The background of the study in this research is the students still have difficulties in remembering how to spell a word even they looked it up in the dictionary. The teacher still uses conventional methods, and monotone, so the students are easy to get bored. To make the teaching spelling more effective and interesting, teacher needs various methods such as: spelling games to help her in the teaching learning process.
The problem of this research can be stated as follow:
1) How is the implementation of spelling games to improve students’ English written spelling at seventh grade of MTs Negeri 2 Kudus in academic year of 2009/2010?
2) How is the improvement of students’ English written spelling after being taught using spelling games at seventh grade of MTs Negeri 2 Kudus in academic year of 2009/2010?
The objectives of this study are: (1) To describe the implementation of spelling games to improve students’ English written spelling.(2)To find out the effectiveness of students’ English written spelling after being taught using spelling games.
The study was conducted at MTs Negeri 2 Kudus in the Academic Year of 2009/2010. The subject of this study was the students of VII I class. The number of the subject was forty. The design research used was classroom action research with the reason that the teachers can get interesting ways to improve students’ ability in English spelling. This research conducted preliminary and three cycles in classroom action research.
The techniques which were used to collect the data are documentation, observation, and test. In the preliminary, the teacher uses questionnaire to get the data. The teaching learning process in cycle 1 until cycle 3 in classroom action research, the teacher introduces the words that represented by spelling games, play some games and give assessment test. In the end of cycle, the teacher reviews the entire lesson from cycle 1 to cycle 3, and gives test.
In this research, the researcher analyzed the result from observation and achievement test from each cycle. In the first there are about 50% or more students did not join the class enthusiastically, and the average of the students’ achievement was 61.1. In the second cycle there are about 66.6% or many of the students joined the class enthusiastically, the average of the students’ achievement was 72. In the third cycle there are 76.6% or majority of students joined the class, the average of the students’ achievement was 83.
Result of the research shows that the students improve their spelling ability.