Journal of English Language Teaching Volume ... No. ... Serie ...

Journal of English Language Teaching

ISSN 2302-3198
Published by English Language Teaching Study Program of
FBS Universitas Negeri Padang
available at http://ejournal.unp.ac.id/index.php/jelt

IMPROVING STUDENTS’ ENGLISH VOCABULARY OF ACTION

VERBS THROUGH “CHARADES GAME” IN ELEMENTARY
SCHOOLS

MustikaRamadhani1, Dra. An Fauzia Rozani Syafei, M.A2

English Department
Faculty of Languages and Arts
State University of Padang
email: mustikaramadhani060394@gmail.com

Abstract
Vocabulary is an important part in Learning English because it gives big
contribution to master the language. As a result, it is important for students to
have and to understand the meaning of English vocabulary. Action verbs are one
of vocabulary components that are needed to learn and to understand by
elementary school students. However, knowing and understanding the meaning of
action verbs are difficult for them because action verbs are abstract which is
different from nouns frequently seen around by the students. Therefore, teacher
should find a suitable technique for helping them to understand the verbs easily.
One of the interesting techniques that can be applied by the teacher is Charades
Game which is an acting and guessing game that requires students to play as an
actor to describe words or phrases with silent actions while the rest of the students
are required to guess the words being acted by the actor.

Key words: Vocabulary, Elementary school students, Charades Game

A. INTRODUCTION
Vocabulary is an important part in learning English. Having and knowing
many vocabulary can give contribution for learners to acquire the four skills
namely listening, speaking, reading, and writing. In other words, vocabulary is a
central part in acquiring those skills. In fact, the more vocabulary students have,
the more they know how to use the language. Nation (2001) states that vocabulary
knowledge enables students to use the language and language use can increase
students’ vocabulary. Thus, vocabulary plays important role in English language.
English is taught including in Elementary School as a foreign language in
Indonesia. However, English is no longer included in national curriculum. Even
though English is no longer included in national curriculum in elementary
schools, there are still certain elementary schools that include English as its
subject like private schools. However, English teachers of these schools don’t
have a reference how to teach English well because of lack of training provided
1
Student of English Language Teaching Program of FBS UNP Graduated on September 2017.
2
Advisor, the Lecturer of FBS Padang State University

© FBS Universitas Negeri Padang

 JELT Vol ... No... Serie ... September ...

by the Department of Education. As a result, the teachers don’t prepare the

material and don’t select suitable teaching method and teaching technique.
When teaching elementary school students, the very first component that
needs to be taught is vocabulary. The vocabulary learning starts with noun, verbs,
and adjective. However, not all teachers know how to teach English vocabulary
and not all teachers are able to use suitable teaching technique and media to teach
vocabulary. Then, they also teach elementary school students as if they teach
junior high school students. For example, they teach the students the meaning of
the words by translating them literally or write them on the blackboard. As a
result, the process of teaching and learning becomes ineffective which students
don’t get the meaning of the words being taught to them successfully.
In elementary school, action verb is one of aspects that should be learned
and understood by the students. However, there are some factors that make verbs
difficult to be learned. According to Gentner in Avcu (2014), verb is harder to
learn than noun because noun is basic conceptually and Rosch in Avcu (2014)
adds that the meaning of verbs depend on abstract concepts. Similarly, Childers &
Tomasselo (2002), Kersten & Smith (2002), Tarditf (1996) in Razak and Yunus
(2016) states that verbs acquisition are more difficult than noun acquisition. Real
object or realia also can’t be used in teaching verbs because it is mostly used for
teaching nouns. Hence, teacher should find a technique that makes students master
the words easily.
One of the interesting techniques that can be used is Charades Game. It is
an acting and guessing game in which each member tries to communicate to the
others a particular word or phrase that they have been given, by expressing each
syllable or word using silent actions. In this game, a student is asked to be an actor
to act out words or phrases silently and the others guess the word that is being
acted by the actor. This game uses pantomime style where someone does an action
without talking. This game is believed to improve students’ vocabulary mastery
because it requires students to visualize the meaning of the words by doing an
action. It will be easy for students to remember the words because they know the
meaning of the words by acting out the words.
The writer proposes Charades Games to teach action verbs to young
learners because the key point of the game is performing an action. This game is
student-centered where students becomes the main actors in this game. It will be
easier for the students to remember the words because they will remember how
they act the verbs and how their friends act it. The writer will explain how to use
charades game in classroom based on Indonesian students’ characters and the
situation.

B. DISCUSSION
Having vocabulary knowledge is very essential because vocabulary is the
central part of the language. Vocabulary is the major factors to be successful in
learning the four skills of English known as listening, speaking, reading, and
writing. Schmitt (1997) emphasizes that vocabulary knowledge is central to
communicative competence and to acquisition of a second language.

2
ISSN: 2302-3198
 Four to five words of the title – Author1 , Author2, Author3

Elementary school students are categorized as young learners. Teaching

young learners are different from adult learners. In teaching young learners, it is
important for teachers to know their characteristics and interest. Primary school
students usually has short attention, so teacher needs to find a way to keep the
students focused in the learning process.
Harmer (2002) also states that young children learn differently from older
children, adolescents, and adult. They tend to change their mood while learning.
Similarly, Scrivener (1994) states some characteristic of young learners. He says
that children are keen, chatterbox, noisy, curious, get easily excited, learn new
things, like to experiment, want to have fun, have a great sense of humor, love
attention, can’t concentrate very long, can be hard to calm down.
Teaching vocabulary deals with knowing meaning from the words.
According to Cameron (2001), teaching vocabulary focuses on helping students to
build up the knowledge of the words, so students will be able to use the language
efficiently and successfully.
In teaching vocabulary to young learner, it is important for teacher to know
ways how to teach the meaning of the words that can be easily understood by
them. According to Phillips (1993), meaning of the words is best learned by
illustrating them such as using a picture, an, action, or real object.
Talking about young learners, game is also one of good techniques to teach
them. According to Hadfield (2001) games are a kind of activity that has rules, a
goal, and element of fun. It means that game must have rules and goals to obtain
in learning process for students rather than entertaining activities. Games also
serve as memory aids and repetition drill in target language that is being taught. In
addition, Mardhatillah and Ratmanida (2016) say that teaching English using
game for young learners is a good choice since their naturally need is playing.
Games can stimulate learners to participate since games usually involves with
movement and competition. Similarly, Phillips (1993) adds that games can help
children to see learning English as enjoyable and rewarding. Games also relax
students who feel stressed while learning the theory that is hard to master.
Therefore, games cover many elements such as rules, relaxation, competition, and
learning.
Therefore, in learning vocabulary for young learners, they need something
not only studying but also entertaining despite their attitude and their behaviour.
They need an activity that can make their learning become enjoyable and
successful. One of interesting technique can be used in teaching vocabulary
especially action verbs to young learner is “Charades Game”.
Charades is an acting game which one of the students is asked to be an
actor to act out words or phrases silently and the others guess the word that is
being acted by the actor. According to Kumar and Vasanth (2013), Charades is
one of the most popular game played among people of various generations. This
game is a game of guessing that can be played without much preparation and tests
the vocabulary of a person. It is a game that involves guessing of the words or
phrases which are provided by the opponent team.
1. Teacher’s Preparation for Charades Game

3
 JELT Vol ... No... Serie ... September ...

Before applying this game, teacher should prepare anything related

to this game. Teacher needs to prepare index cards. Index card is a card with
a picture and word in it. The total of index card is based on how many
words that have been taught for the students. Then, teacher also needs box
or basket to place the index cards in it. These are examples of index cards:

Examples of Index Cards of Charades Game-action verbs

EATING DANCING RUNNING DRINKING

SLEEPING WALKING READING SINGING

JUMPING KICKING SWEEPING THROWING

4
ISSN: 2302-3198
 Four to five words of the title – Author1 , Author2, Author3

WRITING SWIMMING lAUGHING

PAINTING

2. The Procedures of Teaching Vocabulary and Using Charades Game

In teaching vocabulary about simple action verbs, as usual, teacher
can explore students’ background knowledge first where the teacher invites
the students to talk about anything related with the topic. Teacher also can
ask any questions related to the topic.
Before teaching the vocabulary, teacher can give warming-up
activity to the students by singing a song that contain words that will be
taught for the students. Singing a song with an action will be useful for them
to know the words step by step. Students will learn the action verbs
incidentally by singing a song with actions. Besides using song, teacher also
can use others activities in warming-up activity that make students familiar
with the words that are going to learn. It can be rhyming words. After doing
the warming-up activity, students at least know some words and the
meaning.
Next, teacher will show pictures with words that are going to learn.
Teacher and students discuss the words together. Then, teacher will teach
the students how to pronounce the words that are going to learn. While
teaching vocabulary, it is important to teach how to pronounce it besides the
meaning. Teacher will pronounce the words first then students will follow.
After that teacher can ask students to pronounce the words one by one.
Then, teacher gives example of simple sentence with the words being learnt.
After that, teacher points at random students, the pointed student are asked
to make a simple sentence of the picture that teacher pointing at.

5
 JELT Vol ... No... Serie ... September ...

/JUMPING/ /DRINKING/

/READING/ /WRITING/

/RUNNING/ /DANCING/

/EATING/ /WALKING/

Some Action Verbs Picture

6
ISSN: 2302-3198
 Four to five words of the title – Author1 , Author2, Author3

To make students more familiar with the words, teacher will do story
telling with the action verbs. While doing the story telling, teacher can act
out the words in the story, so students become more familiar with the words
that are being taught. This activity can take about 10-15 minutes
Hobbies
One day, there was a rabbit and a monkey talking each other. The
rabbit said, “Hey, monkey! What is your hobbies?” Then, the monkey
replied, “hhmm, I like jumping.” Then, the monkey was jumping. “I also
like dancing”. Then, the monkey was dancing and asked the rabbit to
dance with him. “I like running too, I am a good runner”. Then, the
monkey was running to show the rabbit that he was a good runner. After
running, the monkey said, “I am so thirsty and hungry now”. Then, the
monkey was drinking and eating banana from the tree. After eating, the
monkey asked the rabbit, “How about you rabbit?” Then, the rabbit said,
“I like reading a book and I also like writing a letter to my friend”.
“Wow, you must be smart, rabbit”, said the monkey. It was almost night,
then the monkey asked rabbit to go home together. Finally, they walked
together.
After learning all of the words, students will play Charades game to
reinforce their vocabulary, so they will master the words that have been
taught to them.
Before playing Charades Game, the teacher will divide students
into four groups. Because the amount of students in Indonesia are usually
around 30 people in each class, it will be good to divide them into four
teams rather than two teams, so there will be more participation of students
in this game. Teacher then tells students that there will be three rounds in
this game. The first round is the competition between A and B, and the
second round is C and D. The groups that win the first and second round,
they will compete in the third round or final round.
Here is the illustration.
Teacher: We are going to play a game called Charades Game. Now
make a group of four, A, B, C, and D.
Students: Yes, mam!
Teacher: There will be three rounds in this game. The first round is
between A and B, the second round is between C and D. The group
who win in the first and second round will compete in the third round.
Students: Yes Ma’am!
After that, teacher explains about the game. Teacher will model how
to play the game first. Teacher will act as an actor and the students will
shout any answer that come to their mind. After showing how the game
works and making sure that the students understand, teacher chooses one
representative for each group.

7
 JELT Vol ... No... Serie ... September ...

Next, the game is played. In the first round, teacher will ask group A
and B to compete. The representative of group A will be the actor, and the
members of team B will be the ones who shout the word is being acted. For
example, teacher asks the actor to choose index cards randomly in the box,
and he gets jumping index cards.
Teacher: Now, come to the front the actor of the Group A! Choose
this card randomly!
Students: (get the jumping cards, for example)

JUMPING

Then, he must act out the words and the members of team B will guess
the word being acted within a minute. If they answer correctly, they get 1
point. If they don’t, they don’t get any point.
Teacher: act out the words in the card! The member of group B
must shout out the word correctly in a minute. Any sounds are
forbidden!
Students: Yes, Mam!
After the actor of group A finishes the game, it’s time for the
representative or actor of team B to act the words in Index cards in the
same way. After the first round ends, the groups of second round, C and D
will play the game in the same way like in the first round.
After getting the winner of the first and the second round, they will
compete each other in the third round. The third round is a little bit different
from the previous ones. In the third round, teacher chooses the
representative to be the actor, then the winner groups will compete to guess
the words acted by the chosen actor. The group who answers the word
correctly first, they will get a point.
After the game ends, the group who gets more points will win. Then
teacher discuss about the words with the students. The teacher can ask
students what words that are most difficult to guess and why it is hard to
guess.
At the end of the lesson, teacher can review the words that have
been learned by the students by asking the meaning of the words that have
been learned literally.
Teacher makes sure that most students participate in answering the
questions.

8
ISSN: 2302-3198
 Four to five words of the title – Author1 , Author2, Author3

3. The Advantages of Charades Game

There are some advantages in using Charades Games to teach
vocabulary to elementary school students. Since elementary school students
are categorized as young learner, using games will be good ways in teaching
them.
First, this game work best in reinforcing students’ mastery of
vocabulary because this game asks students to visualize the meaning of the
words through an action which use body to communicate. This game can
reduce anxiety and boredom because this can relax students’ mind. This
game can also make students laugh because while playing this game, there
will be funny acts showed by their friend while acting out the words.
Furthermore, students also learn how to compete and cooperate with their
teammates. Since this game is a competition, they can also have lesson
about fairness. The last advantage is that this game also encourages
students’ participation in the class. This game is students-centered where
students is the main role in this game and students are the participant of this
game. Therefore, there are many advantages of Charades Games in teaching
vocabulary to elementary school students

C. CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS

Charades game can help students in practicing their vocabulary, so it will
enable students to master the vocabulary easily. This game also helps students in
drawing the meaning of the words in memorable way through an action. As we
know that the steps of using this game is students act out words without talking,
then the others try to guess what word is being acted.
In order to make the Charades Game can be implemented effectively,
there are some points that the writer suggests the teacher. Firstly, the teacher
should manage time playing this game effectively. It means that the teacher must
be consistent that all of the students have the same amount of time while trying to
guess the words being acted out by the actor. Teacher can use a timer such as
stopwatch. The second, teacher should control the class because this game will
cause chatterbox among the students. The last, teacher can give a reward to a team
who wins the game because it will engage students’ participation in playing this
game and they will be excited that they will get a reward to win the game. Thus,
those all are about points suggested to teacher while playing the game.

9
 JELT Vol ... No... Serie ... September ...

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Avcu, E. 2014. Nouns-first, verbs-first, and computationally-easier first: A
preliminary design to test the order of the acquisition. Unpublished Thesis.
Cameron, L. 2001. Teaching languages to young learners. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Hadfield, J. 2001. Elementary grammar games: A collection of grammar games
and activities for elementary students of English. Longman.
Harmer, J. 2002. The practice of English language teaching. New York:
Longman.
Kumar, B.I.D & Vasanth, G. 2013. Active learning through dumb charades: a
game method for technical education. International journal of Research in
Engineering & Advanced Technology, Volume I, Issue 5, pp. 1-6.
Mardhatillah & Ratmanida. 2016. Using ‘mime game’ to teach vocabulary to
young learners. Journal of English Language Teaching, 5 (1) Serie B, 128-
136.
Nation, I. S. P. 2001. Learning vocabulary in another language. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Philips, S. 1993. Teaching English a foreign language to young learner. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Razak, A.N.A. & Yunus, M.M. 2016. Using action songs in teaching action words
to young esl learners. International Journal of Language Education and
Applied Linguistics (IJLEAL). ISSN: 2289-7208 print; 2289-9294 online 04
(2016) 15-24.
Schmitt, N. 1997. Vocabulary learning strategies. In Schmitt, N. and McCarthy,
M. (eds.) Vocabulary: Descriptive, Acquisition and Pedagogy. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Scrivener, J. 1994. Learning teaching. Oxford: Heinemann.

10
ISSN: 2302-3198