1.4.

1 Young Learners

Young learners refer to students with the age span between 6 to 12 years

young. While English young learners refer to The students of EYL who are learning

English at the age of 6 to 12 years (Yterbeg 1990). In other words, young learners are

the students of the elementary school from the age 6-12 years old. Moreover, Yterbeg

(1990) subdivides young learners into two groups; they are younger group (6-8 year

old) and older group (9-12 year old). This research, therefore, focus on students of

primary schools of second division at the age 9 – 12 years old.

1.4.2 Competency

Competence is a set of knowledge, deed, and skill that teachers must have in

order to accomplish learning and education goal, and competence can be acquired in

education, training, self-learning by utilizing learning resource (Slavin, 1984).

Competence is also referred as a description to people capability and qualification

whether it is in qualitative or in quantitative (Guerriero, 2005). Additionally, Lehmen

(2007) defines competence as cognitively controlled abilities or skills in some

particular domain. In other words, competence is set of abilities, qualification or skill

that one possesses through formal or non-formal education. In this case, those

definitions are reckoned as a set of abilities or qualification that teachers acquired

through formal education since teachers under investigation are those who graduated

from university or other institutions.

1.4.3 Teachers Content Knowledge (Teachers’ Language Competency)

Teachers Content Knowledge refers to the content knowledge of a specific

subject in this case English Language. in other words, teachers content knowledge
 coincide with the terms “Language Competency” which is a defined level of skill in

reading, writing, speaking and listening in English (Dougles, 2017). However, Troike

(2006) divide the term “language competence into knowledge of language (linguistic

competence) and linguistic performance (actual production) of learners at various

stages of acquisition. In this research the term “English Language Competency refers

to ability or knowledge of English language which includes the ability to create

(speaking and writing) and understand sentences (listening and reading).

1.4.5 Teachers’ General Pedagogical Knowledge

This term refers to principles and strategies of classroom management and

organization that are cross-curricular (Blömeke and Delaney 2012).

1.4.5 Pedagogical Content Knowledge

This term refers to the knowledge which integrates the content knowledge of a

specific subject and the pedagogical knowledge for teaching that particular subject).

In other words, pedagogical knowledge encompasses two fields i.e. the knowledge of

content which basically refers to English competency that are Speaking, Writing,

Reading and Listening and the knowledge of pedagogy which refers to a set of

principles need to consider in teaching encompassing strategies of classroom

management etc.

Chapter 2

2.1.5 Pedagogy of Teaching English vocabulary

Teaching English vocabulary is different from teaching any other English

competencies such as speaking or listening. Because as matter of fact, vocabulary is

fundamental aspect of language upon which any phrases or sentences are built.

Vocabulary development is an important part of language development because

language emerges first as words (Thornbury, 2002). With this importance, therefore,

teaching vocabulary is playing vital role in language teaching and requires proper

language pedagogies.
Linse (2005) proposes pedagogical knowledge of teaching English vocabulary

which emphasizes two fundamental aspects: principles of teaching vocabulary and

classroom techniques and strategies.

2.1.5 Principles for teaching vocabulary

Linse (2005) suggest seven principles for teaching English vocabulary which cover

2.1.5.1 Emphasize both direct and indirect teaching

This principle emphasizes the idea of making meaning of the words either

directly or indirectly. Direct teaching refers to teaching the words and their meaning at

once while indirect way refers to helping children learn appropriate strategies so they

can predict the meaning of the words on their own. The second way is used when

students happen to deal with morphological derivation such as bi, uni, un etc.

2.1.5.2 Teach vocabulary words before a new activity

This principle suggests that before jumping into any kinds of activities,

teachers should provide students with related vocabularies to target activities.

Through this way, students benefit in two ways: first, students are able to comprehend

the activity and second, by teaching students vocabulary in advance it is more likely

that students will acquire the target vocabularies.

2.1.5.3 Teach how to use context clues appropriately

The students need to be taught how to use context clues. This principle is used

when students encounter unfamiliar words. If students happen to read a series of

dialogues, they may possibly encounter unfamiliar words, however they may guess

the meaning of the words by understanding what is being discussed within the

dialogues. However, teachers should provide a very basic topic of dialogues in order

students easily figure out the meaning of unfamiliar words.

2.1.5.4 Present multiple exposure to new vocabulary items

As teacher, you should repeat vocabulary items that you taught last time to

present meeting. Teacher should not expect that vocabulary items that have been

taught last time will be remembered by students. Teachers should reappear them many

times in different situation for the next several weeks of instruction. Children often

benefit if teachers give input through multi-sensory way. For example, if you are

teaching children about rooms in a house, teachers may use picture or draw picture of

house.
2.1.5.5 Give opportunities for deep processing of vocabulary items
Deep processing means working with information at a high cognitive personal

level. This process makes it more likely that information will be remembered. Part of

deep processing is having students establish connection between new words and their

prior knowledge
2.1.5.6 Teach Students to use dictionaries
Young learners can benefit from using dictionaries. Because picture dictionary

where words are grouped into different categories triggers students’ multi-sensory as

well as increase the ability of context clues. In brief, by using dictionary (picture

dictionary) students are benefitted to increase their vocabularies and context clues.

However, teachers must be alert of some tricky meaning of polysemy.

2.1.5.7 Have students keep vocabulary notebook
Students of young age can create their own picture dictionary as they are keen

to draw picture. By allowing students to create their own dictionary, it will help them

to memorize the words at ease. This way will help students have more control over

the learning.
 2.1.6 Classroom techniques and activities for teaching English

vocabulary
Many different approaches and activities can be used to help studetns develop

their vocabularies. It is important that teahers include vocabulary items that are part of

curriculum (Linse, 2005) as well as provide learners with opportunities to work with

them the find meaningfully. Any approaches of teaching vocabulary is helpful for

young learners depolement. However approaches of vocabulary teaching should cover

heuristics that help them develop their vocabulary mastery such as

2.1.6.1 Connecting vocabulary to young learners’ lives through

personalization
In teaching vocabulary to young learners, teachers should relate the words to

students’ own lives. By doing so, it will help students to remember the words and will

hopefully help them to use the words in their own speech and writing. In doing it,

teachers may give questions in order to prompt vocabulary development by carefully

phrased the questions. Linse (2005) proposes seven activities that teachers may

implement in teaching vocabulary

a. Word for the day: select a specific word that is going to be the focus on

each day. If it happens to be jungle theme, they could learn different

species each day or teachers can ask students to bring a new words relating

to jungle’s life.
b. Categories: have each learner create a set of picture cards with

different vocabulary items on them. Then, have them put one vocabulary

item on each card. For example if today’s them is about water ask students

to arrange the words related to specific theme. As seen in table 1

Table 1 categories

Related to Water Related to jungle

Harbor Animals
Ocean Trees
Fish Lion
Aqua Nail
c. Scavenger hunt: give children course book that is appropriate for their

age and language level. In teaching, teacher provide a word in the book

such as “orange” then let students determine which unit the word to be

found in. by doing this, it will help learners classify words according to

different categories. Note that the words should be listed on several

different pages.
d. What’s missing?: teachers place 12 – 20 pictures or word cards on the

table. Have students look at the cards for a minute. Then have them close

their eyes and remove one card then ask the group or individual to tell

which cards was removed. By doing this, students are thrilled to activite

higher-order thinking skill.

e. Mystery words: children may be given different mystery words and

asked to come up with their own sentences for the classmate to guess. For

example “I am wearing…… on my head” the other children my come with

variety of responses”. This activity will lead to interesting and challenging

discussion and discoveries.

f. Concentration: this term refers to game play by using cards in which

one side of card is a picture of word while on the other side is definition or

example sentence of picture. By doing this children may concentrate and

are able to use words in context rich sentence.

g. Vocabulary basket: another ways to teach vocabulary to young learners

is through vocabulary basket activity. It simply uses card picture or

something similar depending on age of the learners. Principally, teacher

gives each learner a word card and every child should sit in a chair and

hold the card. Teachers are in the middle of of the circle holding a card.

Teacher then calls card such as apple and orange. The two children with

orange and the apple on them race to change their seats.

 What can be inferred from activities provided by Linse (2005) is that teaching

vocabulary to young learners should be creative and challenging. By understanding the nature

of young learners, teachers, therefore, need to adapt their teaching principles and classroom

activities based on the age of learners.

2.1.3 Content Knowledge

Content knowledge is also called practical or practice-based knowledge (e.g. situated

knowledge), it is not meant to refer to guidelines or prescriptions for practice. Essentially,

this knowledge includes the grammatical aspects of language such as phonetics and

phonology, syntax, semantics, morphology. However, since this study only focuses on

vocabulary thus, the content knowledge refers to knowledge of vocabulary. Knowledge of

vocabulary covers knowledge of parts of speech which may include whether the word is

noun, verb, adjective adverb or interjection etc. this knowledge may also cover more specific

categories such whether the words belong to abstract noun or concrete noun or whether they

are action verb or linking verb or whether they are predicative adjective or attribute adjective

etc.

In rather more complex one, understanding a given word covers linguistic unit such as

word’s form (morphology), meaning (semantics), context of use (pragmatics), how it goes in

a given sentence (syntax), how it pronounces (phonology). Morphology is about how words

are formed, word classes and word coinage. Phonetics is related to the sounds of language,

whereas phonology is about the sound patterns of language. Syntax is about the sentence

patterns of the language, while semantics explains what the meanings of those words are.

Additionally, There are also the social aspects of language such as dialects, pragmatics and

register (Troike, 2006).

 In brief, vocabulary content knowledge encompasses linguistics competences.

Understanding vocabulary simply means an understanding which inlcudes all linguistic

aspect that the word is bound. For example, the competence of understanding the word

“triangle” will include understanding of the fact that the word is composed of two morpheme

tri and angle and understanding the meaning of it which is a flat shape with three straight

sides and three angles (Hornby, 1995). It also includes how it is pronounced [traiæŋgl] along

with how it goes in a given sentence such as “a triangle of blue shape”

2.1.4 Pedagogical Content Knowledge

This term refers to mastery of both subject matter and pedagogy and

know how to combine them appropriately. This idea is based on the work of Lee

Shulman who formally conceptualized the notion of pedagogical content

knowledge (Segall, 2004), implying that teachers must have knowledge on both

content (subject matter) and pedagogical knowledge (principles of teaching).