Teaching Listening Comprehension Listening

spoken one. For example the word ‘ship’ and ‘sheep’ which are pronounced differently between the vowel ı and i: but they look the same when it is heard from the recording. According to Ur 1984; 11, it takes a considerable amount of practice for the students to understand things like that. Besides that, in the school, there is little amount of time given by the teacher to learn listening. A study by Ardila 2013: 103 mentioned some factors affecting listening comprehension. They are motivation, paralinguistic features, the lack of vocabulary, lack of concentration, teachers’ methodology and variety of tasks, and the learners’ background knowledge. Another study on listening by Arief 2013: 55 stated five factors that make students difficult in listening, they are: 1 colloquial language, 2 stress, rhytm and intonation, 3 reduces forms, 4 redundancies, and 5 accents. In addition to factors mentioned by Arief, Underwood 1989 as cited in Gilakjani and Ahmadi, 2011: 981-982 stated seven causes of obstacles to listening comprehension. First, listeners cannot control the speed of delivery. Second, listeners cannot always have words repeated. Third, listeners have a limited vocabulary. Fourth, listeners may fail to recognize the signals which indicate that the speaker is moving from one point to another, giving an example, or repeating a point. Fifth, listeners may lack contextual knowledge. Sixth, it can be difficult for listeners to concentrate in a foreign language. Seventh, students may have established certain learning habits such as a wish to understand every word. From the paragraphs above, I conclude that there are two main factors in listening comprehension: internal and external factor. Internal factor in this case is the factor which is originated from the students themselves related to linguistic and non-linguistic factors. Linguistic factors are, for example, lack of vocabulary, poor understanding of sentence relation, poor recognizing of reduces forms, lack of understanding towards colloquial language and so on. Non-linguistic factors are for example lack of motivation, concentration, background knowledge, listening strategy, anxiety, and related to the way the spoken text is presented.Meanwhile external factors are the factors which come from the environment. For example the environment does not support them to develop listening habit, lack of input and practices and lack of immediate feedback when listening. To tackle problems related to internal factors like the linguistic factors, students need to have a lot of practice.Long time ago, there was also a study conducted by Boyle 1984 on factors affecting listening comprehension. He conducted a survey to thirty teachers from two universities in Hongkong, Polythecnic, teacher training colleges and schools. In addition to teachers, he also involved sixty students who have just finished secondary education in the survey.This study discovers that both teachers and students consider lack of practice the most important factor. Therefore, practice is important in listening comprehension. In addition, to tackle problems of non-linguistic factor as well as the external factors, a supportive environment to support students in learning listening is very crucial to be established.

d. Listening Strategies

Listening strategies are conscious plans to deal with incoming speech, particularly when the listener knows that he or she must compensate for incomplete input or partial understanding Rost as cited in Carter and Nunan, 2001: 10. To be successful in listening comprehension, many studies have revealed the importance of listening strategy. Most of the studies said that the use of listening strategy may help learners to be an independent and competent learner. Oxford 1990 as cited in Rahimi, 2012: 551 argues that strategies are important for language learning because they are tools for active, self-directed involvement, which is essential for developing communicative competence. To define learning strategies, it is better first to know learning strategy as listening strategy is a part of it. In the Concise Encyclopedia of Educational Linguistics 1999as cited in Rahimi, 2012: 551, Oxford offers this definition: learning strategies for second or foreign language learners are “specific actions, behaviors, steps, or techniques that students use to improve their own progress in developing skills in a second or foreign language. These strategies can facilitate the internalization, storage, retrieval, or use of the new language.” There are various strategies that can be used for listeners in listening. In this research, I took the taxonomy from Vandergrift. Vandergrift 1997b taxonomy is based on O’Malley and Chamot 1990, 137-139; Oxford 1990, 21; Vandergrift 1996. He proposed three types of strategies, metacognitive, cognitive, and socio-affective. Harmer 2008: 34 explained that cognitive strategies are strategies that we use in order to complete an immediate task. For example, a student may find out about the topic before listening, in order to predict content. Metacognitive strategies are related to learning in general and often have long-term benefits. For example students might choose to tune in to a BBC recording once a week as a strategy for improving their listening. Socio-affective strategies are concerned with the learners’ interaction with other speakers and their attitude towards learning. For example they may choose to rehearse a telephone conversation in L2 with another student in order to develop confidence, or reward themselves with a doughnut when they successfully complete some task in the target language. As listeners, especially in the countries that treat English as a foreign language, often face difficulties in listening, they will naturallyemploy different kinds of listening strategies ranging from cognitive, metacognitive and socio- affective strategies as explained above.Considering the close relation of listening strategy in listening process, it is important to consider it in improving listening comprehension. In this case, listening strategy is taken as a moderator variable of the research. It is not manipulated yet it is observed to strengthen the external validity of the research results. It means that the involvement of listening strategy in this research is to explain whether the effect of FLAP on the students’ listening comprehension can be generalized across all the types of listening strategies students belong to more varied or less varied strategies.

e. Teaching Listening in Senior High School

According to Badan Standar Nasional Pendidikan BSNP, the objective of the English teaching-learning process in Senior High School is to develop communication skills in the form of spoken and written to achieve functional literacy level 2006: 235.Literacy level involves performative, functional, informational, and epistemic. On the performativelevel, people are able to read, write, listen and speak using the shared symbols. On the functional level, people are able to use language in meeting his or her daily needs such as reading newspaper or manuals. On the informational level, one is able to access knowledge with his or her language competency. Meanwhile, on the epistemic