The Effectiveness of Personal Vocabulary Note (PVN) Technique through Al-Qur’an in Improving Students’ English Vocabulary

The students require a good learning technique to acquire, extend and develop English vocabulary. This research aims at investigating the effects of personal vocabulary note (PVN) technique through Al-Qur’an in improving students’ English vocabulary mastery. This study was an experimental model consisting of two groups: experimental and control group. The study was conducted at Islamic Boarding School of BabulKhaer Kalumeme Bulukumba, South-Sulawesi. Samples of the study were 30 students, 15 students were experimental group and 15 students were control group. The data were collected with pre-test, treatment and post-test. Written vocabulary test was administered to both groups of experimental and control group. Data were analyzed and interpreted by means of SPSS-25 program. The results of the research indicated that personal vocabulary note technique through Al-Qur’an gives significant effect on students’ vocabulary improvement. The result of the students’ vocabulary score improvement from pre-test to post-test demonstrated significant differences. The research found that sig. (2-tailed) is 0.000 lower than 0.05. Comparison of the students’ improvement between the two groups was 0.000 which meant that the improvement was significant.


INTRODUCTION
English in Indonesia is learnt as a foreign language which is taught from elementary school to university level. It has a great role in communicating and interacting with other people in this world.
English cannot be separated from speaking, writing, listening, reading; as well as grammar and vocabulary.
Vocabulary is being as a fundamental aspect in learning new languages including English; because without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed. The problem is many students find challenges when they learn English vocabulary and acquire new words.
Based on the preliminary research, the students in Islamic boarding school of Babul Khaer Kalumeme Bulukumba find some problems and challenges in learning and acquiring new vocabulary; such as they find it difficult to recall some vocabularies that they have memorized and learnt, they find it difficult to motivate their selves to learn new vocabulary, and they find it difficult to use the words in sentence.
Those problems are caused by rarely applying the vocabulary in daily life activities and simply memorizing the word without a meaningful process (memorizing technique), while "meaningful learning is better than rote learning" (Ausubel, 1968in Brown, 2000in Ali, 2017. It means that learning process should be meaningful which designed with some activities to motivate and reinforce the students' retention about what they learn including vocabulary. Based on the problems above, the researcher is interested to propose one technique in learning vocabulary to help the students improve their vocabulary; it is Personal Vocabulary Notes (PVN) Technique. It is a good and interesting technique in learning English Vocabulary. Harmer (1993) described that "Personal Vocabulary Notes are elements which present in a language classroom to help students learn effectively and not make students boring and scare". PVN also encourages the students to learn vocabulary independently by selecting and choosing words based on what word they want learn. In PVN Technique, the students usually take or note the words from the certain texts such as from text book, magazine, newspaper, articles, and other texts.
In this case, the researcher used Al-Qur'an as source of words because the students in Islamic Boarding School always read it everyday at school and dormitory (habitual activity) and it is very interesting for students because of containing religious side and Arabic language. Al-Qur'an is not only a holy book for Muslim and source for learning about Islam Religion but also many things can be learnt from its text like vocabulary, grammar and structure. In learning process, the text of Al-Qur'an is translated into English or Indonesian and followed by some attracting activities. The translation of Al-Qur'an text can be simply found and seen by the students from Google searching, even can be simply downloaded from Google Play Store and saved as an offline application. The title of this research is "The Effectiveness of Personal Vocabulary Notes (PVN) Technique through Al-Qur'an in Improving Students' English Vocabulary Mastery" which is designed in a Quasi Experimental Research using statistical approach.

Design of the study
This study was a quasi experimental design by engaging two different and separated groups; they are experimental and control group (Gay et al., 2006).
The experimental group is treated using Personal Vocabulary Note Technique through Al-Qur'an, and the control group is treated using conventional Technique (Brown, 1995 Gay et al., 2006) Both groups received pretest and posttest; they were given a pretest before the treatment and posttest after the treatment. The treatment in experimental group is Personal Vocabulary Note (PVN) Technique through Al-Qur'an as independent variable, and the students' vocabulary improvement as dependent variable (Mertens and McLaughlin, 2004).

Location, population, and sample of the study
The study was conducted in Islamic Boarding

Data collection
In collecting data, the researcher used a written vocabulary test instrument that designed into multiple choice form which divided in two steps, namely pretest and posttest (Hughes, 2003) and (Nation, 1990). The both groups were given a pretest which consisted of 100 items to know the students' prior knowledge of vocabulary, while a posttest was given to obtain the students' vocabulary improvement. After doing the pretest, the experimental group were treated by Personal Vocabulary Note (PVN) Technique through Al-Qur'an which consisted of several meetings; the PVN through Al-Qur'an contained some steps namely selecting "surah" from Al-Qur'an, and then selecting "ayat", and then selecting words, and then translating the words from Arabic to Indonesian and English, and then noting and listing the words, and the last activity is extending the words knowledge; while the control group was treated by using a conventional strategy using certain reading texts. After treating process, the both groups were given a posttest which consisted of 100 items.

Data analysis
In this study, the researcher used the gained scores (Depdiknas, 2006). After calculating the data, the students' progress were classified into seven categories such as excellent, very good, good, fairly good, fair, poor, and very poor. While the percentage of students' score, the mean difference between control and experimental group, the standard deviation of the data, and the significant difference between students' vocabulary improvement on both groups (student t-test) were calculated and computed by using SPSS-25 program.

RESULT OF THE RESEARCH
The rate percentage of the students' pretest score in experimental and control group.

DISCUSSION
The description from the data collected through pre-test and post-test indicated that the students' performance of the experimental group improved significantly. It means that Personal Vocabulary Note through Al-Qur'an has a significant effect on students' vocabulary learning in acquring new words and the hyphothesis is accepted. It can be proven by the mean score rate result of the students' pretest and post-test of both experimental and control group.
The result of this research supports the previous theory mentioned by Kurzweil (2002) that "Personal Vocabulary Notes (PVN) is a way of developing students' vocabulary in a personalized way while encouraging them to become autonomous learners".
It is caused by the application of PVN in the classroom can motivate the students in "creating the need" and "establishing a routine". And also it can encourage independent vocabulary development and support the active learning.