23 recording they hear. Besides, the practice activity is usually conducted by
requiring the students to work on “words, phrases, pattern and sentences from the analysis activities” Willis, 1996, p. 100. Thus, the students have a chance to
review what they get after analysis the language focus.
3. Listening a. The Nature of Listening
According to Nunan 2003, p. 24, listening is a receptive skill that requires somebody to receive and understand incoming information or input. In
addition, listening refers to a complex process which allows people to understand the spoken language, as stated by Rost 2002, p. 7. It can be concluded that
listening is one of the skills which should be mastered by people in order to gain and understand the information which is said by other people. This skill enables
people to communicate with each other by understanding what each other says. Listening is considered as the most difficult skill to most students
Riddell, 2001, p. 108. However, there are chances for the teachers to help the students to improve their listening skill. As stated by Harmer that through a
combination of extensive and intensive listening material and procedures, students can improve their listening skill 2001, p. 228. The extensive and intensive
listening materials and procedures provide varied teaching-learning activity for listening skill both inside and outside the classroom.
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b. Extensive and Intensive Listening 1 Extensive Listening
Extensive listening gives a chance for the students to be active independently in improving their listening skill. In such a way, the students are
encouraged to freely listen to anything they want. Moreover, the students can do the listening section whenever they want. They can do it at home or other places
they want as long as it is outside the classroom. In extensive listening, there is no limitation for the students to choose the materials they want to listen to. They can
find the materials from many sources. The sources can be from the tape of authentic materials, coursebooks tapes, or even the sources which are
recommended by the teacher Harmer, 2001: 228. In addition, the extensive listening gives the students more reasons to
listen. By given some kinds of tasks, the students are supposed to listen more to complete the tasks. Harmer adds that giving the students some tasks, such as
record their responses to what they have heard in personal journal, summarize the content of tape, write comments on a student web site, may becomes the reason to
force the students to listen more. This is one kind of effort to encourage extensive listening Harmer, 2001, p. 229. Therefore, by applying extensive listening, the
teacher can help the students have more chances to listen freely as well as improving their listening skill through listening more.
2 Intensive Listening
Hammer notes that intensive listening can be clarified into three categories. They are intensive listening using taped material, intensive listening
25 ‘live’ listening, and the roles of the teacher in intensive listening 2001, p. 229.
This statement implies that in intensive listening there are three types of activities which can be applied, namely, using taped material, ‘live’ listening , and the
teachers’ roles. The use of taped material seems common among the teachers when teaching listening skills. Taped material can be in the form of CD player or
tape recorder. In using the taped material, the teacher indirectly gives the students a chance to listen to a variety of different voices apart from just their own
teacher’s. Moreover, the taped material is also portable, readily available, and relatively inexpensive. Besides, taped material can also consists of both audio and
audio visual materials. Thus, music and video can be also used as the materials. Those can be the bases for teacher to “rely on” taped material in preparing “source
of language input” Harmer, 2001, p. 229. However, there are some things that should be the attention for the teacher when using the taped material. Using taped
material means dealing with tape or disk and machine quality. Thus, it would be good for the teacher to check the tape or disk as well as machine quality before
the listening section is started. Instead of the use of taped material, the teacher can deliver listening
section by ‘live’ listening. As cited in Harmer 2001, p. 230, live listening becomes a popular way to make sure that communication is authentic because the
teacher andor visitors to the class talk to the students. Harmer mentions some forms of live listening activity which can be used in class. Those are reading
aloud, story – telling, interviews, and conversations Harmer, 2001: 231. Those
26 kinds of activities provide the students another option to practice their listening
skill. Furthermore, intensive listening involves the teacher’s role to encourage
the students in enjoying every activity in listening practices. In accordance with Harmer 2001, pp. 231-232, there are some roles of teacher which should be the
focus in teaching listening. Those roles are organizer, machine operator, feedback organizer, and prompter. By being an organizer, the teacher should tell the
students exactly what their listening purpose is and give them clear instructions about how to achieve it. Besides, the teacher should be wise in deciding when to
stop and start the machine based on the students’ need as well as knowing how to operate the machine well. Those things are the role of the teacher as a machine
operator. When doing the role as a feedback organizer, the teacher can check whether the students have completed the task successfully or not. It can be done
by comparing their answer in pairs. The last, after giving the students chances to listen to the recording on a tape or disk for comprehension purposes, the teacher
can play the role as a prompter. In this case, the teacher offers them the extra chance to listen again for more specific attention such as the variety of language
used as well as the feature spoken.
c. Listening in the Classroom
There is a structured lesson plan to include listening activities in the classroom suggested by Nunan 2003, p. 42. The activities consist of a warm-up
activity, a main listening task, and a speaking task related to the previous task. The listening activities in the classroom can be varied in the form of many tasks.
