Identification of the Problem

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CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW

A. Theoretical Review

This chapter consists of theories related to the research. It becomes the references in developing the listening materials for the eighth-grade students of SMPN 14 Yogyakarta. There are five main parts discussed in this chapter. Those are theories about listening skill, theories about the teaching and learning process based on 2013 curriculum, theories about material development, theories about tasks, and the last is theories about listening tasks. The details of every part can be seen as follows.

1. Listening

a. The Nature of Listening

1 Definition This part presents the definition of listening. Marc and Steven 2007 look at several scientists’ ideas and find out that there are similarities in their definition of listening. All the definitions use the word ‘active’ and ‘construct’. So, actually listening is more than just the act to decode the input that the listeners hear. It is an active process where the listeners get the information from the visual and the auditory cues and relate it to the knowledge that they already have. During the process of listening, the listeners do two kinds of activities: to select and to interpret. To select means the listeners use only parts of the incoming information to understand the inputs. Whereas, to interpret means to catch the sense of the inputs by using background knowledge All these past years, people often thought that listening and reading are passive skills and writing and speaking are active skills. However, from the explanation above, we know that listening activity is not passive at all. Its process is more complex than that. 2 The Importance of Listening From the earlier discussion, we know that sometimes listening skill is given less attention than the other skills reading, writing, and speaking in the language learning process. Nunan 2001 even says that it is often regarded as Cinderella skill. Furthermore, Brown 2004 also states that listening often less valued than its counterpart, speaking. Those ideas can be proved when the researcher looked at the book used in SMPN 14 Yogyakarta given by the government. There are only few tasks aimed to teach listening. We cannot simply let this issue arise. Although listening activities are often overlooked in English language learning, actually it also holds an important key to the success of the learning process. There are several advantages of doing listening activities. Harmer 1998: 97-98 states that listening to spoken English let the learners to experience different varieties and accents. Listening only to the teacher’s voice is not enough for them. Their ability to recognize varieties and accents of English language can be very limited, especially if the teacher is not a native speaker of English language. Providing the learners with listening activities gives them the opportunity to know that there are so many different kinds of accents even though the language that is used is still the same, English. It enables them to recognize that English language spoken by British people is different from that of American or Indian since there are some differences in the accent, pronunciation, and so on. The ability to recognize those things above is needed in their future. The second advantage that the learners get by doing listening activities is that it helps them to acquire language subconsciously. English language has its own special features such as grammar. When the learners are given the listening activities, they listen to the language and learn something new although the teacher does not draw attention to the special features. These activities engage them to learn not only about grammar or vocabularies. They are also able to recognize and learn about the pronunciation, rhythm, intonation, pitch, and stress. These things can be acquired through listening activities. For addition, Brewster 2003:99 describes the similar thing about listening purpose. He states that there are seven reasons why students have to be given listening activities. Below presents the description of the importance of listening activities: a It will physically settle pupils. Sometimes students will act boisterous. Listening activity will help them to focus on the materials that they hear. They will be engaged to do their activity, so that it will be good to calm them down. b To stir the pupils. It is a normal thing if students ever feel bored or get tired to learn once in a while. Doing listening activity will also help to give them “fresh wind” of their learning. It is good to wipe away their boredom. Of course teacher have to be creative and choose an interesting topic as materials. Not only it will engage them to focus on the activity, it will also reduce their stress in learning. c To improve the general listening attitude. It is said be able to help the students to develop their concentration span and their memory. It is also enable students to grow good habit by doing listening for enjoyment. d To develop aspects of language. This idea is similar to what Harmer said earlier. It can improve pronunciation, stress, rhythm and intonation, and familiarity with new words and structures. We can take the activity of listening to stories for example. It provides opportunity for the students to practice about tenses and vocabulary and connect it with the topic.