The Inﬂuence of Word Clap Game on Students’ Vocabulary Mastery

Marhamah

, Rahmi Eka Putri

, M. Aries Tauﬁq

, Yenni Rozimela

and Hasanudin

Department of English Education, Universitas Islam Riau, Pekanbaru, Indonesia

Faculty of Languages and Arts, Universitas Negeri Padang, Jl. Prof. Dr. Hamka,Padang, Indonesia

Keywords:

Word Clap Game, Vocabulary Mastery, Elementary Students.

Abstract:

This research aimed to discover the inﬂuence of word clap games on students’ vocabulary mastery at elemen-

tary school in Pekanbaru. This experimental research was conducted by applying pretest posttest design. The

samples of this research were 38 students from one of the elementary schools in Pekanbaru. Those samples

were splitted into two groups: an experimental group and a control group. The experimental group was treated

by applying word clap game while the control group was treated by applying a conventional strategy in which

the teacher explained the materials. The results of this research found that students who were taught by word

clap game had better vocabulary mastery than students who were taught by conventional strategy. This in-

dicates that applying word clap games greatly inﬂuences the vocabulary mastery of the elementary students.

Thus, this research concludes that word clap games has a signiﬁcant inﬂuence on the improvement of students’

vocabulary mastery.

1 INTRODUCTION

As one of a language components, vocabulary is es-

sential to be acquired by students in learning the lan-

guage, especially English. Without sufﬁcient vocabu-

lary, students will get troubles in mastering skills like

speaking, reading, listening and writing. It implies

that recognizing enough vocabulary will make the stu-

dents able not only to understand what others are say-

ing but also to create sentences in order to transfer

their messages to other people. Thus, vocabulary be-

comes the ﬁrst element the students should master in

studying English.

Vocabulary is a fundamental element in commu-

nication. Learning vocabulary is also important for

the language acquisition process. Krashen (1981) as-

serts that learning English can not be broken up from

learning its vocabulary. Moreover, it is even more cru-

cial to master vocabulary than to master the English

grammar. As stated by (Thornbury, 2006; Markova

et al., 1979), without mastering grammar, people can

express very little but without vocabulary people can-

not say anything. Therefore, it is crucial for teach-

ers to introduce vocabulary to facilitate the students

to understand English utterances and to prepare them

to learn English in the next level. Learning vocabu-

lary can help students in mastering other components.

That is why vocabulary mastery has a signiﬁcant role

in achieving the language skills.

(Thornbury, 2006; Setiawan, 2010) asserts that it

will be difﬁcult for the students to comprehend and

express their English skill if they have insufﬁcient vo-

cabulary. He adds that people can say anything with

words. It implies that vocabulary is the primary ele-

ment the students should now before coming to other

elements. Thus, it is the teachers’ responsibility to

ﬁnd and apply appropriate strategies to facilitate stu-

dents during the learning process so that it can im-

prove their vocabulary mastery. Unfortunately, stu-

dents still have problems dealing with vocabulary.

One of the reasons was the different rules between

English and Indonesian. These differences cover not

only the structure of the languages but also the pro-

nounciation and vocabularies.

Based on the preleminary observation conducted

in an elemnetary school, some problems were found

related to the students’ vocabulary mastery. It was

found that most of the students did not have sufﬁ-

cient vocabulary. As a result, it was difﬁcult for them

to understand other skills such as listening, speaking,

reading and writing. Besides, the students also cannot

identiﬁed parts of the words, like verbs, adjectives,

adverbs, and nouns. From the results of the obser-

vation explained above, it was assumed that students

needed to be taught by an appropriate strategy that

assisted them to learn vocabulary. They need an ef-

272

Marhamah, ., Putri, R., Tauﬁq, M., Rozimela, Y. and Hasanudin, .

The Inﬂuence of Word Clap Game on Students’ Vocabulary Mastery.

DOI: 10.5220/0009127802720276

In Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Social, Economy, Education and Humanity (ICoSEEH 2019) - Sustainable Development in Developing Country for Facing Industrial

Revolution 4.0, pages 272-276

ISBN: 978-989-758-464-0

fective strategy not only to memorize vocabulary but

also to understand it.

Various kinds of teaching strategies are available

to help teachers in learning process, especially learn-

ing vocabulary. One of of the strategies is by imple-

menting word clap game. It is a game-based learn-

ing which integrates a game named clap game into

the learning process. Several experts assert that word

clap game is a kind of game that can be applied as a

strategy for teaching vocabulary. Through this game,

the students not only remember the vocabulary but

they can also build their conﬁdence. Besides, word

clap game can increase students’ motivation to learn

so that they can enjoy the learning process.

This research focused on the implementation of

word clap game in improving students’ vocabulary

mastery at elementary school. The purpose of this

research was to discover the inﬂuence of word clap

game on students’ vocabulary mastery at fourth grade

of elementary school in Pekanbaru.

2 RELATED THEORIES

2.1 Vocabulary Mastery

Vocabulary mastery is deﬁned as the ability to utilize

words as a medium to communicate with others. Na-

tion in (Schmitt, 2000) says that vocabulary mastery

is the competence related to a set of words that cre-

ate a language which is utilized by a particular per-

son. Moreover, Read (2000) asserts that vocabulary

mastery means the ability to use words in conducting

communication, and students understand the sets of

words. In other words, it is the set of words likely

to be used by those students when constructing new

sentences.

(Aslanabadi and Rasouli, 2013) argue that vocab-

ulary is very crucial in order to understand any con-

cepts in learning a foreign language because the stu-

dents can understand the language if they know the

meaning of the words in that language. Furthermore,

vocabulary links the other skills: speaking, listening,

reading and writing. Vocabulary facilitates the stu-

dents to produce sentences both in spoken and writ-

ten (Susanti, 2017). However, it will be difﬁcult for

the students who have limited vocabularies to demon-

strate their ability in English well. As stated by Bur-

ton (1982), it is impossible to apply our English cor-

rectly without having a sufﬁcient vocabulary. For

this reason, students need to master vocabulary before

they communicate with other people in English.

Considering the importance of vocabulary in

learning English especially for the students, the

teacher needs to consider a suitable strategy to be ap-

plied in teaching vocabulary in the classroom. This

is because students’ vocabulary mastery will be in-

creased if the teaching process runs well and effec-

tively, and the students enjoy the learning process.

From the explanation above, it can be concluded

that the teacher must choose appropriate teachniques

which make the students able to understand the mate-

rial in learning vocabulary and enjoy their study.

There are some techniques that can be imple-

mented by the teacher in teaching vocabulary, for ex-

ample teaching by giving explanation, through pic-

tures, songs, and even games especially word games.

Since the object of this research was elementary stu-

dents, game-based learning is considered to be the

best strategy that can be applied by the teacher in

teaching vocabulary. Games bring fun situation in the

classroom, and the learning process will be more in-

teresting. In this research, the game applied in the

classroom was word clap game.

2.2 Word Clap Game

Learning through games can be an interesting class-

room activity and it usually becomes a favorable

strategy for students. (Brown, 2002; Nugroho

et al., 2012) comments that students enjoys learning

through games. They will learn better when they

work with their classmates. One of the examples of

game that can be applied in the classroom is word

clap game. Word clap game combines clap games

with words. It is a game that requires collaboration

among students. Thornburry (2002) deﬁnes word clap

game as a game played by groups of students which

works by clapping hands collaborated by other stu-

dents. In this game, the students play in groups and

say the words as soon as possible while clapping their

hand.

Before applying this game, both the teacher and

students need to understand the rules of the game.

Thornburry (2002) explains that to begin this game,

the students sit in a circle, then, following the

teacher’s command, make a four beat rhytm by clap-

ping their hands to their thighs three times. Then, they

clap both hands while mentioning a word from a topic

provided by the teacher. The winner is the one who

can mention the most words. In this game, the teacher

only needs to monitor and control the game. Dur-

ing the game, the teacher moves from one group to

another, listening and providing any assistance when

necessary as well as noticing the mistakes committed

by the students. At the end of the game, the teacher

gives feedback related to the mistakes found during

the game.

The Inﬂuence of Word Clap Game on Students’ Vocabulary Mastery

273

Word clap game brings several beneﬁts both for

the teacher and students. First, this game can be ap-

plied at any stage of teaching. It can be performed

at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of the

learning process. After that, this game is also simple

and easy to play since the teacher does not need any

preparation for this game. Then, word clap game is

also appropriate for any level of students starting from

kindergarten to high school students. It can also be

applied at any setting whether in formal or informal

situation. Just like other games, word clap game can

also stimulate students’ motivation so that this game

can encourage students to remember their vocabular-

ies. However, applying this game in a classroom, es-

pecially at elementary school, can be crowded and

even causes chaos.

Therefore, a good preparation is absolutely re-

quired if the teacher wants to apply this game in the

classroom. Every step must be carried out sequen-

tially. The teacher needs to think carefully about the

topics and predicts any possible errors that could hap-

pen during the game.

In addition, Thornburry (2002) mentions the steps

of the game. First, before starting the game, the

teacher prepares the topics. In the classroom, the

teacher explains the rules of the game. After that, the

students make some groups and sit in a circle based on

their group. To begin the game, the students follow

the teacher’s instruction making a four-beat rhythm

by clapping their hands on their thighs three times.

Then, they clap their hand and mention a word based

on the topic given by the teacher. The students who

either repeat the words already mentioned or break

the rhythm or say nothing are disqualiﬁed. The game

ends when the there is only one student left as the

winner.

3 RESEARCH METHOD

This research was an experimental research using

pretest-posttest design. It was conducted at grade 4

in one of the elementary schools in Pekanbaru. 38

students were chosen as the samples of this research.

Those samples were splitted into two groups: an ex-

perimental group and a control group. The experi-

mental group was treated by applying word clap game

while the control group was treated by applying a con-

ventional strategy. The instruments of this research

were vocabulary tests which were distributed to the

students before the treatment (pre-test) and after the

treatment (post- test). After analyzing the statistical

requirement, the data were analyzed by using t test

formula in order to test the hypotheses.

The hypotheses of this research are:

: There was no signiﬁcant inﬂuence of apply-

ing word clap game on the students’ vocabulary mas-

tery.

: There was a signiﬁcant inﬂuence of applying

word clap game on students’ vocabulary mastery.

4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

After analyzing the data, the result of the pre-test and

post-test from both classes can be seen in the follow-

ing ﬁgure.

Figure 1: The Results of Students’ Vocabulary Mastery in

Experiment Class and Control Class.

Figure 1 demonstrates that after conducting the

pre-test, the average score of the students in the ex-

perimental class was 47.9 while the average score in

the control class was 44.9. After having the treatment,

the average score of the students in experimental class

increased signiﬁcantly to become 69.5 while the score

in the control class was 50.4. Based on this result,

it can be seen that there was an improvement in the

students’ score between pre-test and post-test. How-

ever, the improvement in the experiment class was

more signiﬁcant than in the control class. It implies

that the students who were treated by word clap game

had better vocabulary mastery than students who were

treated by conventional strategy. Based on the expla-

nation above, it can be summarized that there was a

signiﬁcant inﬂuence of word clap game on students’

vocabulary mastery.

4.1 Hypotheses Testing

After analyzing the result score of pre-test and post-

test both in experimental class and control class, the

researchers compared the result score of post-test in

each class by using independent sample test in or-

der to know the signiﬁcant effect of word clap game

ICoSEEH 2019 - The Second International Conference on Social, Economy, Education, and Humanity

274

on students’ vocabulary mastery. The researchers uti-

lized SPSS Version 2.2 to analyze the data. The out-

put of data analysis can be seen in the tables below.

Table 1: The Statistics Result of Paired Samples

Mean N

Std.

Dev

Std.

Error Mean

Pair 1

pretest

experimental class

47.90 20 2.864 .640

posttest

experimental class

69.50 20 3.487 .780

pretest control

class

44.90 20 3.076 .688

Pair 2

postest control

class

50.40 20 2.644 .591

Table 2: Paired Samples Test

Paired Differences

t df

Sig

(2-tailed)

Mean

Std.

Deviation

Std.

Error

Mean

95%

Convidence

Interval of the

Difference

Lower Upper

Pair 1

Pretest

experimental

class - posttest

experimental

class

-21.600 4.083 .913 -19.689 -19.689 -23.657 19 .000

Pair 2

Pretest

control class -

postest

control class

-5.500 2.819 .630 -6.189 -4.181 -8.725 19 .000

Table 2 demonstrates the output of paired sample t

- test. Paired sample t-test was used to know whether

there was a signiﬁcant effect between two group sam-

ples which were not correlated. From the calculation

above, it can be seen that the value of t

calculated

was

23.657 while the value of t

table

was 2.023. It means

that t

calculated

is higher than t

table

. Furthermore, the ta-

ble shows that the signiﬁcance value was 0.000, and it

was lower than the value of α Signiﬁcance 5% (0.05).

Thus, alternative hyphothesis was accepted and null

hypothesis was rejected. It can be concluded that

word clap game gave signiﬁcant inﬂuence on the stu-

dents’ vocabulary mastery.

The main concern of this study was to know the

inﬂuence of word clap game on students’ vocabulary

mastery at grade four of elementary school. Based

on the explanation mentioned above and the results

of data analysis, it can be stated that word clap game

is very appropriate in teaching vocabulary. Through

this game, the students enjoy the learning process and

word clap game increases students’ interests in learn-

ing vocabulary. In this study, word clap game is more

effective that the conventional technique used by the

teacher. It motivates the students to learn vocabulary

and bring them to the topic. Besides, it also makes

the students feel fresher. At last, the application of

word clap game creates competition and remind the

students about the topic being taught by the teacher.

It is in accordance with the result of the research

conducted by Susanti (2017). In her research she

found that the elementary students were happy and

motivated when they were taught by using word clap

game. Moreover, word clap makes students enjoy the

learning process. In addition, this game also trains

the students to work collaboratively in groups. The

result of this research is also supported by the result

of the research from (Agustin, 2016) and (Mariyana,

2016; Furqon, 2013). Both of them agree that word

clap game is effective in teaching vocabulary since it

is signiﬁcantly improve students’ vocabulary mastery.

5 CONCLUSIONS

Based the ﬁndings of this research, it can be con-

cluded that word clap game is effective to improve

students’ vocabulary mastery especially at elementary

schools. The ﬁndings of this research reveal better re-

sults for students who are taught by word clap game

than the convetional strategy. Thus, it is suggested

for elemntary school teachers to apply this strategy

in teaching vocabulary. However, this research also

has a limitation. First, it only analyzed the inﬂuence

of word clap games on students’ vocabulary mastery

at elementary school. In the future, it is suggested

for the next researchers to add any variables, such as

learning motivation and students’ perception towards

the game, in order to obtain more comprehensive re-

sults about this topic.

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