This study aims to investigate the students’ improvement in vocabulary by
watching TV-Series and knowing the factors that contribute to the vocabulary gain. The participants of this study are first year students of UNIKA Atma Jaya majoring in Primary School Teacher Education and Counseling Guidance who have been studying for two semesters in the Faculty of Education and Language. During the experiment, 18 participants were asked to watch a 10-episode of English (American) television program with English subtitles for eight days – before and after which they were asked to do a pre-and post-test. After the post-test, an interview was arranged with the participants to learn what factors help them learn new vocabulary while watching the TV-series. The study asked the participants to do a pre-test before watching ten episodes of English subtitled TV-Series for five days and then writing their experience in a student's journal each day. A post-test was also conducted to see the improvement of the participants' vocabulary after the treatment. By the end of the treatment, the findings showed that some participants improved their vocabulary acquisition by watching TV-Series, but others were not. The factors that are contributed to the vocabulary gain include internal such as be motivated or had a personal interest to learn more about English. The other one, outside factor, is affected by frequency, pronounceability and orthography, and length. |