Aspects Characteristics
of the listeners because elementary and intermediate listeners have very limited memory capacity and relatively
low background knowledge. The students may have troubles in catching up with long videos.
Language
1 The language used in the video should be appropriate for
the listeners‘ level. 2
If the language is dense, it will be more difficult to follow. A speech is dense when it has complex syntax. The order of
density from the most dense to the least dense is: newscast, interview, drama.
3 The presence of recognizable words and phrases may help
ease listeners‘ understanding. For example, it will be easier for Indonesian learners to watch a video about Borobudur
Temple than one about Pyramid because their background knowledge will come to their aid.
Learner
1 The learners‘ sex, age, and interest should be considered.
Learners tend to be more attracted to materials that represent their age or sex. They will also pay more attention
if the topic is interesting for them. For example, a class with majority of male students will pay attention to a video
about sport. 2
As previously stated, learners‘ proficiency must be carefully put into consideration when selecting the video.
The other way for listening exercise is by ‗live‘ listening. In ‗live‘ listening,
the students listen to a speaker who is present in the classroom. The speaker can be the teacher or even a guest native speaker. The activities can be expanded
creatively, like listening to a story telling by one of the students, and listening to live interview or conversation. This method has obvious advantages because the
speaker is there to provide visual clues if it is possible, and the students can clarify unclear information.
21
The other technique is extensive listening. Here students are required —or
rather, encouraged —to listen to a lot of materials, but they are free to choose
whichever materials that they like and whichever ones that they think can improve their listening skill. Students mostly listen to the materials outside the classroom
at their leisure. There is little pressure and the learning goes in an unconscious —
and fun —way. Extensive listening is also satisfying in a sense that it demonstrates
that what the students have learnt in the classroom is useful in their real life.
22
The materials used in extensive listening are basically similar to those in
classroomintensive listening. Teachers may provide various tapes, CDs, or digital audio and video files that the students can borrow. It would be even better if the
materials are authentic or from real life, like news broadcast, movie, podcast, etc. To make the activity become more focused, teachers may provide the students
with report forms. Teachers can assign a response journal, response poster, card comments, or even comments on social media posts. The key is to make students
enjoy the process of listening practice and find many reasons to listen.
5. The Teaching of Listening at the Department of English Education
In the Department of English Education, listening and three other language skills are obligatory courses for the students. Listening skill itself is taught in four
levels, from Listening 1 to Listening 4. The students need to pass a course before they take the next level.
The teaching of listening follows the standard mentioned previously, with lessons consisting of pre-listening, while-listening, and post-listening. The
materials vary from beginner lessons in Listening 1 to more advanced lessons in the later Listening courses.
One of the primary data in this study is listening scores, and the scores were taken from Listening 4 course. Listening 4 is the most advanced listening course
21
Jeremy Harmer, 2001, op. cit., p. 230.
22
Geoffrey Broughton, et al., op. cit., p. 69.
in the Department of English Education, and the scores from this course were expected to represent the
students‘ most recent skill and competence. This course uses materials in the forms of academic and situational passages. The exercises
include finding main ideas, specific information, supporting ideas, speaker‘s opinions, etc. see Appendix 1. This course also emphasizes on the development
of the students ‘ competence for IELTS International English Language Testing
System preparation.
6. The Difficulties in Listening
The difficulties in listening may come from the listeners themeselves internal or from the characteristics of spoken language external. Penny Ur
identified several common problems that the learners have. These problems are as follows:
a. Learners often have trouble in catching the actual sounds of foreign language
because they perceive the sounds inaccurately; b.
Learners assumed that they have to understand every word, whereas not every word necessarily adds meaning to the sentence;
c. Learners can not comprehend natural speech because they can not keep up
with the speed; d.
Learners often need to hear a speech more than once in order to fully understand it;
e. Learners are often overwhelmed by the incoming information;
f. Learners get tired and lose their concentration when they have to listen to
long speeches or passages.
23
To overcome these problems, learners need to practice a lot and develop their own strategies. For example, if they cannot understand the sounds, they may
practice listening to various sounds and recognizing their pronunciation. If they have trouble in understanding fast speech, they should get more exposure to fast,
23
Penny Ur, A Course in Language Teaching: Practice and Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 111
– 112.
but highly understandable speech, for example informal talks. They key is to practice and get as much exposure as possible.
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Aside from learner s‘ internal problems, there are also the external problems
that come from the speech itself. Spoken English language has special characteristics which differentiate it from written language. These characteristics
can be problematic for ESL and EFL learners if they are not familiar. It is important for learners to acknowledge the characteristics and be accustomed to
them. Brown pointed out 8 characteristics as the following: a
Clustering In written language, a sentence is the basic unit of organization. Meanwhile in
spoken language, people speak in ―chunks‖ rather than full sentence. People break down speech into smaller groups or words, like clauses or phrases.
b Redundancy
Spoken language is highly redundant. People often say more than what it needs to convey the message. Redundancy includes repetitions, rephrasing,
elaborations, and insertions like ―I mean‖, ―well‖, and ―you know‖. Redundancy may help listener to process the meaning by offering time or clues to what will be
said next. However, listeners should know that the redundant utterance itself is usually not to be used in forming the message.
c Reduced forms
Spoken language can be —and is often—reduced. The reduction can be
phonological “Djeetyet?” for ―Did you eat yet?‖, morphological contraction
like I‘ll, syntactic Missing elements like ―When will you be back?‖ ―I will be back
Tomorrow, maybe‖, or pragmatic when a phone rings a girl calls out to her mother ―Mom Phone‖
d Performance variables
Unless the speech is planned, speakers usually have hesitations, pauses, or correction when they speak. Brown expressed that a transcribed speech may look
ridiculous in written form, but people have little trouble in understanding it when
24
Ibid.
it is spoken. For example: “But, uh—I also—with this course if you’re playing
well —if you’re playing well then you go uptight about, uh, your game.”
e Colloquial language
Colloquial language is language forms that are more often used in speaking than writing. It often includes idiom, slang, and informal language. For example
in writing people use the word ―man‖, while in speaking people say ―guy‖. f
Rate of delivery People, especially native speakers, often seem to talk too fast which is
challenging for listeners. Furthermore, in reading people can reread the parts that they do not understand while in listening people cannot rewind the utterance.
g Stress and intonation
English is stress-timed language, which means there are stresses in the words and in between syllables. It can be confusing to learners whose native language
does not have stress system. The intonation also takes significant role in giving meaning to the utterance. For example, the intonation in a statement and in a
question is different. Intonation may also indicate more subtle message, like emphasis, sarcasm, endearment, etc.
h Interaction
In spoken language, usually people do not just listen. There is an interaction between the two parties, like negotiation, clarification, maintenance of the
conversation, etc.
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7. The Definition of Listening Skill
After the literature on Listening has been reviewed, it is necessary to define ―listening skill‖ as the variable y of this study. Listening skill is the skill in
understanding the meaning behind spoken language. When people listen, they identify the units in the sound or utterance, and use their background knowledge
to make sense of what they hear, and finally form their understanding. People mainly listen to confirm their expectation and to get the general information,
detailed information, or specific information.
25
H. Douglas Brown, op. cit., pp. 252 – 254.
