1. A. Background of Study
In the era, English Language is very important for the human’s life. Language is a
basic need for communication in expressing ideas and feelings. It functions as a means of
communication. It is accepted as an International Language of Technology and Business.
In Indonesia, English is adopted as the first foreign language.
To provide students with all language skills, English teaching has to give them an
opportunity to achieve listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills. “… English is a
world language, with more than 60 countries where ‘English is now the dominant or
official language’. The importance of English throughout the world in education,
business, government, and social situation continue to grow, despite the understandable
desire of people to preserve their own ‘native’ languages.”1 Thus, there is no doubt that
English is a means of International communication. It plays an important role in every
field of work and study.
In English Learning, there are four skills, namely listening, speaking, reading and
writing. Besides that, one of English components taught to the learners is vocabulary
because it has a primary role for all language skills as Taylor said, “vocabulary may have
a special, importance for adult’s learners, since it is the one are of the language learning
that does not appear to be slowed down by age.”
Films are a type of visual communication which use moving pictures and sound to
tell stories or inform (help people to learn). People in every part of the world watch
movies as a type of entertainment, a way to have fun. For some people, fun movies can
1 Peter Luncatoni, Teaching And Assessing English Skill In English As A Second Language, (United
Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p.3.

2. mean movies that make them laugh, while for others it can mean movies that make them
cry, or feel afraid.2
One of the kinds film is Western Movie. Western movie is that movie come from
Western. For making the viewer easier to understand the film by subtitle film or
translation (Indonesia subtitle) the film. So, when we watch the Western Movie, we will
more understand the meaning of the film.
Vocabulary is one of important part in learning a language, because without
vocabulary cannot communicate with each other. Vocabulary is a crucial component in
acquiring and understanding language when we read something it will sound good if we
understand the words of vocabularies in our reading, so we will understand better.
According Norbert and Michael Mc Chantry states that vocabulary is the stock of words
used in a language.
From the explanation of subtitle film and vocabulary, it shows that they have
close relation. To get empirical data about it, the writer will organize the test mastery of
vocabulary and reading ability. The writer tries to find the answer that student’s mastery
of vocabulary influence reading ability through the research entitled
“The Influence of Western Movie’s subtitle and student’s mastery of
Vocabulary on the Seventh Graders of Junior High School Muhammadiyah 1 Way
Jepara.”
The researcher tried to study about student’s mastery of Vocabulary. This present
research will be held on the Seventh Graders of Junior High School Muhammadiyah 1
Way Jepara. The researcher got the data of pre-survey on April 10th, 2014 as follows:
2 Simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/movieat April,19th 2015

3. Table 1
Student’s English Result
No. Score Categories Frequency Percentages
1. 80-100 High 3 9.7%
2. 60-79 Fair 10 30.3%
3. 0-59 Low 22 60%
Total 35 100 %
Source : “Mrs.Arini, S.Pd” The teacher who teach in Junior High School Muhammadiyah 1 Way Jepara,
taken on March 16th 2013.
Based on data and table above, we can see that there are 22 students have low
categories with percentages 60 % and 10 students have fair categories with percentages
30.3%. And then, 3 students who have high categories.
The researcher choose this problem, because want to know about the influence
Western Movie subtitle and Vocabulary Mastery of the student. So, based on the data of
pre-survey at the seventh Graders of Junior High School Muhammadiyah 1 Way Jepara,
the researcher found that the students still face many problems, Among the noticeable
problems in low motivation to watch the Western Movie, low vocabulary mastery of
student.