Beside that, the students’ knowledge about vocabulary and grammar also determined their ability to listen. Vocabulary is the basic element for the students
to understand the conversation or text. The lack of vocabulary influenced their comprehension since it was vital. Meanwhile, the knowledge of grammar also
affected their understanding . The lack of grammar mastery made them uneasy to differentiate the order of words, phrases, or sentences which they listened.
Externally, the listening process was influenced by some factors such as media, materials, teacher, and method.The first factor is media. Media which was
used in teaching listening was a tape recorder or notebook. The use of language laboratory was rarely done because some of the equipments were damaged.
Usually tape recorder or notebook was combined with the projector as the visualization. But, not all classes have the projector. Only some classes which
have this media. Beside that, the materials that were used in the process of listening tend to be monotonous. Most of the materials content was dictating and
testing, while explanation is less. The second factor is the teacher. Beside conveying the listening materials,
the teacher should also be able to encourage and make the students interested in and understand the listening activity. Based on the observation, the teacher tends
to test students only and rarely gave any explanation toward the students. The last factor is the method. Methods are techniques used by the teacher in
conveying information or knowledge to the students. The use of appropriate method determined the success of the teaching and learning process. In this case,
the teaching technique of listening in the class was testing only. Any explanation
or information about the text was rarely done. Therefore, some students were looked confused on what they heard because they did not get any explanation.
C. Limitation of the problem
As stated in the identification of the problem there were many factors which related to the teaching of listening skills, namely: students, the teacher, materials,
and technique. It is impossible to solve all of those problems. Based on the researcher’s consideration and discussion with the English teacher, from those
factors, the researcher only focused on the technique. The technique that was used to overcome the students’ problems of listening was by using scaffolding
principles. By using this scaffolding principles, the students are expected to be easier in comprehending the spoken language because they also get any
explanation or information about what they heard.
D. Formulation of the problem
Based on the background of the problem above, the researcher formulated the problem as follow: How can scaffolding improve the students’ listening skills
of class VIII B in SMPN 1 Ngemplak ?
E. The Objective of the study
In relation to the formulation of the problems, the objective of this research is to improve students’ listening skills at grade VIII B of SMPN 1
Ngemplak, Sleman in the academic year of 20132014 by implementation of scaffolding principles.
F. Significance of the study
These significances of the research are devided into: 1.
Theoritical Significance Theoritically, the result of this study may give valuable information and
enrich the knowledge on how to improve students’ listening skills through the use of scaffolding principles.
2. Practical Significance
Practically, this study is expected to be beneficial for:
a. The English Department of Yogyakarta State University It is expected that the result of this research can be used as a reference
and useful for the other students of English Department Program who have the related topic of listening ability and the use of scaffolding
principles. b. The teachers and students of SMPN 1 Ngemplak
Hopefully, the result of this research can inspire the English teachers of SMPN 1 Ngemplak to use and develop various techniques in the
teaching of listening. Beside that, through the implementation of the actions in this research, it will give meaningful and useful contribution
to the students of class VIII B especially for their listening comprehension. So, they were interested and have motivation in learning
English.
c. The researcher himself It is expected that through the implementation of this research, beside
doing the actions, the researcher also obtained much experience and knowledge. He also learnt many things about teaching and learning
process in the school. d. For the other researchers
This research could give the contribution, inspiration, and references for the researcher who was conducting similar research that deals with the
same strategy, and with the same of different research design to improve the quality of teaching listening comprehension through the use of
scaffolding principles.
CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW
A. Theoritical Review
1. Listening
a. The nature of listening
Actually, listening is a skill in a sense that is related, but it has a distinct process from hearing. Listening occupies an active and immediate analysis of the
streams of sounds while hearing involves merely perceiving sound in a passive way. According to Rubin in Helgesen and Brown 2007 : 3, listening is an active
process in which listeners select and interpret information which come from auditory and visual clues. It means that in the comprehension process of spoken
language, the listeners only use part of the incoming information while interpreting the information, listeners use their bakcground knowledge.
Supporting this statement, Spratt, Pulverness, and Williams 2005 : 30, explicitly, categorize listening as a receptive skill which involves responding to
spoken language. Furthermore, Spratt, Pulverness, and Williams 2005 : 31 state that listening involves doing many things such as dealing with the spoken
language characteristic, using the context and knowledge of the world, understanding different text types, understanding different speeds of speech and
accents, and using different listening subskills. Richards and Schimdt 2002 : 13 state that listening comprehension is the
process of understanding speech in first or second language. The study of listening comprehension in second language learning focuses on the role of
