22 information and materials needed to complete the task. Final assessment is based
on the quality of the team’s performance Burden and Byrd, 1999.
5. Listening
Listening is one of the importance skills that students need to be mastered. Because the study is related to the listening, the writer will explain about the
listening
a. The Nature of Listening
Michael Rost 2002: 7 states that the term of listening is used in language teaching to refer to a complex process that allows us to understand the spoken
language. Listening is used in others skills. For examples, when we read we will be familiarized with words because we often hear the word in television or daily
activities. We know the phonetic sound of the words. When we want to communicate, we had to be able to understand the meaning of the spoken
language. By seeing those examples, it is obvious that listening is important for all language skills but it’s strange seeing listening is the neglected skill.
b. Listening Processes
To understand how we can make sense what we hear or listen there are two processes proposed by Rumelhart and Ortony 1977 and expanded upon
Chaudron and Richards 1986, Richards 1990 as cited in Hegelsen 2001 which are Bottom Up and Top Down processes. The distinction is based on the
23 way learners attempt to understand what they hear or read. With Bottom Up
processing, students start with component parts: words, grammar, and the like. The Top Down processing is the opposite. Learners start from their background
knowledge, either content schema general information based on previous learning and life experience or textual schema awareness of the kinds
information used in a given situation See Long, 1989 cited in Hegelsen 2001. In many cases, the Top Down and Bottom Up processes work in
integration. This Top Down and Bottom Up integration happened by accident. In the classroom, pre listening activities are good way to make sure it happens.
Before listening, learners can, for example, brainstorm vocabulary related to the topic or invent short dialog relevant to function such as giving direction or
apologizing. In the process, they base their information on their knowledge of life Top Down information as they generate vocabulary and sentences Bottom Up
data. The result is a more integrated attempt at processing. The learners are activating their previous knowledge. This use of combination of Top Down and
bottom data is also called interactive processing Peterson, 2001 as cited in Hegelsen 2001.
As Buck 1995 points out, the assumption that the listener simply decodes messages is mistaken. “Meaning is not in the text text = what ever is being
listened to- but is something that is constructed by the listeners based on a number of different knowledge source.” Among those sources are the knowledge
of language, of what has already been said, of context, and general background PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
24 knowledge. From the discussion above the writer will say listening is meaning
based. When we listen, we are normally doing so for a purpose Hegelsen, 2001.
c. Listening Functions
