Background of the Study

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

In this chapter, the writer explains the background of the study, the problem formulation, the problem limitation, the objectives, benefits of the study and the definition of terms.

A. Background of the Study

In learning English, there are four skills that should be mastered by the students. They are listening, speaking, reading and writing. In the past, listening was regarded as the least important skill, as Brown cited in Morley, 2001: 69 noticed that there are a limited number of published courses on listening comprehension and classroom practice in many schools across countries. Nonetheless, listening is now an essential part of language learning in both its theory and practice. In reality, listening is used more often than any other language skills in daily life. River and Weaver as cited in Morley, 2001: 70 stated that we listen twice as much as we speak, four times more than we read, and five times more than we write on average. Denes and Pinson as cited in Morley, 2001: 70 noted that listening establishes a foundation for the development of oral language within the “speech chain” of listening and speaking. In the bounds of a unit of communicative discourse, listening is a means for teaching elements of grammatical structure and allows new vocabulary items to be contextualized. Besides, according to Peterson 2001: 87, learners can build an awareness of the inter-workings of language 1 PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 2 systems at various levels and thus establish a base for more fluent productive skills through listening. For example, in intermediate level, listening can be used to stimulate awareness of details and promote accuracy when students are improving their understanding of the grammatical systems of their second or foreign languages. Nowadays, in addition to the importance of listening in language learning, listening also takes an important place in senior high school. The mastery of listening skill is a requirement that should be accomplished in order to pass the National Examination and to graduate from senior high school in Indonesia. Therefore, the preparation dealing with listening test in order to graduate from senior high school is principally needed. The preparation for listening tests in many schools in Indonesia is still limited to the use of recording in the form of cassettes. Until recently, the use of films in foreign language teaching has been disparaged because teachers feel they are time-consuming. Yet, with the spread of video equipment and audiovisual resources into educational institutions, the use of films is becoming more common. Giving visual messages a place in the foreign language curriculum offers an excellent opportunity for intermediate-level students to develop fluency in English. It is an interesting and entertaining way to enhance the learners motivation in learning the target language. Besides, the messages available through films offer a refreshing change of routine in the classroom. Furthermore, Massi and Merino 1996: 20 suggested that films are able to illustrate clearly situations which are unfamiliar or inaccessible. Films also provide the learners with a stimulus which serves as a link for further discussion 3 of an issue. Besides, the practicality of films offers a richness of classroom listening comprehension, contextualized linguistics, paralinguistics and authentic cross-cultural information, and fluency practice Braddock, Mejia, Stempleski, Wood as cited in King, 2002 from http:www.eltnewsletter.combackFebruary 2002art882002.htm. SMA BOPKRI 2 Yogyakarta is one of the senior high schools that has introduced listening lessons to the students in order to prepare them to face the National Examination. However, the availability of listening materials and teaching media in this school is very limited. The teaching media used are only cassettes. Furthermore, the students have some weaknesses in listening. For example, the students cannot catch the speaker’s utterances, are not familiar with the expressions used in the recordings, lack vocabulary mastery, and the recordings do not give them the illustration of the situation where the dialogue takes place. Moreover, the students rarely have exercise on listening skills. Those are the main reasons why the writer is interested to conduct the study. Therefore, this study is aimed to construct a set of English supplementary listening materials using films for the eleventh grade students of Language Department of SMA BOPKRI 2 Yogyakarta. The reason why the writer chose the eleventh grade students of senior high school is that they are more flexible to be given any kinds of materials than the twelfth grade students, who have to concentrate on the examination. It is expected that the students will have strong basics of English as well as high motivation in learning English. Moreover, the students cannot instantly acquire English well. They have to learn it continually. 4

B. Problem Formulation