EXAMINING THE EFFECT OF CAKE APPLICATION ON SEVENTH GRADERS' VOCABULARY KNOWLEDGE OF SMPN 7 TARAKAN
Vocabulary mastery is a major challenge students face in learning English, particularly at the junior high level, due to limited language exposure and ineffective learning strategies. This study investigates the effect of using the Cake application on the vocabulary knowledge of seventh-grade students at SMPN 7 Tarakan. A pre-experimental design was employed involving one class consisting of 32 students. The research instrument was a written vocabulary test administered before and after the treatment. The treatment was conducted over six sessions using the Cake application as the learning medium. The results indicate that the students' mean score increased from 58.59 in the pre-test to 78.00 in the post-test. This improvement was influenced by Cake's features, including contextual short videos, native speaker pronunciation, interactive quizzes, and daily reviews that helped strengthen vocabulary comprehension and retention. Based on the Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test, the significance value was below 0.05, thereby confirming the acceptance of Ha and the rejection of Ho. These findings suggest that the Cake application effectively improves students' vocabulary knowledge and can be an alternative medium for teaching English vocabulary in schools.