19
a world language. The number of variety to be taught should be appropriate with their level. Second, children acquire English subconsciously through listening.
They learn grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, rhythm, intonation, pitch, and stress without any burden. Third, children can get any helps from teachers in
learning listening skill and performing it. They will be good listeners because they listen effectively.
In line with Harmer, Pinter 2006:56 states that after children have been exposed to English through listening, they soon are willing to talk about their
world and participate in interactions with their friends in class and other language speakers. By listening to the teachers or their friends, the children develop their
communicative skill and social skill. They learn to listen to the others and give them feedbacks.
Besides, by developing good listening skills, children‟s reading comprehension skills will be improved because they are able to match the sounds
of spoken words with the similar symbols Linse and Nunan, 2005: 25. Children at the age of eight to ten are able to understand symbol of words. There are
possibilities that they have less difficulty in matching the sound and the written form of words.
Based on the theories above, listening is very essential to be learned by children. It should be stressed before speaking skill because recognition
knowledge is required to process and to decode the oral input, whereas retrieval
20
knowledge is required to encode and generate speech. It is the most communicative and practiced skill that needs to be developed as much as possible.
b. The Principles of Teaching Listening Skill to Children
The way of teaching listening to children is different from adults because children cannot sit still in their desks like the adults do. Children should be
involved in the teaching and learning activities. Teachers cannot ask students to always listen to and remember the lesson. Unconscious repetition of important
parts of spoken texts is more effective method than force them to remember the texts.
Moreover, in teaching listening to children, there are guidelines which should be followed in order to develop children‟s listening skills. These are lists of the
guidelines proposed by Brewster et al 2002: 98. 1
Giving the children confidence. Teachers‟ gestures, tone of voice and visual aids will help children feel
confident about what is important to concentrate to. 2
Explaining why the children have to listen. Teachers should make sure the learners know clearly about the reason why
they are listening, and what the purpose of the activity is by spelling out which part of the message they need to focus on and what they are going to do. Deeply,
the following lists describe the kinds of listening purposes. a
To physically settle pupils: to calm when they are too boisterous. b
To stir pupils: to stimulate or allow them to physically let off steam if they seem bored or tired.
21
c To improve the general listening attitude: listen for enjoyment, improve
concentration span, or develop the memory. d
To develop aspects of language: listening to improve pronunciation, stress, rhythm, and intonation, as well as familiarity with new words and structures.
e To reinforce conceptual development: spoken texts can act as useful revision
for reinforcing concepts such as number, size, or cause and effect. f
To interact with others: activities which encourage children to work with others require the learners to negotiate meaning by listening and asking
questions, checking meaning, agreeing, and so on. g
To provide support for literacy: older children can be encouraged to make connection between spoken and written English by picking out written words
or statements which are part of a spoken message. 3
Helping children develop specific strategies for listening. The important listening strategies are; a predicting encouraging listeners to
guess what they think they will be listening, b working out the meaning from the context encouraging listeners to use pictures, their general knowledge, or the
message to work out the meaning of unfamiliar words, c recognizing discourse patterns and markers.
4 Setting a specific listening task.
In order to make listening an active, learning-focused process, teachers need to develop a repertoire of different pre-, while-, and post-activity types which fit
different types of language.
