I. INTRODUCTION

Language obviously is a vital tool in communication. Language can also be

considered as knowledge. In our world today knowledge is one of the key factors in

competitiveness. In an advanced society, the knowledge of every language becomes

essential. Forthe last few years, millions of people across the world, who share common

interests, are able to communicate with each other and exchange ideas. Not only they are

able to do this due to the various technological advances, but also because they share a

common language.

When we learn a language, there are four major language skills that we need

to be acquired for communication, namely listening, speaking, reading and writing.

When we learn our native language, we usually learn to listenfirst, then to speak, then to

read, and finally to write. In teaching and learning process, those four language skills

have to be involved in integration; however, listening comprehension is often difficult, at

the same time it is also very important. There are many ways and techniques can be

applied to encourage students to improve their listening skills. One of them is to let the

students hear different varieties and accents of languages rather than just the voice of

their teacher. There are many dialects and accents of people when speaking in English.

The differences are not only in the pronunciation of sounds but also in grammar.

It is said that listening is used far more than any other single language skill in

normal daily life. Generally, we can expect to listen twice more than we speak, four

times more than we read, and five times more than we write (Rivers and Weaver in

Celce- Murcia, 1991: 82). The importance of listening cannot be underestimated.

Therefore, it is imperative that it cannot be treated trivially in second and foreign

language curricula. Thus language acquisition is achieved mainly through receiving

understandable input and listening ability is the critical component in achieving

understandable language input. Besides, the importance of listening in communication is

enormous. People often focus on their speaking ability believing that good speaking

equals to good communication. The ability to speak well is a necessary component to a

successful communication; however, the ability to listen is equally important as speaking

ability. Given the importance of listening in language learning and teaching it is essential

for language teachers to help students becoming effective listeners.

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II. LISTENING

2.1. THE CONCEPTION OF LISTENING

Listening is the ability to listen and understand the language from spoken

information. It is stated that the ability to hear is a natural process that develops in all

normal infant (Flowerdew and Miller. 2005: 21). It is also said that the process of

listening and discriminating what we hear begins and develops quickly during the first

year of childhood even before we are born. The physical components of the listening

process combine with the cognitive development in a child, resulting in advance listening

skills. However, the natural ability to hear is often mistaken for a fully developed skill

that needs no further fine-tuning.

Listening is one of four language skills that is considered as a basic step that

should be taken first before the others in terms of communication. Besides, listening is

the language modality and primary activity that is used most frequently (Lawson. 2007:

1). Similarly, Helgesen (2003:24) stated that Listening is an active, purposeful

processing of making sense of what we hear.In the implementation, students may receive

most of their communication time by listening in school information through listening to

instructors and others.

If people are asked to give a word description of listening, some will say

hearing; however, hearing is physical. Listening is following and understanding the

sound, in the other words, it is hearing with a purpose. It is also said that the role of

listening in a language program is to help developing learners’ abilities to understand

things they listen to (Richards. 2008: 14). Listening is the combination of the meanings

of words and sentences by the brain. It leads to the understanding of facts and ideas. But

listening takes attention. It requires concentration, which is focusing your thoughts to one

particular problem. As what is stated by Richards and Schmidt (2002: 313) that listening

comprehension is the process of understanding speech in a first or second language,

which focuses on the role of individual linguistic units such as phonemes, words,

grammatical structures, as well as the role of the listener’s expectations, the situation and

context, background knowledge

In learning a second language, students must acquire the skill of listening. They

have to be able to discriminate the sound of the target language among the unfamiliar

sounds. Listening is also similar to reading comprehension. It is usually defined as a

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receptive skill comprising both a physical process and an analytical process. However,

Celce- Murcia (1991: 82) states that listening is well recognized as a critical dimension

in language learning that remains one of the least understood processes.

Furthermore, listening is often considered as a receptive skill because it is used

to receive language which has been produced by someone else. Although it is a receptive

skill, listening is not a passive activity. As it is stated that listening is now considered as

an active skill that involves many processes (Osada. 2004: 55). It is due to the fact that in

listening activities, the students have to listen and understand the whole meaning of the

language spoken; moreover, if the learners are the ESL (English as Second Language)

students. They will need to concentrate to catch the meaning and respond to it. However,

in language learning, one cannot separate one skill to the others because they are

connected each other. Listening is involved in the interaction with one another using

combination of skills. For instance, when the students write, the first thing they do is

listening their teacher’s directions. They will be able to do their task if they can hear the

instructions. Therefore, we cannot assume that listening is a passive activity anymore.

2.2. THE IMPORTANCE OF LISTENING COMPREHENSION

Listening skill is very important in learning languages. Everyone who wants to

learn a language, such as English, should be able to master listening as one of the

language skills. By studying listening skill, people can improve their English better than

before. Listening has also a role in speaking, because people will be able to give

response after they listen to speaker. Besides, being a good listener is the key to be a

good speaker. It is due to the fact that nobody has been loaded or programmed with good

speaking skills at the time of birth. For instant, a baby starts speaking only by listening to

the words spoken by his family members. So that, just like a child, the students who want

to learn foreign language, have to listen first to the target language as much as possible,

and then they can imitate to be a good speaker too.

According to Richards (2008:1), in recent years, listening has also been

examined in relation not only to comprehension but also to language learning for the

students. Since listening can provide much of the input and data that learners receive in

language learning. The students not only can receive the knowledge from the lessons

have been doing at the school. They also can learn the foreign language by audio- visual

media such as foreign movie and video which use English as the spoken language. In the

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other word, if the students have good listening skill, they can do their hobby such as

watching movie and also learn the foreign language at the same time.

Wallace et al (2004: 13) mention that listening skills are essential for learning

since they enable students to acquire insights and information, and to achieve success in

communicating with others. It is because of the fact that students’ life within and outside

school affords many listening opportunities. Students spend most of all school related

hours just for listening. If television watching and conversations are included, students

spend approximately a half of their waking hours just listening.

Moreover, Harmer (1998: 97) utters that one of the main reasons for getting

students to listen to spoken English is to let them hear different varieties and accents

rather than just the voice of their teacher with its own idiosyncrasy. In today’s world, the

students need to know not only one variety of English, but also other varieties such as

American English, Australian English, Indian English, or West African English. As the

students used to hear and be familiar with the distinctions among those varieties, they

can understand what people saying to them in English, even though the speaker comes

from different nationalities.

Furthermore, Harmer (1998: 97) also states that listening is special too because

spoken language, especially when it is informal, has a number of unique features

including the use of incomplete utterances, incomplete repetitions, the students’

hesitations, etc. So that, by experiencing the informal spoken English together with an

appreciation of other spoken factors such as the tone of voice, the intonation the speaker

use, rhythm, and background noise, will help the students to find the meaning out of such

experience.

A lot of argumentations state that the importance of listening cannot be

underestimated. One of those said that listening is used far more than any other single

language skill in normal daily life. It is because on average, we can expect to listen twice

more than we speak, four times more than we read, and five times more than we write

(Rivers and Weaver in Celce- Murcia, 1991: 82). So that it is imperative that it should

not be treated unimportantly in second and foreign language curricula.

Those explanations above can be considered as the proof about how important

to acquire the listening skill is. Since, the listening comprehension is very important for

the development of other language skills, the teachers cannot neglect to find out any

effort to improve the students’ listening skill.

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2.3. THE FACTORS AFFECTING LISTENING

Grognet and Van Duzer (2002: 1) mention that listening is a demanding

process involving: the listener, the speaker, the content of the message, and any

accompanying visual support. Those components are stated as follows:

a. The Listener.

If the listener is familiar with or is interested in the topic, comprehension will

increase. If not, a listener may struggle and then tune out the message. Also, a

listener who is an active participant in a conversation, even though he has little

background knowledge to facilitate understanding, is more likely to learn. That

means that the teacher has to explicitly teach active listening skills such as

repetition, definition of points not understood, clarification and negotiation, to

enable the listener to make sense of the incoming information.

b. The Speaker.

When we speak, we usually do not speak in full sentences. Informal language and

reduced forms also make comprehension more difficult. A speaker’s rate of

delivery may be too fast, too slow, or may have many hesitations for the listener to

follow. All of these may affect on concentration. Awareness of a speaker’s

corrections and use of rephrasing can enable the listener to recognize speech habits

as clues to deciphering meaning. While teachers cannot predict how each speaker

will use language, they can teach students to listen for patterns in speech and to use

strategies which help them comprehend.

c. The Content.

The familiar content is easier to comprehend than the unfamiliar one. In workplace

for instance, hotel housekeepers, factory workers, or office clerks usually talk

about topics that are already familiar every day. The contents may be unfamiliar

only when explaining something new or unfamiliar topics. Therefore, when

background knowledge is essential to understanding content, more listening

strategies may be necessary.

d. Visual Support.

Visual support, such as the actual tool, a video, pictures, diagrams, gestures, facial

expressions, and body language, increases comprehension. However, how to use

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these strategies may need to be explicitly taught so the learner can be able to

interpret them correctly.

Moreover, It is stated that research in second language listening has focused on

identifying what factors are involved in the process of listening and how variation in these

factors affects the product of listening comprehension. The centered variables such as

speech rate and pausing, stress and rhythmic patterning, sandhi variation, morphological

and syntactic modifications, discourse markers, elaborative detail, memory, text type, and

prior knowledge, as well as other psychological variables such as anxiety, self-

confidence, and gender (Carrier in Osada. 2004: 57). However, Carrier also claims that

the cognitive factors and very little attention have been focused on the social context of

listening. She argues that, since the social relationship has an effect on language behavior

and conversational interaction, and conversational interaction has an effect on listening

comprehension, afterward the social relationships in an interaction may have an effect on

listening comprehension.

In conclusion, humans are born with a natural ability to hear. However,

hearing is not listening, and many factors can affect on the listening comprehension on

students. It can be external and internal factors such as students’ environments, physic

and emotional. Those factors need to be considered in order to develop the effective

listening skills of the students.

2.4. TYPES OF LISTENING PERFORMANCE

According to Brown (2004: 120), there are four commonly identified types of

listening performance. Each of them contains a category to consider assessment task and

procedures. Those performances can be described as follows:

a. Intensive

Listening for perception of the components such as phonemes, words, intonation,

discourse markers, etc of a larger stretch of language. This type of listening

performance involves recognizing phonological and morphological elements, also

paraphrase recognition.

b. Responsive

It refers to listening to a relatively short stretch of language such as a greeting,

question, command, comprehension check, etc, in order to make an equal short

response.

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c. Selective

It refers to processing stretches of discourse such as short monologues for several

minutes in order to “scan” for certain information. The purpose of such

performance is not necessarily to look for global or general meanings but to be able

to comprehend designated information in a context of longer starches of spoken

language. Assessment tasks in selective listening could ask students, for example,

to listen for names, numbers, a grammatical category, directions or certain facts

and events. The form of this type of listening performance includes listening cloze,

information transfer, and sentence repetition.

d. Extensive

Extensive listening is listening to develop a top- down, global understanding of

spoken language. Extensive performance ranges from listening to lengthy lectures

to listening to a conversation and deriving a comprehensive message or purpose.

Listening for the gist, for the main idea and making inferences all part of extensive

listening. The form of this type of listening performance involves dictation,

communicative stimulus- response task, and authentic listening task.

III. TEACHING LISTENING

3.1. PROCESS OF LISTENING

When listening to somebody or something we use different strategies in order to

understand the message and that is why it is so important for teachers to help their

students to learn how to listen.

There are two main views of listening bottom-up process and top-down listening process.

a. Bottom-up listening process

In bottom-up processing, students use the information they have about sounds, word

meanings, and grammar and the like to gather their understanding of what is heard

one step at a time (Brown, 2004). This type of process suggests that the meaning is

gained at the end of the listening process.

b. Top-down listening process

In top-down processing, the students start from their background knowledge either

the general information based on previous learning and life experience or the

awareness of the kinds of the information used in a given situation to help them

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explain and interpret what the speaker is talking about (Long, 1989 in Nunan, 2003).

Moreover, this prior knowledge enables them to predict what may come next.

3.2. Guidelines for Designing Listening Activities

In general, Wey (2013) stated that ideally, the design of listening activity should

follow these following guidelines, namely:

a. Materials should be authentic. It means that listening must be meaningful for the

learners. Teachers should try to bring recordings that are as realistic as possible,

containing normal speech, in order to make the listeners in touch with the outside

classroom listening.

b. Videos/texts should last from two to five minutes. The used of short video is aim to

make students stay focus on the speech and avoid them to be bored.

c. Tasks for each text/video should be arranged from easy to difficult. Human are

different to each other. The ability to comprehend the material must be different. The

used of tasks which written in different level of difficulties will be meaningful to give

students chance to be able to get a good score especially in listening.

d. Texts/videos should be presented three to four times to students, with a different task

each time. The implementation of repeating video could give students chance to

recheck their understanding toward the video.

e. In teaching listening, homework is a must. All material seems to be impossible to

comprehend only once. Giving homework is aim to make students active to learn even

it is in their home time.

f. Speaking and listening should be paired. Listening could not be separated with

speaking, because the students are listening to the speech. Doing speaking after

listening or doing both in the same time could give students meaningful learning for

example by implementing role play.

g. Video clips are highly recommended for arousing students’ interest. Websites such as

YouTube provide English learners with a useful tool to improve their listening skills.

This websites offer very authentic examples of everyday English used by native

speakers of English. Based on the observation done by Wey (2013), using video clips

could make learning interesting and delightful because students were attracted to the

“real life” situations of the videos. However, when choosing video clips, teachers

should ensure that the video clips chosen are challenging for the students.

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h. Teachers have to consider the listening procedure. According to Rixon (as cited in

Wey, 2013) a listening is divided into three phases namely: Pre listening stages;

while listening stages; and follow-up stages.

3.1.1. Pre-Listening Stage

It would not be fair towards students to draw them straight into the listening

without introducing the topic or the type of activity they are going to work on, since in

the real life there are not many situations when people are supposed to listen with

having no idea what they are going to hear. In relation to that, students should be

given a substantial pre-listening support. This will help them to become more

confident and successful especially to dealing with listening task. Underwood (1989)

claims that at the very beginning of the while listening activity, the students should be

helped to concentrate on what they are going to hear. Moreover, Underwood (1989)

declares that pre-listening task can consist of a variety of activities, which can help the

teacher to focus the students’ minds on the topic by narrowing down the things that

the learners anticipate to hear and stimulating relevant previous knowledge. The steps

are including:

The teacher providing background information;

The students read something relevant to the listening text;

The students look at some pictures;

Discussing the topic or situation to the listening text;

A question and answer session to the listening text;

Written exercise to the listening text;

Following the set of instructions relevant for the while-listening activity;

Students think about how the while-listening activity will be organized.

Furthermore, Underwood (1989) presents a number of tasks for pre-

listening stage that can enable the students to gain knowledge that is needed for the

listening task. This gained knowledge gives the students confidence that is necessary

for successful listening. The tasks include:

Starting a discussion about the topic (possibly based on visuals and titles). In this

sort of exercise students are asked to make a discussion about a set topic.

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Brainstorming. In this activity the students are asked to predict vocabulary that is

associated with the set topic and the teacher is supposed to write them on the

board. Another form of brainstorming activity can be making mind maps.

Game. A nice example of warm up activity where either the students or the

teacher mimes the words and the rest of the class are supposed to guess the

meaning.

Guiding questions. Teacher either writes or asks questions that will help students

with the listening passage.

3.1.2. While-Listening Stage

This stage contains activities done by the students during the listening

passage. The aim of activities done during this phase is to help the students to catch

the main meaning of the text or video and make them able to have enough information

to interpret the text or video. Teachers have to point out that on this stage students

should be concerned with demonstration of the important information. One of the

most important functions of while-listening activities is to present the sound of the

target language. This presentation enables students to develop their listening

comprehension skills and it also serves as a model of their speech. Underwood (1989)

points out that a good while-listening activities help listeners find their way through

the listening text and build upon the expectations raised by pre-listening activities.

The following are some suggested activity that can be done in while-listening

activities, namely:

True-false or multiple choice questions.

Filling gaps with missing words.

Map activities.

Taking notes.

Choosing the correct pictures from a description.

Sequencing pictures.

Carrying out actions.

Following a route.

Dictation.

3.1.3. Follow-Up Stage

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Follow-up stagecan be used to check students’ comprehension toward the

material. Underwood (1989) argues that during the follow-up activities students use

their knowledge gained during the previous stage, while-listening stage, for

completing the exercises. There are a number of purposes why to incorporate follow-

up activities into the lesson plans. One of them is to check if the learners understood

the listening passage or whether they finished the task successfully. During the

follow-up phase learners can be given a possibility to think about the attitude of the

speaker. One of the other reasons for incorporating the follow-up stage is to broaden

students’ knowledge about specific topics. This could be done by a decision making

or asking them to express their views. There are several activities that can be used in

the follow-up stage:

Problem solving and decision-making tasks. Students are trying to find out a

solution for a problem from the recording.

Role play. Students can be asked to try to produce the new text or conversation by

using vocabulary found in listening activities and present it in a role play.

Summarizing. Students can be asked to summarize a story they heard. This

activity can be linked with problem solving.

Written work. Students can be asked to write the end of the story. The teacher can

give students a passage which the story is not finishes yet.

Shadowing. Students ask to retell the speaker’ speech or dubbing the video.

3.3. Steps of Conducting Listening Activity

Regarding to the general explanation of an ideal listening activity, the presenter

choose to fuse some of the important component to be involved in conducting listening

activity, namely:

1. The teacher opens the class discussion by using guiding questions. This stage is

started to implement the pre-listening activities. Teacher either writes or asks

questions that will help students with the listening passage.

2. The teacher presents the clip with no sound yet and asks students to speculate about it.

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3. After giving general question about the topic as well as showing the silent clip, then

the teacher using brainstorming. In this activity the students are asked to predict

vocabulary that is associated with the topic and the teacher is supposed to write them

on the board.

4. The teacher started to present the clip with sound and then ask students to do the

while-listening activities.

5. While listening, the students asked to do the listening assignments which consist of

fill in the gaps and true or false tests.

6. The teacher presents the clip again and asks students to listen for some specific details

which are used to give them chance to recheck their task.

7. The teacher presents the clip again with the captions and asks students to pay attention

to the details they have failed to comprehend. This step could be done also by write

down the answer on the board by the students and the teacher role is confirming the

answer.

8. As the follow up activities of the listening, the teacher asks students to make a

conversation which is related to the topic. The conversation will be presented by them

in role play.

REFERENCES

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Brown, H Douglas. 2004. Language Assessment: Principles and Classroom Practices. New York. Pearson Education, Inc.

Brown, Steven. 2006. Teaching Listening. New York: Cambridge University Press

Boyle, Joseph P.1984. Factors Affecting Listening Comprehension. ELT Journal, v38 n1 p34-38 Jan 1984

Flowerdew, John. and Miller, Lindsay. 2005. Second Language Listening: Theory and Practice. United States of America: Cambridge University Press

Grognet, Allene and Van Duzer,Carol. 2002. Listening Skills in the Workplace. Spring Institute for International Studie

Harmer, Jeremy. 1998. How to Teach English: An Introduction to the Practice of English Language Teaching. Great Britain: Longman Group, Ltd.

Lawson, Karen. 2007. Series of Articles to Cultivate Outstanding Leaders: The Importance of Listening. Lawson Consulting Group. Inc. (Access on 2 March 2015. Available from: http//www.GrowingGreatness.com).

Murcia, Marianne Celce. 1991. Teaching English as A Second or Foreign Language (second edition). Los Angeles: Heinle & Heinle Publishers.

Osada, Nobuka. 2004. Listening Comprehension Research: A Brief Review of the Past Thirty Years Vol 3. Waseda University.

Richards, Jack C. and Rodgers, Theodore S. 1986. Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching: A description and analysis. United States of America: Cambridge University Press.

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Underwood, M. (1989).Teaching Listening. New York: Longman.

Wallace, Trudy et al. 2004. Educational Practices Series- 14: Teaching Speaking, Listening and Writing. Geneva: International Academy of Education.

Wey, L. (2013). Teaching Listening in EFL Classrooms in Senior High Schools in Taiwan. National Wen-Hwa Senior High School

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APPENDICES

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