THE EFFECTIVENESS OF TEACHING LISTENING COMPREHENSION THROUGH ENGLISH SONGS AT THE ELEVENTH GRADE OF SMAN 12 BANDAR LAMPUNG

ABSTRACT

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF TEACHING LISTENING COMPREHENSION
THROUGH ENGLISH SONGS AT THE ELEVENTH GRADE
OF SMAN 12 BANDAR LAMPUNG

By:
Dito Setiyawan

This research aimed at analyzing the effectiveness of teaching listening
comprehension through English songs and finding out the problems the students
faced in learning macro skills of listening comprehension through English songs.
The population of this research was the students of the eleventh grade of SMAN
12 Bandar Lampung. The data were obtained from the pre-test and post-test to
analyze the improvement of the students and the data of the problems were
obtained through interview in learning macro skills of listening comprehension.
The result showed that the students’ mean score of the pre-test was 53.6 and their
mean score of the post-test was 65.3, in which their gain score was 10.5. It means
that teaching through English songs improved the students’ listening
comprehension in all aspects of macro skills of listening comprehension;
identifying the main idea, identifying specific information and identifying

inference. Besides that, in line with what was observed during the treatment, the
problems the students faced in learning macro skills of listening comprehension
through English songs could be divided into two a) Problems from the listener, in
covering low concentration, understanding the difficult words/phrases,
distinguishing sentence pattern and discourse marker, and unable to keep up with
the native speaker’s speed; b) Problem from listening materials, in example some
songs were long.
However, after practicing the dialogues more frequently through English songs,
the students gradually started to comprehend the materials and were able to
overcome those problems. Based on the results above, it could be concluded that:
1) English songs could improve the students’ listening comprehension
significantly, 2) English songs could overcome the problems the students faced
during the treatment of teaching listening comprehension through English songs.

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LIST OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ................................................................................................
CURRICULUM VITAE .............................................................................

MOTTO ......................................................................................................
DEDICATION ............................................................................................
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................
LIST OF CONTENTS ................................................................................
LIST OF TABLES ......................................................................................
LIST OF APPENDICES .............................................................................

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I. INTRODUCTION
1.1. Background of the Problem .................................................................
1.2. Formulation of the Problem .................................................................

1.3. Objective of the Research ....................................................................
1.4. Uses of the Research ............................................................................
1.5. Scope of the Research ..........................................................................
1.6. Definition of Terms ..............................................................................

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II. FRAME OF THEORIES
2.1. Concept of Listening ............................................................................
2.2. Concept of Teaching Listening ............................................................
2.3. Concept of Song ...................................................................................
2.4. Types of Songs .....................................................................................
2.5. Concept of Teaching Listening through Songs ....................................
2.6. Advantages and Disadvantages ............................................................
2.7. Procedures of Teaching Listening through Songs……………………

2.8. Theoretical Assumption .......................................................................
2.9. Hypothesis ............................................................................................

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III. RESEARCH METHOD
3.1. Research Design ...................................................................................
3.2. Population and Sample.........................................................................
3.3. Data Collecting Technique...................................................................
3.3.1. Administrating the Try-Out ..................................................
3.3.2. Administrating the Pre-test ...................................................
3.3.3. Administrating the Post-test ..................................................

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3.3.4. Conducting the Interview ......................................................
3.4. Research Procedure ..............................................................................
3.4.1. Determining the Population and chose the sample ...............
3.4.2. Administrating the Try-Out ..................................................
3.4.3. Administrating the Pre-Test ..................................................
3.4.4. Conducting the Treatments ...................................................
3.4.5. Administrating the Post-Test ................................................
3.4.6. Analyzing the result of Pre-test and Post-test .......................
3.4.7. Comparing the result of Pre-test and Post-test……………..
3.4.8. Interview……………………………………………………

3.5. Validity and Reliability test .................................................................
3.5.1. Validity..................................................................................
3.5.1.1. Content Validity ........................................................
3.5.1.2. Construct Validity .....................................................
3.5.2. Reliability ..............................................................................
3.6. Level of Difficulty................................................................................
3.7. Discrimination Power...........................................................................
3.8. Scoring System ....................................................................................
3.9. Data Analysis .......................................................................................
3.10. Data Treatment………………………………………………………
3.11. Hypothesis Testing .............................................................................
IV. RESULT AND DISCUSSION
4.1. Result of the Research .........................................................................
4.1.1. Result of the Try-out Test .....................................................
4.1.2. Result of the Pre-test .............................................................
4.1.3. Result of the Post-test ...........................................................
4.1.4. Result of Macro Skill Types of Listening Comprehension
Achievement .........................................................................
4.1.5. The Improvement of the Students’ Listening
Comprehension Ability .........................................................

4.2. The Problems Faced in Teaching Listening .........................................
4.3. Discussion and Findings ......................................................................
4.2.1. The Finding of Teaching Listening Comprehension through
Songs…………………………………………………………
4.2.2 The Finding of the Significant Improvement of Students’
Listening Comprehension through English Songs…………...
4.2.3. The Finding of the Problems the Students Face in
Learning Macro Skills of Listening Comprehension
through English Songs ..........................................................

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V. CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
5.1. Conclusions ..........................................................................................
5.2. Suggestions ..........................................................................................

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REFERENCES............................................................................................
APPENDICES ............................................................................................

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I. INTRODUCTION

This chapter discusses the following points: introduction that deals with
background of the problem, formulation of the problem; objectives of the
research; uses of the research; scope of the research; and definition of terms.

1.1 Background of the problem
English Curriculum 2006 (Depediknas, 2006) states that senior high school
students should master English both the productive skills and receptive skills to
their level appropriately. The productive skills are speaking and writing and
receptive skills are listening and reading. Since sound comes first to our brain,
listening becomes the primary part of mastering the language. Listening has an
important place in teaching-learning English in SMA because practically, people
cannot speak without listening first.
Listening is the first skill that the student should master because if the students
have good listening ability, they will understand what is being said or heard. But
in fact, teacher cannot avoid the real condition of the students that they still have
many difficulties in listening ability. It is supported by Harmer (1991:231) who
states that teaching listening can cause some problems of the students. Moreover,
Swift (2007:16) states that the students hate doing listening comprehension in the

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classroom. There are many reasons for the problem of students’ listening ability, it
can be caused from the students, the teacher, the material that given, technique,
method, etc.
Furthermore, based on the researcher’s experience in teaching practice (PPL) at
MA Miftahul Huda, Terbanggi Besar, Lampung Tengah, it was found that the
students’ motivation in learning listening were low because most of the students
cannot understand or comprehend what the speaker says and the methods used
were boring. Besides, when the researcher did pre-observation in SMAN 12
Bandar Lampung, he found the same problems happened there. The teachers just
used monotonous short dialogues and texts to teach listening comprehension in
that school. Therefore, the researcher intended to help the teachers solving this
problem by teaching listening comprehension through song, because according to
the researcher, by doing this method the student will be more interested to study.
It is generally known that students mostly have special interest in listening to
English songs. It may be written for one or several voices and it is generally
performed with instrumental accompaniment. Songs can also motivate a positive
emotional influence on listener. It is noticed that students will often recite the
words of the song while singing it; it makes the students unconsciously
understand the content of the songs. It will eventually develop their active
understanding of the songs. It makes students’ ears accustomed to listening either
to English song or dialogue or monologue. But in MA Miftahul Huda, Terbanggi
Besar, Lampung Tengah when the researcher taught them about vocabulary and
grammar through song, they did not understand about them.

3

According to Bramasto (2006), students’ listening frequency of English songs
correlates to their listening ability. He states that listening to English songs has a
correlation with listening comprehension, as there is tendency that when the
students’ frequency in listening to English song is higher, their listening score is
also higher.
Considering the statement, the researcher found out the effectiveness of English
songs in teaching listening. The researcher was interested in investigating the
students’ ability in listening. The research was conducted in SMAN 12 Bandar
Lampung because the researcher considered that there were some problems in
students’ listening there and as one of the alumnus of this school, the researcher
did this research in order to help the teacher in solving this problems. Therefore,
the title of this research is “The Effectiveness of Teaching Listening
Comprehension through English Songs at the Eleventh Grade of SMAN 12
Bandar Lampung.”

1.2 Formulation of the Problem

The researcher formulates the research as follows:
1. Is there any significant improvement of students’ listening ability after
being taught through English songs?
2. What problems do the students face during teaching and learning process
of listening by using English songs?

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1.3 Objective of the Research

In line with the formulation of the problems, the objectives of this research are:
1. To find out whether there is significant improvement of students’ listening
ability after being taught through English songs.
2. To find out the problem faced by the students during teaching and learning
process of listening by using English songs.

1.4 Uses of the Research

The findings of the research may be beneficial both theoretically and practically.

a. Theoretically, the result of this research can be used as a reference for the
next researcher who will concentrate in improving the students’ listening
comprehension through English songs. In addition, the conclusion of this
research can be used as a reflection to improve the students’ listening
comprehension through English songs.
.
b. Practically, the uses of this research are:
1. To give motivation to help students to increase their ability in listening
through English songs in order to enhance their listening
comprehension ability.
2. To be a consideration for English teachers to apply the technique
which is better to teach listening for the students.

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1.5 Scope of the Research

This research is a quantitative research which was conducted by administrating
the pre-test and post-test to analyze the improvement of the students’ listening
comprehension through English songs. The researcher conducted interview to find
out the problem faced by the students in teaching and learning process of listening
by using English songs in SMAN 12 Bandar Lampung. The subjects of the
research are students in class XI IPA 2 which consists of 30 students.

There are three aspects of listening that were measured in this research. These are
identifying the main idea, identifying specific information and identifying
inference in teaching listening, the researcher used classic pop songs to help the
students for having better skill in those aspects of listening in macro skill level.
Moreover, in this research the researcher used comprehension listening type,
since it was the most appropriate type of listening to song.

The researcher chose classic pop songs because, classic pop songs have two
elements, they are lyric and rhyme that simply to understand than any other type
of songs and can make them easier to be comprehended by the listeners.

1.6 Definition of Terms

In order to avoid misunderstanding, specific terms used in this study are defined
accordingly:

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Listening
Listening is an active process of deciphering and constructing meaning from
both verbal and non-verbal messages. And comprehending the general idea of
the utterances heard by listener.

Song
Song is short musical work set to a poetic text with equal importance given to
the musical and in the words Doren (1980: 220).

Teaching Listening
Teaching listening comprehension is the teaching actively conducted by the
teacher to make the students able to comprehend the content of the oral text.

Effectiveness
The degrees to which objectives are achieved and the extent to which targeted
problems are solved.

English songs
English song is the song which is sung and written in English.

II. FRAME OF THEORIES

In this chapter the researcher reveals concepts related to this research. Concept
of listening, concept of teaching listening, concept of song, type of song, concept
of teaching listening through song, advantages and disadvantages and procedure
of teaching listening through songs, theoretical assumption, and hypotheses. They
are presented as follows.

2.1 Concept of Listening

Listening is an active process of obtaining information of what we hear. Nunan
(2003:24) states that listening, along with reading, as receptive skill, requires a
person to receive and understand incoming information rather than produce. As
people listen, the process is not only in what they hear but also connect it to other
information they already know. In other words, listening is not the same as
hearing (Rixon, 1986). The former requires wholehearted concentration,
readiness, and awareness in recognizing what is being heard, especially in spoken
language, as there are listening characteristics that should be taken into account.

According to Morley (1991:82), listening is the most common communicative
activity in daily life, we can expect to listen twice as much as we speak, four times
more than we read, and five times more than we write, because it is the first skill
when we learn a language, Margareth (1988:13) states that listening is
considered as the first step in learning a language. It means that learning a

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language is started from listening. That is why listening becomes important to be
investigated in this research, listening comes first into human life than the other
skills. As a result, as the basis of humans’ skills, the researcher tried to apply
English songs in increasing students’ listening ability.
Syque (2002:5) differentiates the types of listening as follows:

1. Discriminative Listening
Discriminative Listening is the most basic type of listening,
whereby the difference between sounds is identified. Here,
the listener learns to distinguish between sounds and
phonemes of the language also to discriminate between
muscle and skeletal movements that signify different
meaning.

2. Comprehension Listening
In this type of listening, the listener tries to understand what
others are saying. And through understanding body
language, voice, can help the listener to understand the
messages from others, because that is the key of
communication.

3. Evaluative Listening
In this type of listening, the listeners make a judgment of
other person statement, whether something is good, bad, or
worthy.

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4. Appreciative Listening
In this type of listening, the listener seeks certain
information that can meet the listener needs or goals.

5. Empathetic Listening
In this type of listening, the listener tries to understand
other people’s beliefs, models, emotions and also goals.
This type of listening obligates the listener to be excellent
in discriminating the nuances of emotional signals.

6. Therapeutic Listening
In this type of listening, the listener does not has only
emphatic feeling but also has deep connection in order to
aid the speaker understand, change or develop in some way.

7. Dialogic Listening
In this type of listening, the listeners learn through
conversation and engaged interchange of ideas and
information in which they actively seek to learn more about
the person and how they think.

When the listeners are listening to the music, sometimes they just need to get
some information from the song without any intension to consider body
movement, emotional signals, relationship between singer and listener, and
also muscle and skeletal movement. Therefore, in this research the researcher
refers to type 4 for the listening that was taught and tested in the class.

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In terms of the skills of listening, Hughes (1991:134) proposes two main
divisions:
1. Macro skill
1) Identifying the Main Idea
Identifying the main idea of a text is one of the most important specific
comprehension skills. According to Hancock (1987:54), the main idea
is the essence of the text or rather what the speaker is trying to get
across to the listener. In other words, that is what the speaker wants
listener to know about. Therefore, the main idea is the important idea
that the speaker develops throughout the text.
2) Identifying Specific Information
Supporting sentence or specific information develops the topic
sentence by giving definition, examples, facts, comparison, analogy,
cause and effect, statistics and quotation.

3) Identifying Inference
According to Kathleen (1986:31), an inference is an educational guess
or prediction about something unknown based on available facts and
information. The listener will be able to do this by making use of the
context in which the word occurred, in order to give him a rough idea
of its meaning.

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2. Micro skill
In micro skill, to understand what someone says, a listener has to
interpret intonation pattern (e.g recognize stress and rhythm),
recognition of function of structures (interrogative as request,
imperatives e.g sit down!), cohesive devices e.g such as and which,
detect sentence constituents, e.g subject, verb, object, prepositions ),
recognizing discourse markers (e.g Well; Oh, another thing is; Now,
finally).

Basically, the senior high school students have to understand identifying the main
idea, identifying specific information and identifying inference, in order to
understand what someone says. Besides, it is also based on the curriculum of
senior high school that mostly consists of text both in monologue and functional.
Without understanding this information, the listeners will get difficulties to
understand the meaning. For that reason, the researcher chooses both micro and
macro skill because by having these skills, the students will be able to understand
the spoken English. Hence, the researcher used classic pop song because the lyric
and the harmony were easy to be understood. Those helped the students to master
the aspects include in macro skill.

2.2

Concept of Teaching Listening

Language learning depends on listening. Listening provides the aural input that
serves as the basis for language acquisition and enables learners to interact in
spoken communication. Effective language instructors show students how they
can adjust their listening behavior to deal with a variety of situations, types of

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input, and listening purposes. They help students develop a set of listening
strategies and match appropriate strategies to each listening situation.
According to Swift (2007:18), teaching listening suggests that we need to take a
more active approach to improve listening abilities, by focusing on the specific
problems that the students have and planning listening activities, which helped to
resolve the problems.

There are two approaches involved in listening according to Swift:
1. Bottom-up processing
The bottom-up approach sees comprehension as a matter of listeners first
decoding (or understanding) the smallest elements of what they hear-the
elements of sounds.

2. Top-down processing
The top-down approach sees understanding as starting from the listener’s
background knowledge of the non-linguistic context and of working down
towards the individual sounds. Listeners will actively interpret what they
hear in terms of their understanding of the situation and the word in
general.
According to Wong (2005:4), way of treating the teaching and learning of
listening by focusing on how to get the main ideas, the gist or the meaning in
listening materials even when it is clear that the learners have not been able to
identify a lot of the speech sounds is often called the top-down processing
approach. Thus, in this research the researcher used Top-down processing as the
approach in teaching listening through song.

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2.3

Concept of Song

Song consists of lyrics or poetic text. The lyrics and the text are various. Redlich
(1975: 28) adds that song is short composition usually for one voice, based on
lyrics poem.

According to Weikart (1988: 12) song is a short poem or a sequence of verses
which is composed with music and intended to sing. Song, which belongs to genre
including both lyrics and music, can be added to list. They are marked by richness
of content, poetical metaphor and symbol that emotionally reflect the world we
live in. songs can motivate a positive emotional influence on listener.

The lyrics in the songs that are sung by the singer can be heard by the listener, and
actually it is considered good in English language teaching especially in listening.
Students are accustomed to listening to English songs they will be easily
recognize the utterances of the singer, and that ability can be implied when they
have a listening test. That’s why the researcher used songs to find out the
effectiveness of English song in teaching listening.

It is generally known that students mostly have special interest in listening to
English songs. The facts are in line with Doren (1980: 220) who stated that song
is short musical work set to a poetic text with equal importance given to the
musical and in the words. It may be written for one or several voices and it is
generally performed with instrumental accompaniment. Songs also can motivate a
positive emotional influence on listener. It is noticed that students will often recite
the words of the song while singing it; it makes the students unconsciously
understand the content of the songs. It eventually developed their active

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understanding of the songs. It made students’ ears accustomed to listening either
to English song or dialogue or monologue.

When students listen to songs, the affective element of interest comes to play, and
in this case is listening to English songs. Song can be the representative of
feelings or psychological condition for young students, it can comfort the mind
and gives spirit.

2.4 Types of Songs

A song is certainly one of the most prominent elements in music. The people will
come across several different categories of songs which have a unique mood and
touch. As a result, they cannot be differentiated on the basis of specific factors.
The main reason why songs cannot be marked in only one class is because the
differences in their type of music, lyrics, and purpose. For example a ballad can
even have a metal music feel to it. However, songs may be roughly classified as
per types of lyrics, music, tone, culture, and similar other factors. In the following,
we have just given a random list of different songs.

Classic pop songs are those in which traditional music has a main role. These
songs are first composed by artists like The Beatles, The Madness and Michael
Jackson, just to name a few. However, these songs have had a substantial impact
on the music we hear today.
There are several characteristics of song that can be used as a teaching material, as
the followings.
1. The song should have a moral value for the students.

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2. The song should be easy listening.
3. The song should not harass any society.
4. The lyrics should be rather easy to understand.
5. The lyrics should not have too many repetitions.

2.5

Concept of Teaching Listening through Songs

Students can learn native speakers’ language by listeninng to the songs. As
Coromina (1993:35) states that there are many advantages of using songs in the
classroom: First, they are easily available; second, they present new vocabulary
and expression in context; students become familiar with the pronunciation of
native speakers; third, they provide topics for discussion; and the last, most of
students enjoy listening to and analyzing songs, since they provide a break from
the textbook and workbook routine.

The use of music and songs in the classroom can stimulate very positive
association to the study of a language. Song can play a really important part in the
language classroom. It can change the atmosphere in the room within seconds
(Budden, 2003:13). Furthermore, songs can be used as a nice lead in to the topic
and a way to pre-teach some of vocabulary. According to Jamalus (1975), songs
are an art to express peoples’ feeling trough words and tones. Song consists of
several music sentences. A simple song usually consists of four sentences
(Jamalus,1988:45).
In addition, songs as the medium of learning can encourage students’ interest.
According to Lo and Fai Li in Saricoban and Metin (2000), learning English
through songs makes students enjoy their learning in classroom. Songs create fun

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and relaxed atmosphere that can expose students to pronounce unconsciously
(Ebong and Sabbadini, 2006). For students, listening to the songs especially their
favorite ones; a pleasant activity in which they enjoy spending their leisure time
with different range of time and purpose (Lynch, 2006).

From the statement above, it implies that students can recognize easily some new
words and expressions in context that is uncommon. Moreover, they can be
familiar with the pronunciation of the native speaker. Furthermore, it makes them
practice listening well all the time indirectly. In other words, a high frequency of
listening to English songs will help students to develop and improve their
listening ability because students can learn and entertain themselves at the same
time by listening to songs. It can be inferred that song can be used as a teaching
material for improving students’ listening because song can present new
vocabulary and expression in context, change the atmosphere in the room within
seconds and make students enjoy their learning classroom.
2.6

Advantages and Disadvantages

According to the previous research done by Marlina (2011), listening through
English song has some advantages and disadvantages. It can be explain as
follows:
Advantages:
1. Song can make the students easy to find for the sake of vocabulary and
structure.
2. Song can make the students feel secure and enjoy because of those
technique are entertaining and fun.

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3. Song can increase students’ motivation to study, from the music, the
rhythm, and lyric.
4. Song can improve students’ to produce oral English by singing the
song.

Disadvantages:
1. If the teacher cannot choose the kind of song which is appropriate to
the level of the students, it can make the students difficult to
understand the song.

The level of vocabulary and structure which are used should be appropriate with
the level of students, if it is not it will make the students confuse and difficult to
get the idea of the song.
2.7

Procedures of Teaching Listening Through Songs

One of the ways to make the process of teaching in the class successful is by
making and applying the guidelines of teaching.
Philip (1993: 95) states some general guidelines for doing action songs in class,
they are:

a. Play the song once or twice with the students just listening, so that they
begin to absorb the tune and rhythm.
b. Play and sing the song again and get them to clap the rhythm and the tune
to the music.
c. Get them to join the action with you.

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d. Ask them if they can tell you what the song means with the action explain
anything they do not understand.
e. Play the song again. The students join with the action, and sing along with
the words if they wish.

Based on the general guidelines for doing songs in class, the researcher applied
those guidelines to be teaching procedure as follows:

Pre Activity
a. Asking the students about their favorite songs or kind of songs that they
often listen.
1. In this procedure teacher asks some students about their favorite music
and songs.
2. Students answer the question given by teacher.
b. Giving an example of songs and playing the song in the class, students just
listen to the song, so that they begin to absorb the tune and the rhythm.
1. The teacher plays the cassettes and asks students to listen to the song.
2. The students listen to the song and try to absorb the tune and the
rhythm.

c. Playing the song again and asking them to sing by giving a brief account
of the theme or story of the song in students’ own language.
1. The teacher plays the song once again and asks them to sing together
after playing the song and singing together the teacher asks students to
give a brief account of the theme or story of the song.

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2.

The students listen to the songs and sing together after that students
give a brief account of the theme or story of the song in their own
language.

While Activity
a. Giving the students a copy of the song chorus one by one and asking the
students to fill in the blank of the songs’ lyric and discussing it with their
friends after that the teacher asks students to read the chorus aloud
together with the teacher guidance in order to give them a correct
pronunciation.
1. The teacher gives copy of the song and asks them to fill in blank of the
song lyric and discusses it with their friends, after that the teacher
reads the lyric together with students by singing it.
2. Students fill the blank and discuss it with their friends, after that the
students read the song lyric by singing it.
b.

Playing the song once again. They will be asked to practice singing the
song together.
1. The teacher plays the song again and asks students to sing together.
2. The students sing together.

c. After singing together the students discuss the songs’ chorus/refrain and
describe the pattern used.
1. The teacher asks the students to discuss the songs’ chorus/refrain and
describe the meaning of it and also the patterns sentence that is used in
it.

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2. The students discuss the songs’ chorus that is given by the teacher and
describe the meaning of it and also the pattern used.
d.

Playing the song again and asking the students to sing once more.
1. The teacher plays the song once more and asks students to sing
together.
2. The students sing the song together.

Post Activity
a. Asking the students to make formulation of the pattern and practice
making sentences using the patterns.
1. The teacher asks the students to make formulation of the patterns based
on the songs’ chorus and the students have to discuss with their friends
and practice making sentences by using the pattern that they make.
2. The teacher asks the students to guess the meaning of unfamiliar
vocabulary and the teacher helps the students to tell the exact meaning
based on context dictionary.
3. The students make the formulation of the pattern based on the songs’
chorus that they have discussed with their friends and practice making
sentences using the pattern that they make.

b. Having the students achieved the target structure, the teacher will discuss
it together with the students, and then the teacher will ask the students
whether there is any difficulty in teaching and learning process.

The process of acquiring the rules of the pattern here is carried out deductively.

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2.8

Theoretical Assumption

Students’ listening comprehension can improve through various techniques. The
same techniques might be better to apply in listening comprehension. A possible
technique can be matched with students’ purpose in listening. An appropriate
technique considers develop students’ listening comprehension.
Based on the explanation above, it can be assumed that classic pop song can be
used to increase students’ listening comprehension in identifying the specific
information from the song lyrics for senior high school students. It makes the
students aware of their purpose of listening and can motivate them to identify the
specific information in the song lyric, and also makes them enjoy the listening
activity.
Song is an appropriate technique which can be used to increase students listening
comprehension. It is clearly explain that song is enjoyable for study because it has
good and short lyric which can be easy to be understood and remembered, song
also has its rhythm and music. Therefore, the researcher concludes that song is a
better technique in increasing students’ listening comprehension.

2.9 Hypothesis
Based on the theories and explanation presented, the teacher proposed hypothesis
as follows:
H1: There is significant improvement of students’ listening comprehension
ability after being taught through English songs.

III. RESEARCH METHOD

This chapter discusses the research design that was used by the researcher,
population and sample of the research, how the researcher collected the data,
research procedure, validity and reliability of the test, level of difficulty,
discrimination power, scoring system, data analysis, data treatment and hypothesis
testing.

3.1

Research Design

This quantitative research has two variables which are teaching listening through
English songs as the independent variable and listening ability as the dependent
one. The researcher used one group pre test post test design. The research used
two classes, one as the try-out class and other class as the experimental class. The
students were given pre test, the treatments and post test. The treatments of
teaching listening comprehension through English songs were implemented three
times. One group pre test post test design is represented as follows:
T1 X T2
T1 : Pre test
X : Treatments, is the application of using classic pop song. The researcher
will conduct three treatments.

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T2 : post test

3.2

(Setiyadi, 2006:143)

Population and Sample

The population of this research was the students of the eleventh grade of SMAN
12 Bandar Lampung at even semester academic year of 2012/2013. The sample
was chosen by the English teacher of that school. The researcher chose this way to
determine the sample because he did not want to disturb teacher’s teaching
learning program that has been being run at that time. The researcher took two
classes of seven science study program class as the try-out and experimental class.
Each class consisted of 30 students. There are twenty female students and ten
male students in the try-out class. Then there are twelve female students and
eighteen male students in the experimental class.

3.3

Data Collecting Technique

3.3.1. Administrating the Try-Out
The Try-out was administrated in eleventh class two as the try-out class in
the first meeting before Pre-test of teaching listening comprehension through
English songs implemented in the experimental class, as the consideration of
the pre-test items.

3.3.2. Administrating the Pre-test
The pre-test was administrated in eleventh science 2 class as the
experimental class before giving the treatment of teaching listening

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comprehension through English songs to see the students’ basic listening
comprehension.
3.3.3. Administrating the Post-test
The post-test was administrated in eleventh science 2 class after the
treatment of teaching listening comprehension through English songs
implemented by using the same topic and three times repetition of one
question like in the pre-test. The result of the post-test was compared with
the result of the pre-test to analyze the improvement of the students’
listening comprehension through English songs.
3.3.4. Conducting the Interview
The interview was conducted in eleventh science 2 class, in which the
students’ answers were classified and generalized as the resource. The
interview was conducted to find out the problems the students face in
learning macro skills of listening comprehension through English songs.

3.4

Research Procedure

The procedures of this research as follows:
1.

Determining the population and chose the sample.

2.

Administering try out
The try was used to know the quality of the test to take the data and to
determine which item should be omitted for the pre-test and post-test. The
questions were multiple choices. In this try out the researcher administered

25

the try out test in order to measure the level of difficult (LD) and
discrimination power (DP), to find the reliability and the validity of the
test. The test item was objective test. It was given in class out of the
experimental. It was administered 25 items in 45 minutes.

3. Administering the pre test
Pre test was needed to find out the students’ ability in listening. The
students heard a song and then they tried to answer several questions
connecting to the song. The questions represented the five aspects that
measure in this research, that are determining main idea, finding the detail,
reference, inference, and vocabulary. The questions were multiple choices.
4. Conducting the treatments
At the first time, the researcher who acts as the teacher told the student
about the material. Then the students heard a classic pop song as the
introduction to the material. Next, the researcher gave the students two
kinds of tests they were; multiple choices and missing lyrics that was
answered based on the song that they heard. The song was played three
times. And the researcher conducted three treatments.
5. Administering post test
The post test was conducted after the treatments. The students answered
several questions based on the classing song that was heard by them. The
questions were multiple choices and missing lyrics. It was administered 25
items in 45 minutes.

26

6. Analyzing the result of pre test and post test
The researcher gave score for the students’ answer in pre test and post test
by seeing the three aspects that was measured in this research, these are
identifying the main idea, identifying specific information and identifying
inference. In this step the researcher used inter-rater to check the students’
result in order to avoid the subjectivity in giving correction.
7.

Comparing the result of pre test and post test
After analyzing the result of pretest and post test, the researcher compared
those results to answer whether there is significant improvement made by
the students after being taught about listening comprehension through
classic songs.

8. Interview
The researcher gave some questions to the student considering whether the
classic pop song was good or not for students’ listening ability.

3.5

Validity and Reliability of the Tests

The test was considered as the valid one if the test measures the object to be
measured and it was suitable with the criteria (Hatch and Farhady, 1982:250).
According to the Hatch and Farhady (1982:281), there are two basic types of
validity, such as content validity and construct validity. Therefore, to measure
whether the test has a good validity, this research used content and construct
validity. The validity of the instrument was presented as follows:

27

Content Validity
Content validity concerned with whether the test is sufficiently representative and
comprehensive for the test. According to Hatch and Farhady (1982:251), since
content validity is the extent to which a test measures a representative sample of
the subject meter, the focus of content validity is adequacy of the sample of the
appearance of the test. Therefore, since the test instrument is conducted to get the
data of the students’ listening comprehension achievement, the content validity of
the test items were conducted by including listening materials which were
arranged based on the materials already given and it was suitable with the
curriculum. Thus, if the measuring instrument has represented all the ideas that
connected with the materials that were measured, that measuring instrument has
fulfilled the aspect of content validity.

Construct Validity
Construct validity concerned with whether the test was actually in line with the
theory of what it means to know the language that was being measured. To
achieve the construct validity, the test was adopted from the indicators of Basic
Competence (kompetensi dasar) that have been formulated before in syllabus
based on KTSP 2006 curriculum of senior high school.
According to Hughes (1991:134), in macro skill, to understand what someone
says, a listener has to involve with listening for specific information,
obtaining gist of what is being heard or the listener should get the general
idea of the information, following instructions or directions. Therefore, in this

28

research, the researcher focused more on improving the students’ macro skills of
listening comprehension rather than micro skills of listening.

Besides, the test instrument was conducted based on the aspects of macro skills of
listening comprehension above. It was tried-out first then was selected from 35
items. Then, the test instrument used to analyze the improvement of the students’
listening comprehension through songs by measuring these aspects, such as
identifying the main idea, identifying specific information and identifying
inference (WH questions).

In order to fulfill the criteria of construct validity, the table of specification of
listening aspect which was modified from the theory proposed by Hughes
(1991:134), the test instrument can be seen below:
Table 3.5.1 Summary of specification of listening test
No

Types of Listening Comprehension

Items Numbers

1

12,13,16,23,26,30,33

20%

2

Identifying the main idea
Identifying specific information

43%

3

Identifying inference

2,3,7,8,10,15,18,19,20,
22,24,28,29,32,34
1,4,5,6,9,11,14,17,21,25,
27,31,35
35 items

100%

Total

Percentage (%)

37%

In order to measure the content and construct validity, inter-rater analysis was
used to make the listening test instrument more valid. Thus, three English teachers
of SMAN 12 Bandar Lampung were the raters. If the percentage of one item is
>50%, it means that the item test will be taken.

29

Reliability
Reliability of the test can be defined as the extent to which a test produces
consistent result when administrated under similar conditions (Hatch and Farhady,
1982:243). Split-half technique used to estimate the reliability of the test and to
measure the coefficient of the reliability between odd and even group, Pearson
Product Moment formula was used as follows:

rl=

 xy
 x  y 
2

2

rl: Coefficient of reliability between odd and even numbers items.
x: Odd number.
y: Even number.
x2: Total score of odd number items.
y2: Total score of even number items.
xy: Total number of odd and even numbers.
(Lado, 1961 in Hughes, 1991:32).
The criteria of reliability are:
 0.80 – 1.00: high.
 0.50 – 0.79: moderate.
 0.00 – 0.49: low.
(Hatch and Farhady, 1985:247).

30

To know the coefficient correlation of whole items, Spearmen Brown`s prophecy
formula was used. The formula was followed:
rk =2r1
1+r1
rk: The reliability of the test.
r1: The reliability of the half test.
(Hatch and Farhady, 1982:246).

3.6

Level of Difficulty

Level of difficulty was used to look for the level of test that was given to the
students.
For seeing the level of difficulty, the researcher used the following formula:

In which:
LD

: Level of Difficulty

U

: The proportion of the upper group students

L

: The proportion of the lower students

N

: The total number of students who following the test

The criteria are:
< 0.30

: difficult

0.30-0.70

: average

31

> 0.70

: easy

( Shohamy, 1985:79)

3.7 Discrimination Power

Discrimination power was the extent to which the items discriminate between the
testers, separating the more able testers from the less able.

For determining discrimination power, the researcher used the following formula:

In which:
DP Discrimination power
U : The proportion of the upper group students
L : The proportion of the lower students
N : The total number of students

The criteria are:
DP: 0.70-1.00

: Excellent

DP: 0.40-0.69

= Good

DP: 0.20-0.39

= Satisfactory

DP: 0.00-0.19

= Poor

DP: - (Negative) = Bad item, should be omitted

(Heaton, 1975:182)

32

3.8 Scoring System
The scoring system that was used in this research was driving the right answer by
total items times 100. In scoring the students’ result of the pretest and post-test,
the formula by Arikunto (1993, 240):

s=

x 100

Notes:
S : score of the best
R : the right answers
N : the total item

3.9

Data analysis

In order to see whether there was an effect in students’ listening by using classic
pop songs, the researcher analyzed the data by:
1. Scoring the pretest and posttest.
2. Tabulating the results of the tests and calculating the mean of the pretest
and the posttest.
3. Drawing conclusion from the tabulated results of the pretest and posttest
administered, that is by statistically analyzing the data using statistical
computerization i. e. repeated measures T-test of SPSS ( Statistical
Package for Social Science) version 17.0 for windows to see whether or
not the difference between pretest and posttest are significant, in which the

33

significance was determined by p < 0.05. It was used as the data come
from the same sample or known as paired data
(Hatch and Farhady, 1982:114).

The researcher also used qualitative data to support this researcher in order to see
whether or not there were some problems or difficulties faced by the students in
the aspects of macro skill in listening during teaching learning process through
classic pop songs. The researcher knew whether there were some differences
between the previous technique taught by the teacher and the technique which was
used by the researcher through classic pop songs. The researcher also intended to
know whether or not the students enjoy in learning by using classic pop songs.

Interview conducted in experimental class in the form of open and formal
questions (the questions must be in the form of explanation or description rather
than “yes” or “no” answers, to avoid the students from being reluctant to answer
the questi