Charades game: does it affect students’ learning on English vocabulary?

Article history: Received 07 June 2020 Revised 17 July 2020 Accepted 19 July 2020 Available online 31 July 2020 The purpose of this study is to determine the effect of the use of charades game on elementary school students in improving English vocabulary as a foreign language. The source of the data in this study were 5th grade students of Madrasah Ibtidaiyah Nahdlatul Ulama Tropodo Sidoarjo, while the data was the application of charades game to 5th grade students of Madrasah Ibtidaiyah Nahdlatul Ulama Tropodo before and after being given a test. Researchers use use pre-experimental quantitative design as the research method. This study uses one group pretest and posttest. The data obtained from the pretest and posttest which is analyzed by using the t-test formula. The results show that at the 5% level the t-test value is higher than t-table (tt) (4.53> 2.024). Based on the test criteria, the results of the study show that there is a significant influence on the students' vocabulary skills after using charades game. It proves that charades game can improve the foreign language vocabulary of Islamic elementary school students, especially in Madrasah Ibtidaiyah Tropodo Sidoarjo. © 2020 EnJourMe. All rights reserved.


Introduction
Vocabulary is essential because it allows us to communicate. Mastering vocabulary determines the success in English learning. When students have many vocabularies, it will be easy to learn English (August, Carlo, Dressler, & Snow, 2005). Vocabulary or thesaurus is a fundamental component of language teaching that especially in English. In speaking other language, without words people might not be able communicating (Dilek & Yürük, 2013). Thus, without a relative measure of vocabulary, everybody will get inconvenience in their perusing, composing, talking, and tuning in. Studies about the importance of using strategies in teaching vocabulary suggest that instead of asking students to study word lists, teacher have to provide teaching strategies to infer the unknown vocabulary (Çiftçi & Üster, 2009), thus they will remember those word in long-term memory (Rachmawati, 2018).
In the Teaching English for Young Learners (TEYL), the teaching of vocabulary should use the word in a relevant situation, thus they might built the connection among words (Demircioǧlu, 2010). Moreover, the study of TEYL has been increases in a recent years. Researchers employ and apply teaching strategies and media that are successfully increases young learners' comprehension ( as in Demircioǧlu, 2010;Katwibun, 2014;Febrianti, 2019). Besides, researchers also agree that to have an effective learning, it is important to engage young learners.
In Indonesia, although English is not a compulsory subject before secondary school level, English has been included in many primary school curriculum (Astutik, 2017;Zein, 2016). One of those elementary schools is Madrasah Ibtidaiyah Nahdlatul Ulama (MINU) Tropodo Sidoarjo. Hence, the students in Madrasah Ibtidaiyah Nahdlatul Ulama Tropodo should have functional abilities in English vocabulary as they can support all English subjects in the classroom and can help them to know the meaning of what they learn in English subjects. Some problems make it difficult for students to master vocabulary. First, the students cannot express English words well because they have difficulty in memorizing the meaning of words. So, it makes them feel bored in the classroom. Second, they are also lazy to open their dictionary and only ask the teacher when they get difficulties to find the meaning of words from Bahasa Indonesia to English and vice versa. Those will make the learning English process more difficult for next level. The researchers of this study also found that from pre-observation most students got low score in learning English vocabulary. The students were hard to understand the explanation from the teacher. Besides, the students commonly just got new English words from their text books given by the teacher and they tend to wait for the teacher's explanation in front of the class without any activity. Students often felt tired which made it difficult for them to master new English vocabulary during the learning process in class.
Many researchers found that the use of games really helps students learn English vocabulary in reaching the target language. This is also a challenge for teachers to apply games in teaching English vocabulary as a foreign language or a second language (Bakhsh, 2016). Games can make students happy when taking lessons in class, because they feel relaxed and happy. So that, it can hone their skills in learning the target language. Anyaegbu, Ting, & Li (2012) also states that the game can motivate student learning especially in learning new languages. In its use, a game certainly requires a technique or strategy so that it can run effectively. These strategies can vary in variety, which often requires creative ideas from the teacher.
There are many games that can be used to teach English vocabularies, one of those games is charades game (Bafadal & Humaira, 2019). Farqi (2014) states that charades game can also be called a pantomime game where students have to guess words from other friends who act without words or phrases, or with sounds resembling something. Thus, the students might easily remember the words. Acts game is a game in which terms are appearing in emulate. The thoughts are typically utilizing physical and non-verbal communication than talk verbal to conveyed the importance. Physical non-verbal communication like follow and motion will have the option to encouraged keen, Interest, and correspondence. Students will be more excitement and increasingly conceivable to attempting what they are taught in the schoolroom. Eager and happy that are caused in playing act games can drive the exercise substance and exercise circulation simultaneously.
Some articles have been influencing students' competence in English vocabulary. A research conducted by Bafadal & Humaira (2019) investigated the use of charades games in teaching vocabulary for senior high school students. The result indicated that the use of charades games has positive impact on students' vocabulary mastery. Differently, this study is applied on young learners level. Another research was conducted by Lutfah (2019) about the effect of using Adverb Charades game toward speaking of the second-year student at junior high school of SMP 20 Pekanbaru. She used charades game to teach speaking. The result indicated that there was a significant difference between using and without using charades game on students' speaking ability. However, in this study, the authors are intended to investigate the use of charades games in teaching vocabulary.
In addition, in this study, the researchers focus on Islamic elementary school students where English was considered less priority. Therefore, this study is going to investigate the use of charades game on learning English vocabulary especially at Madrasah Ibtidaiyah Nahdlatul Ulama (MINU) Tropodo Sidoarjo. Hence, the purpose of this research is to prove whether charades game has an effect on students in learning English vocabulary or not.

Method
This study used a quantitative research method to analyze data because it measures and quantifies the variables and data that were gained numerically and analyzed using statistical data. According to Sugiyono (2014), the quantitative research method as a method in light of the way of thinking of positivism used to research, in particular the sample and population. Data collection is used as the research instrument, and data analysis is statistical in instruction to test the hypothesis that has applied. Moreover, the quantitative method, as its name, is the use of a numeral in every process, starting with data collection, data analysis, and data interpretation (Sugiyono, 2014).
In this research, the researchers use quantitative analysis. The researchers used preexperimental method because they wanted to test the learning media, namely charade games on learning English vocabulary at the elementary school level. The researchers use the pre-test and post-test in the control class conducted by the researcher. In this study, the writer wanted to notice the effect of using the Charades game for the technique of teaching students vocabulary achievement. The researcher only analyzed one group in which the first step was pre-test than give treatment; finally, it deals with the post-test. Pre-test, it was the observation for the student before they got the procedure, and the post-test was the observation data after they got treatment by the researcher. This research could be a success if the result of the student's post-test were higher than the pre-test. Thus, the charades game can improve students' vocabulary is effectivethe research design for the pre-test and post-test design.
In this study, the researcher used the population of 5 th -grade students in Madrasah Ibtidaiyah Nahdlatul Ulama Tropodo and consisted of 389 students, which divided into 12 classes, and each class consisted of 33 students. Suryanto (2006) states that the sample is part of individuals in a population. A cluster sampling technique has been chosen in this research because the researcher will obverse only one class. The sample of this research was only one class which is five grade of Madrasah Ibtidaiyah Nahdlatul Ulama Tropodo, and it consists of 33 students.
T-test formulation was applied to demonstrate the hypothesis of the study. Sugiyono (2014) states that the T-test is the formulation for inspecting the hypotheses: null hypothesis (Ho) and alternative hypotheses (Ha).

Result
The pretest as the first step did by the researcher on 17 th January 2020. It was given to recognize the students' vocabulary achievement. At this stage, researchers who collaborate with the teachers teach students to practice English vocabulary about transportation. After that, the researchers corrected the work of students. Table 1 presents the score of the student pretest results. As shown in table 1, the mean score is 71.8, the highest score is 89 and the lowest score is 48. Although there are some students get the highest score, the majority of students have very low scores. That is, most students in the class did not master the learning of English vocabulary that had been taught without games.
After the students given a pretest then the researchers gave a treatment by performing charades game conducted in 19 th and 26 th January 2020. The researchers collaborate with the teacher to explain about charades game and the rules of how it carried on. All the students gave a good consideration and concerned on it. After that, the researchers explained about the vocabulary that they need to apprehend. Finally, the researchers asked them to play charades game in a group. One group consist of 6-7 students, so that formed four groups. When the students got treatment and played charades game the researchers found that the students very attracted and enthused to do charades game. Besides, they very fast to memorize and understand the English vocabulary.
The last activity is a posttest. This activity is important to do to identify the ability of students after getting treatment. The posttest was held on January 31, 2020. The researchers asked students to take the test. The results of posttest indicate changes in scores that tend to increase. they all got good grades in the posttest activities. Table 2 depicts the students' score from posttest.
In table 2 shows the mean score is 77.97, the highest score is 95 and the lowest score is 56. In detail it can be seen the comparison of each student before and after being given a game, the average student gets an increase in score. This is indicating the difference before they were given charades game as a treatment in learning English vocabulary.
From the reliability test by using product moment the pre-test score is 0.88, it means that the pre-test has very high (very reliable) in the term of validity. Then, the posttest score is 0, 91 its means that the posttest has very high (very reliable) in the term of reliability test. The calculation of reliability pre-test is 0.88 and posttest is 0.91. It can be concluded that pre-test and post-test is reliable, and both of them has very high category. Thus, this instrument could be applied in this research.  Vol. 5, No. 1, July 2020, pp. 75-83 The result from normality test also indicated that the pretest and posttest had normal distribution. Which in pretest the researchers compared the chi-square computed and chisquare The obtained data tcount and ttable with the significant level is 5%, and degree freedom is 33, t-counting is 4.53, and t-table is 2.024.it proved that the -counting = 4.53> t-table = 2.024. it can be concluded that there is a significant effect using charades games to improve vocabulary achievement in the fifth grade of Madrasah Ibtidaiyah Nahdlatul Ulama Tropodo.

Discussion
From the statistical analysis, it can be concluded that students' motivation, ability, and the score is improved. Based on the experience in the observation, the researcher had noticed that the student felt enjoy playing charades game. They were become more active and creative to do their English lesson. All the students were very excited to write and speak in English. Some previous research also show that charades game significantly improve student vocabulary achievement. The students interested in learning English vocabulary with these media. This result is in line with Sari & Chairani (2017) that apply charades game media in teaching English vocabulary to students at the elementary school. The results of their research on fourth grade students in SD Unggulan Aisyiyah showed a significant effect on student achievement between before and after using charade games on vocabulary teaching.
In addition, using charades game is an effective way to help the students in learning vocabulary. This study also supports the idea that charades game can be used as a warm-up for sharing deeper emotional issues and help to establish a comfort level through acceptance of all feeling. Charades game also helps the students to show their creativity and imagination. Proposes that this charades technique having a mixed age team also has the advantage of helping a student learn how to act out words. These techniques learn how to use the vocabulary words using measures appropriate to the words that we speak. It helps the students to define the concept and adjust the action with the spoken word (Rafinggi, 2013).

Conclusion and Suggestions
Finally it can be concluded that each student in grade 5 at the madrasah ibtidaiyah tropodo shows positive improvement in understanding and mastery vocabulary after researchers and teachers collaborate to play charades game. What is obtained from the results of this study has implications that in the implementation of learning English as a foreign language in primary schools need creative ideas that can increase student passion in learning one of them by learning while playing.
Therefore, the researchers in this study suggest for the next researchers to be able to conduct similar studies which of course with different samples and games. Besides, of course, with the latest updates which are more updated.