THE EIGHTH GRADE STUDENTS' VOCABULARY MASTERY AND WRITING DESCRIPTIVE TEXT ABILITY

ABSTRACT


Introduction
English has become an important language in the age of globalization.It is an international language that is widely spoken in many nations as a native language, second language, or foreign language.It is regarded as the first international language used to communicate among individuals from various countries.It is also found in many novels and other written materials.Furthermore, English covers four skills to master: speaking, reading, listening, and writing.Vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation are also key components of English.These elements are crucial in supporting the language skills used.
Vocabulary mastery is strongly related to language learning with limited word mastery.Everyone has comprehension limitations in terms of hearing, reading, speaking, and writing.Language is nothing if it is not understood.For language learners, vocabulary is extremely important (Taslim et al. 2019& Qian & Lin, 2019).Considering the definition, vocabulary is crucial in understanding language, particularly writing.Writing is one of four Mastering the vocabulary is significantly related to language learning with limited word mastery.Everyone has limitations in hearing, reading, speaking, and writing.The purposes of this research were to find out the correlation between students' vocabulary mastery and writing descriptive text and the contribution of vocabulary mastery on writing ability.The population of the study was all of the 8th grade students in SMP Negeri 6 Lempuing.In choosing the sample, random sampling was used that involved 134 students.The data were collected by using vocabulary mastery and writing descriptive text ability tests.The data were analyzed by using Pearson Product Moment to investigate the correlation between both variables and regression analysis.The results showed that the coefficient of R-value was 0.557.The category of correlation between vocabulary mastery and writing ability showed a moderate correlation.It was found that there was significant correlation between students' vocabulary mastery and writing descriptive text ability of the eighthgrade students in SMP Negeri 6 Lempuing.There was also contribution of vocabulary mastery to writing descriptive text ability of the eighthgrade students as much 31%.Therefore, the null hypothesis (Ho) was rejected and the alternative hypothesis (Ha) was accepted.In other words, having a rich vocabulary mastery can make students easier for students to write especially for writing descriptive text.abilities that language learners must master.Writing, according to Yusuf et al. (2019) and Jayanti (2019) were the practice of communicating ideas through the use of letters, words, phrases, and clauses from a series of interconnected sentences.Furthermore, Smith (2020) writing is a talent that refers to the use of techniques (such as preparing, reviewing, and editing texts) to achieve diverse goals, such as producing reports or communicating one's thoughts with others.While Cargill and O'Connor (2021) and Emig (2020), agrees that writing can be described as learners using written language throughout or sharing thoughts with others, particularly in the construction of a single paragraph.Writing is frequently undervalued as a skill.However, the data reveal that teaching writing is a difficult endeavor because children frequently struggle to express themselves on a piece of paper or on a computer screen.
One of the challenges of writing is a lack of word competence.One key part of language learning is vocabulary.It is difficult to acquire a language without mastering vocabulary, according to Nurchurifiani et al. (2021).Students who desire to learn a language will first master the vocabulary.One of the difficulties that English learners experience is a lack of vocabulary.Students struggle to communicate their ideas or thoughts to others due to a lack of language.Writing is a means of communication in which ideas are expressed and poured into writing (Spivey, 2023).As a result, possessing a large vocabulary can aid pupils' learning, particularly their writing skills.
Certain research has demonstrated that vocabulary knowledge has certain consequences and a relationship with writing abilities.Putri, N. (2021) Suryadi et al. (2022) conducted the second research.According to his research findings, there was a significant association between vocabulary knowledge and students' writing skills in narrative text.This suggests that learners' writing skill was influenced by their vocabulary competence.Barbosa and Silva, (2020) conducted the most recent study.According to his studies, there is a considerable association between vocabulary and writing.From the preceding sentence, it can be stated that in order to write properly, students require a large vocabulary in order to express their ideas through writing.
The problems of this research were formulated as follows: 1) Was there any significant correlation between students' vocabulary mastery and writing descriptive text ability of the eight grade students in SMP Negeri 6 Lempuing?2) How much did students' vocabulary mastery contribute to writing descriptive text ability of the eight grade students in SMP Negeri 6 Lempuing?
Vocabulary is an essential component of the English teaching process, and it is one of the linguistic components that must be learnt and taught.It is a tool for thinking, expressing ideas and emotions, and learning about the world.Vocabulary is a basic information utilized by pupils to communicate and satisfy knowledge and discussion with one another.It is possible to say that vocabulary is the most significant aspect of learning a language.Students with a big vocabulary may find it easier to read, write, listen to, and speak foreign languages.

The Importance of Vocabulary Mastery
The ability to understand a language throughout the process of learning a foreign language is highly dependent on one's vocabulary knowledge, in addition to understanding of the language itself.Vocabulary is one of the language aspects that aids in language acquisition competence.According to Vargas Aucapiña and Ganchozo Olivo (2018) the value of vocabulary appears extremely evident in oral and written communication for most people, because having a large vocabulary might make it easier for someone to communicate.Furthermore, according to Qian and Lin (2019) vocabulary is a fundamental component of language proficiency that serves as the foundation for student performance in other abilities such as speaking, reading, listening, and writing.
Language abilities such as listening, speaking, reading, and writing rely heavily on vocabulary proficiency.Vocabulary is vital in linguistic skill, according to Alharthi (2020) learners employ vocabulary mastery in listening skill to understand what others are saying.Vocabulary helps readers understand a statement or material more easily.In terms of speaking ability, vocabulary makes it easier for students to communicate their thoughts orally.It assists them in expanding their ideas depending on the desired topic phrase when writing.

Concept of Writing
According to Hyland (2019) writing encourages pupils to focus on using appropriate language.Writing is an English productive ability that students must master in order to learn English for academic reasons.Brown and Green (2019) define writing as a thought process because it is the process of putting ideas on paper in order to convert thoughts into words and give them a coherent structure and organization.Furthermore, according to Sa'adah (2020) writing is a talent that refers to the use of techniques (such as preparing, assessing, and editing texts) to achieve diverse goals, such as creating reports or expressing viewpoints with others.
Meanwhile, writing is a powerful tool for communicating and expressing one's thoughts, feelings, ideas, and opinions to others.It is the ability to explain ideas, thoughts, and feelings to others through written symbols in such a way that other people or readers grasp the ideas expressed.As a result, writing can be defined as the process of putting ideas in written form in order to convert thoughts into words and give them a clear structure and organization (Harris, 2023& Emig, 2020).

Concept of Descriptive Text
In general, a description is a writing that depicts people, animals, objects, or other physical objects, as well as tangible objects that can be touched.Jayanti (2019) says that "descriptive text is a text that describes people, places, and objects in clear detail to help readers visualize an object being described".Meanwhile, Toba and Noor (2019) suggest that a reader can mentally visualize items, places, or people.The goal of descriptive writing is to give readers detailed information about something, such as an animal, person, item, or place, such that readers or listeners may grasp what is being described and can visualize what is written or described even if they have never seen it before.
The structures of descriptive text are generic.Sipayung et al. ( 2021) defines the generic structure of descriptive text as two parts: (1) Identification is a paragraph that contains a brief description of an object, person, animal, or location before discussing the characteristics of the object or thing in the following paragraph.Then comes (2) description, which is to explain something in full and completely, including color, shape, qualities, and so on from the prior explanation.

The research hypotheses of this study were formulated as follows:
Ho: There was no significant correlation between students' vocabulary mastery and writing descriptive text ability of the eight grade students in SMP Negeri 6 Lempuing.Ha: There was any significant correlation between students' vocabulary mastery and writing descriptive text ability of the eight grade students in SMP Negeri 6 Lempuing.

Method
This is a quantitative inquiry that focuses on correlation design.A correlation is a statistical test used to determine and assess the link between two or more variables or a set of scores, according to Plano Clark (2017) the goal of correlation research is to identify how much variation there is in one attribute or another.The research's population consisted of eighth-grade students from SMP Negeri 6 Lempuing during the academic year 2022/2023.There was a total of 350 students in the class.The writers utilized cluster sampling to accomplish research aims by focusing on specific traits in a population that have a dominant relationship.Based on instructor recommendations, the writers chose four classes (VIII.1,VIII.2,VIII.3, and VIII.4) for the sample since the leaners in those courses had low vocabulary mastery.A test is a means of testing a person's competence or knowledge in a certain subject when collecting data (Brown & Green, 2019).The writers employed two types of tests: vocabulary mastery and descriptive text composition.
Descriptive statistics are used to examine data by describing or explaining the obtained data (Mishra et al. 2019).Following the collection of data, the writers employed a description of the eighth-grade students' vocabulary mastery and writing abilities at SMP Negeri 6 Lempuing Kolmogorov Smirnov was the normality test applied.If the probability is larger than 0.05, the data is considered normal.To determine whether or not there is a significant positive correlation between one variable and another.This study's data were analyzed using Person's Product Moment Correlation in the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS 23).The data generated from two variables that would be revealed in terms of quantitative scores to see the correlation coefficient of variable X (Students' Vocabulary Mastery) and variable Y (Writing Ability) was employed by the writers.The product value table "r" moment is an index used to determine whether or not the correlation between two variables is significant.
After the writers found the correlation between students' vocabulary mastery and writing ability, the writers used regression analysis to find out how much did vocabulary mastery contribute writing ability of the eight grades of SMP Negeri 6 Lempuing.

Results
Result done by using SPSS 23, divided into normality test, descriptive statistic, correlation analysis and regression analysis.

Normality test
Normality test was administered to examine whether the data of habit in vocabulary mastery and writing descriptive text ability test were normally distributed.Kolmogorov-Smirnov was used to test the obtained normality.If the probability is higher than 0.05, it means that the data. is normal.The result of normality test is described in Table 1.Based on the normality test with Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, the value of asymp significant vocabulary mastery was 0.070 and writing descriptive text ability was 0.263 then it was normal because > 0.05, the value asymp.Based on the table above, the results of both tests were normal.

Descriptive Statistic
Based on the result of vocabulary mastery test, the total respondent was 134 students, the mean score was 53.62, minimum score was 10, maximum score was 100, and the standard deviation was 21.428.The summary of descriptive analysis result presented in table 2. Meanwhile, in the result of writing descriptive text ability test, it was found out that the total respondent was 134 students, the mean score was 54.19, minimum score was 25, maximum score was 93, and the standard deviation was 18.385.See the table 3.

The Correlation Analysis
To know the level of correlation between vocabulary mastery and writing descriptive text ability in this study, the writers used Pearson Product Moment.Table 4 presented the result of correlation analysis.From table 16, it was found that correlation coefficient between students' vocabulary mastery and writing descriptive text ability R-value 0.557 at the significant(2-tailed) 0.000.It means that students' vocabulary mastery and writing descriptive text ability was significant correlated since significant(2-tailed) (0.000) was lower than 0.05.Both variables were correlated.Furthermore, the Pearson Correlation was 0.557.It indicated that the correlation between students' vocabulary mastery and writing descriptive text ability was in moderate level.
The writers used regression analysis to know how much the students' vocabulary mastery contributed to writing descriptive text ability of the eighth-grade students in SMP Negeri 6 Lempuing, table 5 presented the regression analysis.Based on the table above, it was found out that the coefficient of regression value influenced vocabulary mastery in writing ability was 0.310.It means that the contribution of vocabulary mastery to writing descriptive text ability was 31%.

Discussions
There were some interpretations that may be shown based on the study's findings.First, consider the students' vocabulary proficiency and descriptive text writing ability.According to the data, there were 9 students that scored highly in the category of vocabulary mastery.This could happen because the pupils have similar basic English learning experiences.This makes it easier for individuals to express themselves in class.Then there were 17 students who received high marks in the category of vocabulary mastery, because some of them learned language by watching movies and playing video games.Furthermore, 29 students were classified as having ordinary vocabulary mastery.Furthermore, 79 students were classified as having low vocabulary mastery due to a lack of practice.
Second, the correlation analysis revealed a 0.557 correlation between students' vocabulary mastery and writing descriptive text ability at a significant level of 0.000, indicating that students' vocabulary mastery and writing descriptive text ability were significantly correlated because the p-value (0.000) was less than 0.05.It suggests that there is a strong association between students' vocabulary knowledge and descriptive text writing skills, despite the fact that the correlation coefficient is moderate.This finding is consistent with earlier research that discovered a significant relationship between vocabulary knowledge and writing abilities (Taslim, 2019;Qian & Lin, 2019;Putri, 2021).Finally, students' vocabulary competence contributed significantly to their ability to write descriptive language.The regression coefficient that influences vocabulary mastery in writing ability was 0.310.This suggests that language competence contributed 31% to writing ability.According to putri (2021), there is a link between English vocabulary mastery and writing skills at SMP Negeri 40 Palembang.The study found a moderate relationship between language mastery and writing skills.Because vocabulary mastery contributes to writing ability, pupils' vocabulary mastery might make it easier to write.

Conclusion
The research problems can be solved when the study on the correlation between students' vocabulary mastery and writing descriptive text abilities of eighth-grade students in SMP Negeri 6 Lempuing is completed.First, there was a significant association between students' vocabulary mastery and descriptive text writing abilities in SMP Negeri 6 Lempuing eighth-grade students because of sig.(2-tailed) 0.000 was below 0.05.This signifies that Ha is accepted and Ho (null hypothesis) is rejected.The R-value of 0.557 suggested that there was a moderate link between eighth-grade students' vocabulary knowledge and writing descriptive text abilities at SMP Negeri 6 Lempuing.
Second, there was a positive relationship between students' vocabulary knowledge and descriptive text writing abilities in SMP Negeri 6 Lempuing eighth grade students.Furthermore, the coefficient of the influence of vocabulary mastery on writing skill was found to be 0310.This suggests that students' vocabulary competence contributed 31% to their ability to write descriptive language.In other words, mastery of vocabulary influences writing skill.
conducted the first study, which sought to determine The Correlation between Students' Vocabulary Mastery and Writing Descriptive Text Ability of the Eighth Grade Students in SMP Negeri 40 Palembang.Data research revealed a link between English vocabulary mastery and writing abilities at SMP Negeri 40 Palembang.
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Table 1
Purnomo.H.A et.al (The Eighth Grade Students' Vocabulary Mastery and Writing Descriptive Text Ability)