The Use of English Short Story for Children to Enrich Students' Vocabulary Mastery

Short story is a fictional literary work that tells a brief story about the problems, from the beginning to the end, that certain character faces. Short stories can be read in half an hour or an hour at a time, according to Edgar Allan Poe (1864), as quoted in Das (2018). Vocabulary is one of the most crucial aspects in the language learning process, including English. Vocabulary is defined as a collection of words that a person has or as a part of a particular language. The purpose of this study was to determine the students’ vocabulary mastery using a quantitative design. So, it can be concluded that this study applies a quantitative approach, using a preexperimental design in a single study group with a pre-test and post-test design in one group and no comparison or control group. Tests were used to collect data consisting of 50 questions which are divided into 30 multiple choice questions and 20 matching questions. Moreover, the vocabulary test consisted of pre-test and post-test. The pre-test was given to determine the students’ vocabulary skills before being presented with the media or given treatment while the post-test was given to determine the increase in students’ vocabulary after being given treatment. This research was conducted at SMPN 4 Satap Sampolawa in the eighth grade which consisted of 22 students. The data were analysed descriptively and revealed that the average value of students’ vocabulary was around 43,91 for the pre-test and 88.00 for the post-test. The post-test was higher than the pre-test value after the treatment which indicated a significant increase. From the result, the value of t-table was greater than the value of t-test (52.026> 2,073); thus, this indicated an increase in students’ vocabulary mastery after receiving the treatment of using short stories. In conclusion, the results showed that the use of short stories could increase students’ vocabulary and create a fun learning in class.