Fun Listening Android Application FLAP

Figure 2.5 The Conceptual Framework of the Study Listening comprehension is a complex cognitive process. Therefore, listening comprehension is difficult in a second or foreign language Lynch and Mendelsohn, 2002: 207. There are many factors contributing to the success of understanding messages in spoken language. One of them is related to the students’ familiarity with features of spoken language. Students especially in EFL context often face difficulties since they are not familiar to the features of spoken language such as vocabulary and sounds signals Underwood, 1989 in Chen, 2005. In order to be familiar, they need to expose themselves with English vocabularies and sound signals. Unfortunately, many EFL learners have very few opportunities to get exposure input in their surrounding from which they can familiarize themselves with vocabularies and sound signals in English. This problem might be solved by using media, in this case is FLAP. The role of media as stated by Newby, Stepich, Lehman and Russel 2000: 100 is to facilitate student learning. It may serve as source of input. FLAP as media for learning listening provides input in the forms of various spoken texts including transactional and interpersonal type, dialogue and monologue as well. Through this way, students are expected to be able to be familiar with vocabularies, expressions and sound signals in English. Listening, with its complex process not only requires students to be familiar with the input exposure. It also requires students to process the input in the forms of spoken text. In fact, students often find it difficult in the listening process. As stated by Underwood 1989 cited in Chen, 2005, several problems related to the listening process are lack of control over the speed at which the speaker speaks, problem of interpretation and not being able to get things repeated. Those problems actually can be solved through extensive practice of listening. Whereas it is important to familiarize students with input, it is also necessary to familiarize students with practice. This can be done by using FLAP. FLAP provides various types of texts and tasks exercises which are useful for developing students’ listening comprehension skills. Listening also involves affective factors such as being motivated and stimulated to attend to another person’s message Weaver, 1972 cited in Gungor, 2012: 127. In the listening classroom, in which students are put into a one-way listening, affective factors can be interpreted as the students’ motivation towards listening materials. Increasing students’ motivation can be done by using FLAP. It varies the teaching-learning activities and give chances for students to try fun activities provided in it. Another listening problem according to Underwood is the lack of concentration. The lack of concentration may correlate with affective factors since it is often caused by students motivation towards listening. Students’ lack of motivation may decrease students’ concentration in listening. Also, technical problem such as unclear audio may lead students to give up easily from listening activity because their concentration are distracted. In FLAP, listening materials are presented in more interesting mode of presentation than the media in traditional class which use the class speaker and paper pencil exercises. This characteristic is expected to engage students to practice listening. Besides that, using FLAP, technical problems like unclear audio when listening using speaker in the classroom can be solved. By learning using FLAP students may use earphone to reduce sounds from outside and they can adjust by themselves the volume of the audio based on their needs so that they can enjoy listening with better condition. In addition, in listening class, there is also one problem which is rarely seen by most of the students, that is problem related to lack of listening habit. Listening habit is important in developing listening comprehension. Students’ listening habit is actually related to learning support or the availability of materials or media. In the environement, students are often lazy to get the materials by themselves. Most of them depend themselves on the listening materials they got from the class. They do not want to get engaged to listen outside the class. They only listen mostly in the classroom. Whereas classroom contact hours are very limited. Some possible problems of lacking listening habit is that students do not have access to the material or it might be because the material is not interesting and the media is not available. FLAP is considered an appropriate medium for students to tackle this problem. In addition, the characteristics of portability and flexibility give useful value for students to learn listening without limitation of place and time. Based on the reasons above, it can be concluded that, theoretically, FLAP is an effective media that can facilitate listening learning process and lead to the improvement of students’ listening comprehension. However, this conclusion is only tentative since it has not been examined empirically. Therefore, confirmation is necessary to discover the effect of FLAP on the listening comprehension. The hypothesis proposed is: there is an effect of FLAP on the listening comprehension of grade X students. This hypothesis can be expressed operationally withH o = the post-test mean score of the control group is the same as the experimental group’s, and H 1 = the post-test mean score of the experimental group is different from the control group’s.Meanwhile, the hypothesis can also be expressed with the statistical equationH o : 1=  2 and H 1 :  1 ≠ 2 with  1 as the mean score of experimental group and  2 as the mean score of control group. The second objective of this research is to discover the interaction effect of FLAP on the listening comprehension across the use of strategy. This is the answer to the second research question. It is proposed as a research question because it is necessary to strengthenor to make the result of the first research question clearer. It is a question whether FLAP can work effectively with the condition that students have various listening strategies. Learning strategy is often found to be correlated with learning technique. Students’ have preferences towards certain learning technique. Students with more varied strategies might challenge themselves with learning technique which include many exercises and