the general understanding of the content. After that, they may move to concern for the details. They have to achieve the general comprehension first before returning
to listen for the specific details. This order makes them easier to catch the input. Third, there is a special thing about listening. When we are doing listening
activities, it means that we are listening to spoken language. Spoken language, especially when it is informal, has some unique features. Those are including the
use of incomplete utterances, repetitions, hesitations, and so on. It is different from written language which tends to have punctuation and complete utterances. The last
is listening activities enable the learners to experience informal spoken English along with the other spoken factors such as the tone of the voice, the intonation,
rhythm, and background noise.
c. Bottom-up vs Top-down approaches to listening
In listening activities, there are two approaches to describe the process. These are the bottom-up and top-down model. Wilson 2008 describes that the bottom-
up model emphasizes the decoding of the smallest unit, phonemes and syllables, to lead us towards meaning. Based on this model, listeners do the comprehension
activities and try to figure out the meaning depends on the sounds that they hear. For addition, Morley in Celce and Murcia 2001 also states the process of finding
the meaning is started from sounds to words, and then continued to the grammatical relationship, and ended in finding the lexical meanings.
Meanwhile, the top-down model emphasizes the use of background knowledge to predict the content. The knowledge of the listeners takes an important part of the
process. If they feel that the situation is familiar to them, they can predict what they
are going to hear based on their experience. Many of the comprehension activities rely on what happens in the mind before the listening activities have even begun.
So many scientists have debated about which one of the approaches is more advantageous to be applied in the listening activities. There are some scientists who
believe that students make more errors when they apply the bottom-up model. It is caused by mishearing during the listening process. However, recent research says
that it is the top-down approach that often causes mistakes in listening activities. Students make mistakes when they hear some familiar vocabularies and begin to
make wild guesses. This leads them to the wrong answer. Those arguments are just some parts of the ongoing research, however in fact people use both of the models
simultaneously in listening activities. Besides using our knowledge, we also consider the words that we hear. So, both of them support each other in order to
reach a good understanding towards the inputs that we hear. This kind of model is also called as interactive model.
Here is a diagram drawn by Marc and Steven 2007:6 to enrich the description of the two processings.
Top-down processing based on general knowledge life experiences content
schema and knowledge of structural routines textual schema
Based on the knowledge of vocab, grammar, and sounds Bottom-up processing
Figure 2.1. The Top-Down and Bottom-Up Processing
d. Types of Classroom Listening Performances
Harmer 2001:228-229 describes that students can improve their listening skill through the combination of intensive and extensive listening materials and
procedures. Both of them have some advantages for their learning such as giving them opportunity to listen for other listening sources other than their teacher, enable
the students to acquire good speaking habit and help them to improve their pronunciation. Below presents the detailed explanation of types of classroom
performances. 1 Extensive Listening
In this kind of listening type, the teacher gives the opportunity for the students to choose what they want to listen to and what they want to do for pleasure
and general language improvement. So, it means that students have great control over the materials that they want to choose in the language learning process. This
can give a dramatic effect to their learning. Extensive listening usually takes place outside the classroom. It can be anywhere such a
s in students’ home, café, or other public places. They can even listen to the materials as they travel from one place to
another since they have electronic equipments which enable them to do so. They can make use of their laptop, mobile phone, or iPod to do it. The motivational power
to do this activity will increase if they have control to choose what they want to listen to by themselves. The source for extensive reader can be easily found through
different kinds of sources. There are many kinds of books out there published with the audio tape. So, the students can enjoy both reading and listening activity in the
same time.
The level, topic and the genre in selecting the tape need to be considered. This makes the extensive listening more effective when it is implemented with a
group of students. Teachers can ask the students to do some tasks to encourage extensive listening such as asking them to record their responses to the materials
that they heard or answering some questions about it. The purpose of these tasks is to give the students more reasons to listen.
2 Intensive Listening: Using Taped Materials This type of listening activity is done by using audio tape recorder. There
are several advantages of using intensive listening. First, it allows the students to hear different kinds of accents. Just listen
to the teacher’s voice is not enough for them. They have to hear the English language spoken by different people from
different countries such as Australian, British, American, or Indian. Second, the tape allows the students to experience different kinds of characters of the speaker.
They get this especially when the real people are talking. However, although the materials of the tape are scripted, they can get the advantage of experiencing various
situations and voices. Third, teachers can get the materials easily. It can be purchased from the store or it can be just simply downloaded on the internet. The
equipment is not complicated to prepare. The teacher just needs to use tape player or laptop to play it.
Eventhough there are some advantages that the students can gain through this type of listening activity, there are also some disadvantages that follow. First,
it is often difficult to make sure that the sound can be heard equally. This issue occurs especially when the class is too big. Second, every student has to listen with
