11/17/2010—President Game

Arousing Students’ Interest to Memorize Vocabularies by President Game

By Eneng Uswatun Hasanah

Introduction

All around the world, a lot of people are learning English even people live in a country,

where it becomes the mother tongue, are learning English. Vocabulary takes important

role in the language. No word a man knows, no word he speaks. Ideas to write should be

expressed by words. A man comprehends little if he understands little vocabularies. A

common reason among learners is to say that they can not understand a text because

they do not know certain words on it. Vocabulary is the basic for the students to involve

themselves in speaking, writing, reading, and listening activities. As Celce-Murcia and

Rosensweig say that vocabulary should be recognized as a central element in language

instruction from the beginning stages.

However, most of the students do not like and tend to be lazy learning vocabularies by

memorizing them consciously. They often learn new vocabularies in the classroom and

go home with the laziness to remember again. A teacher should have good strategy to

arouse them to remember. Madden says to develop pupils’ vocabulary learning skill, a

teacher should motivate the pupils to learn and remember. A game is fun and if learning

can be made enjoyable, the students can learn more. The purpose of this essay is to

introduce “President” Game to arouse students’ interest to memorize vocabularies. It

consists of the step or procedure to apply the game, the advantage and disadvantage or

things to be considered when applying the game.

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Basic Procedures to Apply the President Game

The game is inspired from the writer’s experience to play “President Game” with her

junior high school friends. The game was in Indonesian where every student at the

classroom has his own number. The president mentioned one number; the student with

the number should mention another in only a few seconds. The late student was the

loser.

The writer then adopted president game to teach vocabularies. It uses the principle of

drill or repeating without realizing that they are learning. About the drill, Richard and

Rodger say that foreign language learning is basically a process of mechanical habit

formation, drilling is memorizing and minimizing mistakes.

The procedures of applying president game are the followings:

1. The teacher decides the topic or context of the vocabularies, e.g animal, jobs,

vocabularies, verbs, et al.

2. The teacher discusses the punishment with the students.

3. If necessary, teacher can give some time to let the students read about the topic

or context.

4. The game starts. The president calls one name of the student

5. The called student should mention one vocabulary briefly based on the topic or

context and then call another student.

6. One name of the students can not be called twice unless all the students have had

their turns.

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7. The game is over when all vocabularies taught has been already mentioned or

many students can not mention any vocabulary again and again.

The Advantages of Using President Game

The president game is effective for some reasons. Firstly, it is simple because it does

not require any tools or media. Many games are available to teach but most of them

require media. Bingo needs pictures. Card game needs cards. If the teacher has not

much time to make preparation, the game can be a good alternative. Beside, it also can

be used whenever and wherever. It is ready to use when students look bored or tired

during lecturing in the break moment during discussion, or at the rest time after the

class.

Secondly, the system of competition arouses every student to be better than others. They

try to be the fastest. Basically, human is selfish. To the reason, they like to compete.

The competition gives time to show who they are.

The third reason is students who know better will share with the students who know

less. When the student says ‘a vocabulary’, he actually tells about the vocabulary. The

word ‘Owe” can be unfamiliar for the class. Student A who says “Owe” means telling

the new vocabularies to the rest of the students.

Furthermore, students’ pronunciation can be corrected directly by repeating every

student vocabulary briefly. Pronunciation is important aspect in teaching English.

Haycraft says when new vocabulary is being introduced and practiced, there is a good

opportunity for the general revision of structure and pronunciation.

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Lastly, the game practice students’ concentration. They should pay attention to what

their friend say and who is called by his friends.

Things to Consider when Applying President game

There are some things need to consider when applying this game in the classroom. The

things are:

1. Student should really know the meaning of the vocabularies. In order that, make

sure that the topic has already taught. Record strange vocabularies and explain

after the game is over. To ensure, when repeating, teacher can use body

language if necessary.

2. Student who has already got the turn can give no attention to the game. To

handle this problem, teacher can ask students to not only concentrate and say a

vocabulary but also write all have been mentioned as they can.

3. Teacher should make sure that all students have their own turn. No one student

dominates the game.

4. The game will be stuck when student can not mention any vocabulary in dealing

with the topic anymore. To solve, teacher may change the topic or context if the

game has been passive because students loss their vocabularies many time.

5. Teacher record topic or context has been played by writing onto a card for

classroom evaluation.

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Conclusion

The concept of the game is propose a trick to let the students remember the words

taught. The game does not need much preparation, can be used whenever teacher has

the rest time during teaching learning process or discussion. Furthermore, the game can

be also used to any level of the students and any topic of the vocabularies. In

conclusion, President game can be used as an alternative game to increase students’

memory toward new vocabularies.

References

Haycraft, John. 1978. An Introduction to English Language Teaching: The First Edition.
Great Britain: Longman.

Richards, Jack C and Theodore S. Rodgers. 1990. Approaches and Methods in

Language Teaching: A Description and Analyses. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.

Roblyer, M.D and Jack Edwards. Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching,
second edition. Ohlo: Merill an Imprint of Prentice Hall.