Background of the Study

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

In Indonesia, although English is neither the first nor the second language, nowadays it has been widely used not only for business, tourism, and many other fields but also for education. Therefore, English is taught as the first foreign language which has to be learned from elementary school until university level. The main competence of English subject in Junior High School is to enable students to know, learn, understand, construct, and apply English in transactional and fungsional communication, both in receptive and productive skill. It is stated in the 2013 Curriculum for the Junior high school that the students are supposed to be able to master four skills, they are listening, speaking, reading, and writing Permendikbud, 2013: 57-60. The students are expected not only to understand the language accurately but also to use it appropriately although the level of difficulty of the language which must be used is relatively simple. It can be seen at the English main competence kompetensi inti at Junior School: 1. Appreciate and inspire the teachings of their religion, one example of basic competence is grateful for the opportunity to learn English as an international language which is realized in the spirit of learning; 2. Appreciate the honest behavior, discipline, responsibility, caring tolerance, mutual cooperation, polite, confident, to interact effectively with the social and natural environment in a range of social and existence one example to demonstrate basic competence is polite and caring behavior in implement interpersonal communication with teachers and friends; 3. Understanding knowledge factual, conceptual and procedural based on his curiosity about science, technology, arts, culture and events Create PDF with GO2PDF for free, if you wish to remove this line, click here to buy Virtual PDF Printer perpustakaan.uns.ac.id commit to user 2 related phenomena visible eye, as for example is understood a social function, the structure of the text and the introduction of elements of language on self expression, as well as the response, according to the context of use; 4. Trying, processing and presenting in the realm of concrete using, parse, compose, modify, and create and the realm of the abstract writing, reading, counting, drawing and writing in accordance with the learned in schools and other similar sources in the corner view theory, as an example of competence is essentially capture the meaning of identity oral presentation and write very short and simple Permendiknas, 2013:57-60. The target of teaching English in Junior High School, as mentioned in the main competence above, covers four skills which should be reached; they are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Listening and reading belong to receptive skills, while speaking and writing belong to productive skills. According to Nunan in Nation Newton 2009: 37, it has been claimed that over 50 percent of the time that students spend functioning in a foreign language will be devoted to listening. As one of the crucial components of spoken language processing, there is no spoken language without listening. Rost 2011: 2 states that listening means catching what the speaker says. Listening means decoding the speaker’s message. Furthermore, according to Bulletin in Saricoban 1999, listening is one of the fundamental language skills. It is a medium through which children, young people, and adults gain a large portion of their information, their understanding of the world and of human affairs, their ideals, sense of values, and their appreciation. Rivers 1981: 160 says that listening is a creative skill. It means we comprehend the sound falling on our ears, and take the raw material of words, arrangements of words, and the rise and fall the voice, and from this material we creative a significance. Russel and Russel in Hasyuni 2006: 8 also say that listening skill is listening with Create PDF with GO2PDF for free, if you wish to remove this line, click here to buy Virtual PDF Printer perpustakaan.uns.ac.id commit to user 3 comprehension, attention, and appreciation. Then, listening activity needs integrated skill of language, such as pronunciation, vocabulary mastery, writing, speaking, and reading. In teaching listening, there are some factors which determine students’ listening skill; among others are teaching approaches and self-esteem. Teaching approaches play a very important role in determining the success of the teaching listening itself since different approaches will give different result and effects to the students. There are several ways to approach listening skill in the classroom. There is not necessarily any right or best way to teach listening. The best practice in any situation will depend on the type of student, the text type being studied, the school system and many other factors. Furthermore, among many common-used approaches to teach listening, there are two approaches which are interesting to use; they are Diagnostic approach and Comprehension approach. Newmark 1981: 39 states that a comprehension approach can work as long as the material presented for comprehension in fact consists of 1 sufficient 2 language instances 3 whose meaning can be inferred by students 4 who are paying attention. A comprehension approach to language learning depends heavily on the ability of teacher to provide a large of quantity of controlled material. This control needs to be sufficient for learners to understand what they are listening to. Based on this statement, it can be said that this approach focuses on the material that is used by the teachers. Meanwhile, Field 2008: 82 states that diagnostic approach is an approach full length of listening session and it affords insights into where understanding has broken down, which can then be followed up with small scale remedial exercises Create PDF with GO2PDF for free, if you wish to remove this line, click here to buy Virtual PDF Printer perpustakaan.uns.ac.id commit to user 4 that aim to prevent these errors from occurring again. In addition, according to Brown 1986: 286, until we have some diagnostic procedures, the teacher of L2 listening can only continue to test comprehension, not to teach it. From those definitions, it can be simplified that diagnostic approach is an approach that begins from analysis the students’ difficulties in learning listening. Furthermore, students’ self-esteem is another factor to succeeded listening skill. Engel 2006: 12 says that self-esteem is how you feel about yourself as a person-your overall judgment of yourself. According to Rodewalt Tragakis in Mruk 2006: 1 self-esteem is one of the “top three covariates in personality and social psychology research,” along with gender and negative affectivity. Gurney in Plummer 2007: 13 states that self-esteem is related to our evaluation of our self-concept. It is the relative degree of worthiness, or acceptability, which people perceive their self-concept to possess. Self-esteem is one of the central drives in human beings. When the level of self-esteem is low, the psychological homeostasis is unbalanced, creating insecurity, fear, social distance and other negative situations. Self-esteem can exercise a determining influence on a person’s life, for good or bad; when there is very low self-esteem, this may even bring about a need for clinical treatment. However, though in the context of language learning especially listening, low self- esteem causes serious consequences. Students with low self-esteem may not concentrate in doing listening. They cannot receive clear understanding of the sound input. It will make students fail in their listening test and cannot achieve listening test well. Create PDF with GO2PDF for free, if you wish to remove this line, click here to buy Virtual PDF Printer perpustakaan.uns.ac.id commit to user 5 Taking these effects into consideration, in the language classroom it is important to be concerned about learners’ self-esteem. However, this implies more than doing occasional activities to make students reflect about their worthiness and competence. As a first step, teachers themselves need to be aware of their own self-esteem, to understand what self-esteem is, what are the sources and components, and how its applications can be implemented in the language classroom. This implementation should be based on a valid framework. Having examined the explanations above, the research is conducted under the title: The Effectiveness of Diagnostic Approach in Teaching Listening Viewed from Students’ Self-Esteem An Experimental Study on the Seventh Grade Students of SMP Negeri 1 Ponorogo in the Academic Year of 20132014.

B. Problem Identification