and writing itself is the skill or activity of producing

words on a surface ( Cambridge Learner‟s Dictionary : 2007 ). It means

that essay writing is the activity of producing short of written text that can

be understood by the readers.

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Zemach (2005) in his book entitle “Academic Writing Paragraph to

Essay” also describe that an essay is a group of paragraph written about

single topic and central main idea. It must have at least three paragraph,

but a five paragraph essay is a common length for academic writing.

Therefore, creating an essay which there is overall thesis statement consist

of three supporting paraghraphs begin with a topic sentence is required

for making an essay.

Essay provide a very different challenge to that experienced in all

earlier form of study. Students should be able to recall, organize, integrate

their ideas, and express oneself in writing. Completing a good essays

requires a broad range of skills, which is why so many degree

programmes build them into their asssesment patterns. A good essays

demand that a student show the ability to plan, time-manage, research,

summarize and develop cohesive and balanced arguments before reaching

clear, concise conclusions.

3. Benefits of Writing an Essay

Mastering an essay writing offers at least three benefits. First of all,

mastering an essay writing skills will help students make a better writer.

For other courses, students will often do paper that will be variations on

the essay form. For examples, examination, essays, reports, and research

papers. The basic structure of an essay with its emphasis on a clear point

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and well-organized, logical support, will help the students in almost every

kind of writing.

Second, the dicipline of writing an essay will strengthen the

students‟ skills as a reader and listener. As a reader, students will become

more critically aware of other writers‟ idea and the evidence they provide

(or fail to provide) to support those ideas.

Most important, essay writing will make students be a stronger

thinker. Writing a solidly reasoned essay requires mental dicipline and

close attention to a set of logical rules. The students will learn to discover

and express just what their ideas are and to develop those ideas in a

logical and reasoned way. Essay writing in short will train their mind to

think clearly, and that ability will solve problems in every phase of the

life.

4. Element of Essay Writing

Writing ability is more than the understanding of graphic system

because good writing required knowledge of grammar and the act of using

theories such as arranging word, phrases, sentences and paragraph such

away that they attract the readers attention. Nunan (1991: 6) give some

tips how to succed in writing as followed :

a. mastering the mechanics of letter formation and obeying conventions

of spelling and punctuation.

b. using the grammatical system to convey one‟s intended meaning.

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c. organising content at the level of the paragraph and the complete text

to reflect given/ new information and topic/ comment structures.

d. polishing and revising one‟s initial efforts.

e. selecting an appropriate style for one‟s audience.

It is clear that writing process must be done by step. It needs more

excercises. Writing is a long and often painful process, so that the final

text emerges through succesive drafts.

5. Evaluation of Essay Writing

Evaluation in written language is more complex than others. It is

difficult to consider some aspect of complex achievement in essay test.

There are five assessment aspects of error in writing composition that are

usually made by the the students, they are as follows :

a. Content (the idea that expressed).

b. Organization.

c. Vocabulary.

d. Language mastery (grammar)

e. Mechanics (spelling).

(Nurgiyantoro,2001:308)

6. Structure of Essay Writing

An essay writing should be arranged well, According to Langan,

(2001: 11) gives example structure for essay writing. Here is an example

essay structure that would be appropriate for most other subject.

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Title The essay title is a key part of the essay itself.

Make sure to understand and stick to the
question asked.
Introduction Explore the essay question or title, make a line
of argument clear, summarize the conclusion and
state briefly the evidence that are going to
examine to demonstrate this.
Main Parts of In this part, develop the argument. Break
Essay different ideas down into paragraphs, making
sure there is a logical sequence from each one to
the next, and that overall a persuasive line of
reasoning is developed.
Conclusion Summarize the main ideas in an essay ( don‟t
introduce any new ideas at this stage), clearly
stating the conclusions, or showing why these
are important.

7. Types of Essay Writing

Before talking deeply about an essay writing, it is important to

know the types of essay writing. Essay writing has been divided into

several patterns. Langan ( 2001 ) has been divided into the following

patterns of development, they are :

a. Description

A description is a verbal picture of a person, place, or thing.

Because the function of a descriptive essay is to provide the readers

with a vivid and real pictures as possible in words, students should

choose a topic that appeals strongly to at least one of their sense.

Then, observe and record specific details that appeal to the readers‟

senses (sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch). More than any other

types of essay, a descriptive essay needs sharp and colorful details.

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b. Exposition:

In exposition, the writer provides information about and explains

a particular subject. Patterns of development within exposition include

giving examples (exemplification), detailing a process of doing or

making something, analyzing causes and effects, comparing or

contrasting, defining a term or concept, and dividing something into

parts or classifying it into categories.

1) Exemplification

In daily conversations, it is needed to provide examples-

details, particulars, and specific instanceto explain the statements

that has been made. It is important to help the students in

understanding the truth of the statement. In explanatory examples

also help audience fully understand the points.

2) Process ( Procedure )

In every day life, there are many activities that are processes.

That series of steps is carried out in a definite order. Many of

these processes are familiar and automatic. An essay process

requires the writer to think through the steps involved in an

activity. The students may be painfully conscious of the whole

series of steps involved in the process. The purpose of this text

itself is to instruct someone on how something can be done.

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3) Cause and Effect

The best essays are often written about a topic that the author

genuinely cares about. In everyday life, there are many actions do

not occur without causes. It is realized that those action have good

or bad effect. When constructing an explanation text it may be

neccesary to show a cause and effect relationship. By examining

the causes or effects of an action, It explain someone to

understand things that happened.

4) Comparison and Contrast

A comparison or contrast essay emphasizes how two things

are alike or how they differ. Comparison and contrast are two

thought processes constantly in everyday life. When comparing

two things, there are show how they are similar; when contrasting

two things, there are show how they different. The purpose of

comparing or contrasting is to understand each of the two things

more clearly and, at times, to make judgments about them.

5) Definition

In a definition essay, the writers provide the reader about

their personal understanding of a concept of term. As with other

essay forms, students should think in terms of supporting

definition with two or three paragraphs, each of which has its own

topic sentence. Such a definition typically starts with one meaning

of a term, the meaning then illustrated with a series of details.

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6) Division-Classification

When writing a division-classification essay, the purpose

itself is to present audience with a unique way of dividing and

classifying a particular topic. To write a successful essay, students

need to choose a topic first that interests the readers and lends

itself to being divided and classified.

c. Argumentation

Argumentative essay belongs to essay which is often used by the

people to persuade others by making a point in a class discussion. In

argumentative essay, the writers attempts to support a controversial

point or to defend a position on which there is a difference of opinion.

They will have a chance to judge the statements from others. Giving

logical reasons can help other see through faulty arguments that others

may make. Students will become a better critic of advertisements,

newspaper articles, political speeches, and the other persuasive

appeals in every day.

C. Basic Assumption

Vocabulary is believed to be the most influencing factor for the

development of four skills in English. However, essay writing skill contains

some aspects which are measured. They are content (the idea expressed),

organisation, vocabulary, language mastery (grammar), mechanics (spelling).

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Writing is one of many ways, which is used to express thought, ideas,

purposes, message, etc. The main purpose is communication. In essay writing

skill provide a very different challenge to that experienced in all earlier form

of study. The student require a good vocabulary mastery in order to get an

idea to construct the text well. Therefore, the student‟s vocabulary mastery

seems to have a correlation to their essay writing skills.

D. Hypothesis

Based on the literature review and assumption above, a hypothesis in

this research is formulated as there is a positive and significant correlation

between vocabulary mastery of the 5th semester students of English

Department at Muhammadiyah University of Purwokerto and their essay

writing skill.

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