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top-down, bottom-up and interactive processing. Top-down process in listening is a process of getting the meaning out of sounds by making the most of content, that is
general knowledge or life experience, and textual schema, their situational routines. On the other hand, bottom-up process in listening is a process that makes use of
vocabulary, grammar, and sounds’ features. As it is disputed between Psycholinguists, these experts also find it more logical to believe that it is easier to
comprehend the meaning if a listener operates within these two processes combined together; constituting what is then known as “interactive process” Brown, 2001.
If these processes, despite the researcher’s attempt to simplify, are found to be intricate, it is the nature of listening. It is a very complex mental process. This
mental process is there to always serve a purpose; to enable listener to respond both in verbal or non-verbal replies. It could, however, be broken down into top-down,
bottom-up and interactive process of listening. They respectively related to semantic approach, syntactic approach and combination of the two. It is now clear to state that
listening is a real-time, aural receptive skill Helgesen, 2003.
2. The teaching of listening and Curriculum of English Language in High schools in Indonesia
For being its receptive nature, listening has to do with information processing. Nowadays, information in general could be acquired via various sources. Basically,
one could acquire information of any kind in two forms; written and spoken. To understand the former is beyond this essay scope. The latter, however, could be
understood by listening. The information, when processed, could add to the listener’s knowledge. It could also affect the listeners in various way; changes in
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viewpoint for instance. In its basic purpose, then, listening plays a great role to process oral information.
It has also become the concern of curriculum designers. The Latest Indonesian School Curriculum known as School-based Curriculum has put listening alongside
the other receptive skill, as a means to prepare students for greater opportunities to find more information for their higher study in the future. Television, Internet, CDs
and any other advancement of our civilization have brought more ease to obtain information, and not least of them are in the form of recording or even video, and
are in English. If students have the ability to process this information using their listening skills, they would find it easier to find materials to support their study. The
Curriculum is trying to prepare students to be able to process such materials especially to help them survive in higher education.
In order for students to acquire the skills and be able to meet the challenge of their future study, School-based Curriculum has equipped teachers to help students
do so. It could be seen from the fact, and some are real results from The Latest Indonesian School Curriculum pilot project, that the Curriculum has been focusing
students to be able to locate and identify certain information from oral monolog Kurikulum dan Kegiatan Hasil Belajar – Rumpun Pelajaran Bahasa Inggris.,
2002. With some activities to listen to conversation or explanation, students are expected to be able to turn their vocabulary into use to listen to some short listening
passages. Being flexible in terms of material, School-based Curriculum provides more opportunity for teachers to explore students’ potential and experiment with
some more sophisticated materials and activities depending on students need. This way, The Curriculum may be used to teach students in such a way that the teaching
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of English Language in Indonesia could achieve the targeted role it is endeavoring to accomplish.
3. Metacognition and Learning Autonomy
In general, it could be said that metacognition is the protocol to think about one’s own thinking process. Metacognition has as its components, distinctive from
each other, “metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive strategy” Wenden, 1999. Metacognitive knowledge deals with the information of the thinking process while
metacognitive strategy deals with the skills which are involved to manage, direct, regulate or guide the learning process.
Metacognitive knowledge is not yet unique to one learner. It is not value related Wenden, 1999. What is distinctive from one learner to another is what
experts call learner’s belief. Learner’s belief may take into account learning orientation, models of learning, regulation strategy and processing strategy
Vermunt 1993 as cited in Ajisuksmo, 1996. It is such beliefs which control each learner’s self-regulation in learning. Self-regulation in learning requires a
learner to be first self-directed. A self-directed learner is one who possesses qualities such as ones that Skager 1984 has elaborated. They are self-acceptance,
planfulness, intrinsic motivation, internalized evaluation, openness to experience, flexibility and autonomy.
It could be seen from Rivers’ 2001 and Wenden’s 1999 discussions on self- regulation that after one has been self-directed to continue learning, he or she could
then self-regulate his or her learning. Rivers 2001 argues that Self-regulation involves self-monitor and executive controls. The control of the executive functions,
