5 particular education level, for example Senior High School, demands specific
materials which are appropriate for their learning needs. Therefore this research is aimed at developing an Android application for facilitating the tenth grade students
in improving their listening comprehension.
B. Problem Identification
All reasons mentioned above have encouraged the researcher to build up an effort to solve the problems related to listening skill in Senior High School with the
help of Android application. An Android application for listening comprehension is developed through this research. Listening comprehension, which usually
becomes a part of National Examination, needs to be prepared earlier. Therefore, students should be given more listening practices. Actually the portion of listening
that is done by students is greater than speaking. During the teaching learning activities, they do more listening than speaking. It takes place while the teacher is
explaining or during the discussions. However, the goals of the lesson are on the productive skills i.e. writing and speaking, or on the literacy skills i.e. reading and
writing. As a result, students still find difficulties on listening skills. It is necessary to provide students with adequate language exposures
through listening. Harmer 2001 proposes two main reasons why it is important to make students get used to listen to spoken English. First, it aims to let them hear
different varieties and accents, rather than just the voice from their teacher with its own idiosyncrasies. Provided various listening materials, especially the authentic
ones, the students will be exposed not only to variety of English, but also to different language expressions. The second reason for teaching listening is to help students
acquire language subconsciously. Through listening, they can get a lot of
6 information, not only vocabulary and grammar, but also pronunciation, stress,
rhythm, and pitch. In fact, the listening activities are not yet effective. The sources of listening are mostly from the teacher’s explanation which is taken from the
coursebooks. Sometimes audios are played through th e teacher’s laptop and
speakers. Nevertheless, they are not comprehensible enough for the whole class. Students cannot concentrate and learn the language intensively through such
activities. There is a great opportun
ity to use technology for improving the students’ listening skills. However, both teachers and students are not aware to it. Many
teachers prefer depending on textbooks to developing materials or media by themselves. There should be a variation of teaching materials, methods, or media.
In the same way, the students also lack efforts to improve their language skills, especially listening. Students have few resources of listening materials. When they
face listening tests, they often find difficulties. Students have a good access to the internet, but they use it rarely to practice listening or to browse listening materials.
There are a lot of media that can be used by students to facilitate them in developing their listening skills, for example Personal Computers PCs, laptops,
tablets, mobile phones, and other Personal Digital Assistants PDAs. However, they do not utilize those facilities to practice listening frequently. With the support
from the teacher, students can be encouraged to use those mobile devices to improve their listening skills.
C. Problem Limitation
As discussed in the previous sections, there are many problems related to the teaching and learning process. However, there are some limitations of the study.
7 First, it focuses on the research and development of an application for facilitating
learning. Therefore, no experimental study is conducted to measure students’ listening competence after they have experienced using the application. It focuses
more on the development of an application and its validation. Second, the focus is on listening comprehension for students of Senior High
School grade X. Listening comprehension can influence student’s language
competence as it provides language inputs which affect the productive skills, especially speaking. Besides, listening comprehension is regarded important
because students will face it later in the National Examination. Therefore, they need more preparation for it. If they are prepared since in the tenth grade, they will
simultaneously get more inputs for better results of the listening test. Third, the limitation is on selecting Android platform for the application.
The reason is particularly because it is associated with the terms specified by SEAMOLEC as the sponsor, which requires the SEAMOLEC students to conduct
a study on developing Android applications. Android is chosen because of its assessibility and complete features. The Android application can be used as the
implementation of m-learning at senior high schools.
D. Research Questions
The problems can be formulated as follows. 1. What does the Android application for listening comprehension of Senior High
School Grade X look like? 2. How does the Android application for Senior High School Grade X support m-
learning?
8
E. Research Objectives
There are two main objectives in this research. The first objective is the final version of the iconic model of an Android application which consists of some useful
features for facilitating the students in improving their listening comprehension. The researcher combines the steps in R D model proposed by Borg and Gall
1983 and Dick and Carey model Gall et al., 2003 in developing the application. The second objective of this research is the findings about how the Android
application supports the Mobile Learning m-learning in Senior High School grade X according to the principles of m-learning by Elias 2011. The researcher
distributes questionnaires and conducting interviews to gather information about the participants’ opinion after using the application.
F. Research Benefits
This research is expected to give some benefits not only theoretically but also practically. Theoretically, this research describes some useful features in the
Android application which can support the students in improving their listening comprehension. Besides, the m-learning model in the research will support the
implementation of Mobile Assisted Language Learning MALL in English teaching and learning process at senior high schools. Kukulska-Hulme and Shield
2008 state that MALL is related to the use of technologies, such as mobile phones, MP3MP4 players, PDAs and palmtop computers. They differentiate MALL with
CALL Computer Assisted Language Learning in the use of personal and portable devices which promotes a new way of learning and emphasizes continuity and
spontaneity of access and interaction in different contexts. It is also in line with the definition of m-learning proposed by Dudeney and Hockly 2007. M-learning will
9 work well in the environments where the access of such technologies is more
normal and becomes people’s lifestyles. Practically, the final product of this research i.e. an Android application, can
be a means of learning used as an integrated part of the learning process. The application will be used as one of supplementary media for developing listening
skills. Since the emphasis of MALL is on its flexibility, the application will enable students to learn English anywhere and anytime.
