THE UTILIZATION OF SEMANTIC MAPPING TO TEACH VOCABULARY AT SMP TRI DHARMA PALEMBANG

Vocabulary mastery was an important aspect of language learning, and finding effective methods to improve it was crucial for educators. One such method was semantic mapping, which visually represented the relationship between words and concepts to aid student understanding. This study aimed to determine whether teaching vocabulary through semantic mapping could significantly enrich students' vocabulary or not. This study used a quantitative method. This method was used to find out whether there was a significant enrichment in students' vocabulary mastery after being taught through semantic mapping. The subjects of this study were students of Tri Dharma Palembang Junior High School in the academic year 2023/2024. The sample of this study was class VIII A consisting of 29 students. A one-group pretest-posttest design was utilized to collect data using multiple-choice test questions and questionnaires, and the Wilcoxon signed rank test was employed to analyze the results. The researcher conducted the study in twelve meetings consisting of pretest, nine treatments, questionnaires, and posttest. The data showed that there was enrichment in students' vocabulary after nine treatments. Wilcoxon signed rank test analysis was applied to see the significance of the enrichment. It was found that the Z statistic value was -3.885 with a very low p value (Asymp. Sig. 2-tailed) of less than 0.001. Thus, it was concluded that the application of semantic mapping could enrich the vocabulary of students in the second year of Tri Dharma Junior High School Palembang. The researcher concluded that semantic mapping motivated students to enrich their vocabulary mastery.
Keywords: Vocabulary Mastery, Semantic Mapping, Quantitative Methods, Vocabulary Enrichment.