10 the students are motivated to devote their effort and energy to the listening
activity, they have a good perception and improve their listening skills. On the other hand, the students do not have a good perception if they are not motivated
to devote their effort to the listening activity. Further, Altman, Valenzi, and Hodgetts 1985, p. 85 also state that
perception is the way stimuli are selected and grouped by a person so that they could
be meaningfully interpreted. In other words, it was a person‟s view of reality.
Someone‟s perception on something is influenced by many factors, and those factors make the perception different among others. The following are the
factors influencing perception according to Altman et al., 1985, p. 86.
a. Selection of Stimuli
The process in which the person focuses only on small numbers of stimuli information is also known as selection of stimuli. It is one of the reasons why
people perceive things differently. For example, in this study, some students are able to concentrate and focus in selecting the most important information from the
speakers ‟ speaking while others could not select which information that is the
most important.
b. Organization of the Stimuli
The information which has been selected then must be arranged in a meaningful way. The organization could be done by selecting certain items and
putting them together in a meaningful way. For example, in this study, the students are able to deliver the information that heshe gets from the videos by
11 using appropriate words so that everybody in the class could understand the
content of the videos.
c. The Situation
Perceiving a situation is related to how well a person adjusts his or her behavior to the situations. For example, a student who has never heard the non-
native speaker‟s speaking might find it difficult to understand the content of the
speaking. Then the situation is different when the other students who has ever heard the non-native
speakers‟ speaking.
d. Self-Concept
The way a person feels about and perceives himself is known as self- concept. This self-concept is important because the mental pictures determine
much of what a person perceives and does. For example, a student might see himself as an intelligent person who is able to listen to non-native
speakers‟ speaking well.
2. Accent
Accent broadly refers to aspects of pronunciation, prominence or both. Most commonly, the features of pronunciation e.g. choice of vowel, intonation
identify the speaker‟s place of origin regionally. In phonetics, accent is usually
applied to syllables or words which are prominent, whether by loudness and intensity stress and pitch change intonation, Wales 2001, p. 2.
The following section discusses understanding different accents, attitudes toward the non-native accents and the challenges in listening to non-native
English accents.
