114 tenses, agreement, pluralization, pattern, rules, and elliptical forms, from the
filling-blanks exercises. Through various tasks, students are able to develop and use a battery of listening strategies, such as detecting keywords, guessing meaning of
words from contexts and signalling comprehension or lack. The questions were based in the audios.
They are aimed to measure students’ understanding and comprehension after listening.
Figure 4.11. Three Types of Listening Exercises in FLAP
As FLAP encourages the students to be autonomous learners, the students should be able to check their own progress. After students finishing completing
each exercise, the score will appear. The feedback is also given about their answers whether it is correct or incorrect. It can be seen in the figure below.
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Figure 4.12. The Scoring System in FLAP
After the Practice section, there is Review section. The Review section contains a list of vocabulary or expressions that can be learnt by students to build
their listening skills, as well as speaking skills. There are two features in App Inventor which support this, namely Text to Speech and Speech Recognizer.
According to Kukulska-Hulme and Traxler 2005, Text to Speech is a feature using a synthetic voice to read out documents, diary entries, or simple notes. This feature
enables the user to listen to the correct models of pronunciation. Using this feature, it can save the file size because the sound will be produced by the phones.
Furthermore, it is easier since there is no need to upload the audios. This feature is already available in the App Inventor.
Meanwhile, Speech Recognizer enables the user to record their own pronunciation and check it afterwards. Kukulska-Hulme and Traxler 2005
identify Speech Recognizer as a feature which enables any text entered into a device simply by dictating it. Using this feature, the users can know the result of their
pronunciation after recording it. The following figure shows the layout of Review Screen.
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Figure 4.13. The Review Screen and the Screen Containing Text to Speech and Speech Recognizer
The users can check whether they pronounce the words or expressions correctly or not. After the user inputting their voices using Speech Recognizer, the
transcription of their dictation will appear simultaneously with the result showing whether the pronunciation is correct or incorrect.
The Focus section provides various listening materials and exercises which can be used as inputs to develop students’ listening comprehension. As stated by
Krashen 1981 in Nation and Newton 2009 about comprehensible input in listening, the language inputs should be MINUS i.e. Meaningful, Interesting, New
items, Understanding, and Stress-free. They should allow the students to apply different types of listening strategies accordingly.
2. Fun Section
Based on the questionnaires and interviews, most students stated that they like the Fun section. The Fun section consists of three main types of materials,
namely songs, stories, and poems. Each of them consists of three audios.
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Figure 4.14. The Fun Screen in the Final Version of FLAP
All the activities in the Fun section are designed in filling blanks exercises. This type of activity is aimed to give vocabulary inputs for the students and to
increase students’ listening ability. Through this activity, the students are given the opportunity to apply some listening strategies, such as detecting keywords and
guessing the meaning of words from contexts. The Songs section is designed in the form of missing lyrics. Some keywords
in the lyrics, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are omitted. The students are asked to guess what the lyrics were by carefully listening to the songs. They
should complete the missing parts. The hints for each word are also provided. After that, the user can check their answers by clicking Check button. Later, the number
of the correct and incorrect answers will appear. If the answer is correct, the textbox will turn into green. Meanwhile, it will turn to red for the incorrect answers. The
example of the activities can be seen in the figure below.
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Figure 4.15. The Song Screen and its Scoring in the Final Version of FLAP
The integration of music in this application is aimed to promote an enjoyable learning atmosphere. Harmer 2002: 242 states that music can be a
powerful stimulus for student engagement precisely because it speaks directly to our emotions while still allowing us to use our brains to analyze it. As most students
are keen on music, it is more likely to employ songs as learning materials. Besides, one condition of comprehensible input is Stress-free Krashen, 1981 and Nation,
2009. Students are expected to learn more effectively when they are engaged with the activities and highly motivated to do so.
The second type of the exposure in the Fun section is story. Stories section consists of some audio materials in the form of narrative texts. The activities are
similarly designed as those in the Songs section. Some of the words in the texts are omitted and the students are supposed to fill in the blanks. The hints are also
provided to help the students in guessing the words. After completing the missing parts, they can check how many words they can answer correctly and incorrectly.
The activity can be seen as follows.
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Figure 4.16. The Story Screen and Its Scoring in the Final Version of FLAP
The third section in the Fun section is Poems. Actually, this is just an additional material in this application. In fact, the students of Senior High Schools
are not taught about poems. Thus, the aim of using poems in this application is only for introducing them with English poems and to provide more exercises to enrich
their vocabulary. The activity in the Poem section is also designed in filling blank exercises. They can also check their answers afterwards.
Figure 4.17. The Poem Screen and Its Scoring in the Final Version of FLAP
The f un materials are expected to increase students’ motivation in learning.
However, using materials such as songs, stories, and poems which are already
120 available in the internet also has some problems. It will not work effectively if the
students tend to look for the answers in the internet instead of listening to the audios by themselves. Therefore, it is necessary for the teacher to tell them the
significances and the benefits that they will get after completing the exercises in the application on their own.
3. Final Section
This section provides some listening exercises which are packaged like in the Listening Section of the National Examination. The audio materials are taken
from the previous National Examinations 2007 – 2014. Meanwhile, some of the
questions have been developed by the researcher herself. Before the students join the test, they need to login first by filling in their name and student number.
Figure 4.18. The Login and Final Screen in the Final Version of FLAP
The Final section is divided into four parts of tests. Each part has different types of objectives and instructions. There are twenty questions and sixteen audios
in this section. The types of audios are varied, ranging from monologues to
