The background of this research is based on the phenomenon that learning vocabulary is a link of reading, writing, speaking, and listening as one of the language items that is students’ difficulties to learn memorizing.
This research is aimed to find the answer to the following research questions.
1. How is students’ vocabulary achievement after being taught with Direct Method at SD Patukangan 2 Kendal?
2. How is students’ vocabulary achievement after being taught with non Direct Method at SD Patukangan 2 Kendal?
The study was to find out whether or not Direct Method technique is more effective to improve the students’ achievement in vocabulary test than non Direct Method.
This study employed the true experimental design where students of SD Patukangan 2 Kendal were selected as the research setting. The number of the subjects in this study was 80 students of third grade; two classes were selected as the subject of research by cluster sampling. One class was assigned as the experimental group, in this case was class 3A and the other that was class 3B, as the control group. The methods of data elicitation used here were test and observation. The data were obtained by employing the relevant pre test, post test, and observation.
In this study the obtained data were analyzed. The test of significance of the difference between two groups was measured by employing t-test computation. The research result shown that the significance was seen at 0.05 levels of significance as the criterion for the rejection of null hypothesis. By the 80 students, the critical value for t at the 0.05 level of significance was 2.968. Thus, the calculated t score shown that the difference between two groups was greater than the critical score found in the table 0.05 levels’ of significance. It means that Ho is rejected.
The observation form was administered to know the teacher’s ability during the experimental process. Then, the result of the observation was calculated and got 95.83 % teacher’s ability in teaching concrete nouns using Direct Method.
The main finding of the study were; the experimental and control group were equivalent at the beginning of the experiment and the teaching and learning of vocabulary concrete noun through Direct Method played positive role in improving the students academic achievement.