THE EFFECTIVENESS OF VOCABULARY SELF-COLLECTION STRATEGY (VSS) ON STUDENTS’ VOCABULARY MASTERY

Abstract

The aims of this research are to explain and analyze the effectiveness of the Vocabulary Self-Collection Strategy (VSS) on students’ vocabulary mastery. VSS is a learning strategy that involves students in selecting unfamiliar or interesting words from texts, discussing their meanings, and recording them in a vocabulary list. Introduced by Haggard (1982), this strategy encourages students to take an active role in vocabulary learning by identifying and understanding new words based on context. It is designed to improve motivation, comprehension, and retention. The research was conducted at MTs Darul Hikam with seventh-grade students in the 2024/2025 academic year. A quantitative method was used with a pre-experimental design, applying a one-group pretest-posttest model. The sample consisted of 27 students who were given a pretest before and a posttest after the VSS strategy was applied. The results showed a notable improvement in students’ vocabulary mastery. The average pretest score was 46.30, while the posttest average increased to 89.19. The Paired Sample T-Test showed a significance value of 0.000 (p < 0.05), indicating that the improvement was statistically significant. These results indicated that VSS is an effective strategy to improve vocabulary mastery, as it actively engages students in a meaningful and contextual learning process.