Theory of Prior Knowledge

15 while listening. In listening process, the listeners will take intention, concentration, and also practice. He explains that listeners will not only listen to what is said by speaker, but also need to connect with their existing knowledge. Therefore, in acquiring listening skill, the learners also need to have existing knowledge.

b. Difficulties in Listening

Listening is often considered as a difficult skill to be acquired. Many students face difficulties in listening as it needs high attention and also concentration in order to be able to listen effectively. Students often have difficulties in doing the tasks of listening. However, the difficulties are as the result of many aspects. Brown and Yule 1938b, as cited in Nunan 1991: 24, propose four factors affecting the difficulty of oral language tasks. As listening process involves at least two people, i.e. a speaker and a listener, the first common factor is indeed the speaker. The speaker factor here refers to the speed of speaking, the quantity of the speaker, and also the accent of the speakers. Listening becomes more difficult when the listeners have to listen to a very fast speaker. Besides, the number of speaker who speaks at a time will also affect the quality of listening. The more speakers speak at a time, the harder listeners comprehend the message of what is being told. Moreover, unfamiliar accent of the speakers may cause misinterpretation of a word or even the message. Yet, the speakers give influence to many difficulties. 16 The second problem is the listeners. It is related to the role of listeners, the level of response required, and the interest of the topic being listened. The role that listeners play affects the degree of listeners’ attention. When the listeners do not have big role in listening to the topic, the attention will be condensed so that it may cause lack of understanding. On the other hand, the level of response required from the listeners can also affect the degree of attention. The listeners will not listen to the whole information in order to obtain the whole idea or message of what is being listened. Otherwise, they will only listen to some parts they think to be important in giving responses. However, the most important thing is listeners’ interest. The listener will not pay much attention to the topic if they are not interested at all. The content of what is being listened becomes the third difficulty. The content involves grammar, vocabulary, information structure, and background knowledge. The complex grammar and unfamiliar words cause low understanding. Moreover, the information structure that is how information is being told is also important. The structure of the information should be clear and orderly. Another difficulty is background knowledge. The background knowledge contributes the familiarity of the topic that is going to be listened to. As stated before, familiarity is important so as to make the listeners keep their attention. When the listeners are familiar to the topic, they will listen to it very carefully. The last factor proposed by Brown and Yule is support. The support refers to the use of supporting items to the listening task. It includes pictures, 17 diagrams, or other visual aids. The use of those items is very useful to increase listeners’ motivation in doing the task. In addition, citing Anderson and Lynch 1988, Nunan 1991: 24 provides five difficulties of listening task. Basically, the idea of the difficulties is the same, but is presented in different words. The difficulties are “the organization of information,” “the familiarity of the topic,” “the explicitness and sufficiency of the information,” “the type of referring information,” and “whether the text described static or dynamic relationship.” As a final point, there are a lot of difficulties in completing listening task well. Therefore, teachers should be able to overcome the difficulty. One solution to reduce the problem is by helping the students construct knowledge about what to be listened to. By doing so, the students will be more familiar to the topic. Besides, they will also have clear and sufficient information about the topic, and also will understand the content better.

c. Bottom Up and Top Down Processes

In the process of acquiring listening skill, there are two activities that are commonly applied by the English language teachers. According to Nunan 2003: 26, the distinction of the process of learning is based on the way the students attempt to understand what they listen to. The two activities to acquire listening skill are bottom-up and top-down. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI