TEACHING VOCABULARY TO YOUNG LEARNERS THROUGH I TUTOR.NET AS EDUTAINMENT SOFTWARE : A case study at a primary school in Subang

• Main Author: Dasawati, Idi Maulida (Author)
• Format: Book
• Published: 2012-07-25.
• Subjects: Thesis; NonPeerReviewed
• Online Access: Link Metadata
• Notes: http://repository.upi.edu/8512/1/t_bing_0907885_table_of_content.pdf; http://repository.upi.edu/8512/2/t_bing_0907885_chapter1.pdf; http://repository.upi.edu/8512/3/t_bing_0907885_chapter2.pdf; http://repository.upi.edu/8512/4/t_bing_0907885_chapter3.pdf; http://repository.upi.edu/8512/5/t_bing_0907885_chapter4.pdf; http://repository.upi.edu/8512/6/t_bing_0907885_chapter5.pdf; http://repository.upi.edu/8512/7/t_bing_0907885_bibliography.pdf
• Keywords: LC Special aspects of education

Recently, education has evolved through various new technologies integrated in the classroom including "edutainment" which is coined to mean the integration of "education" and "entertainment." I tutor.net as a Singapore edutainment software distributed in franchise system in Indonesia offers various activities to help young ELLs memorize new words more easily. Unfortunately, the use of i tutor.net as a media of teaching and learning English has not been researched yet. This study, therefore aims to portray what happens in the classroom when i tutor.net is used to teach vocabulary to young learners in a Pilot Elementary School with International Standard (RSDBI). It also attempts to find out their responses toward the software. The data were gained from various resources including classroom observations by the researchers and her colleague, collection of students' works, and questionnaires. Observation data analysis showed that in this study, teaching vocabulary to young learners using i tutor.net was implemented through three main stages of activities comprising before, during and after using the media (Heinich, 1996; Brewster & Ellis, 2002). It is also supported by teacher questionnaire that the implementation of i tutor.net was conducted in three stages. Activities in the first stage were preparations of appropriate conditions to make teaching vocabulary using i tutor.net in the second stage run well. Meanwhile, activities in the second stage were teaching and learning vocabulary using i tutor.net. The third stage was carried out as a reflection from activities in the previous stage. The study shows that the materials in i tutor.net presented in animated lessons and interesting activities such as picture match, picture sequence, letters unscramble, and word search, have attended to young learners' learning characteristics so a more creative and fun learning environment was created (Zin & Zain, 2010). Moreover, regarding the students' responses to the use of edutainment software, the study indicates the students responded positively to teaching learning process. This can be seen from their enthusiasm in their tasks given. This was also indicated in their responses to the questioner that they were happy in every teaching learning process using edutainment software. Referring to the findings, it is recommended that i tutor.net as edutainment software is used in teaching vocabulary to young learners to provide dynamic and enjoyable learning environment. Further research on edutainment software is required to develop edutainment software that is economical and easy to access for many schools.