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confidence. Sayre 2001: 12-13 explains that self-confidence is a positive feeling when someone believes in himself and others believe in him.
Tunas Bangsa Kindergarten students have been learning English since they are in the pre-school. When the teacher explains certain topics in the first language, they also
mention the words in English. In addition, the students are already encouraged to practice simple spoken expressions and written exercises. However, there are some difficulties in
teaching letter-sound correspondence because besides learning letters in their native language, they are supposed to identify letters in English which show difference between
the alphabet and its sound. Moreover, the students tend to be unconfident when they face new words because they are afraid to make mistakes. Therefore, the writer would like to
apply phonics approach for these students in order to make them confident in performing their listening skill.
This thesis would like to discuss the effectiveness of phonics in teaching listening viewed from the kindergarten students’ self-confidence of Tunas Bangsa Kindergarten in
the academic year of 20102011.
B. Problem Identification
The problems are identified as follows: 1. Why do the students consider that listening is difficult?
2. What are the listening activities suitable for kindergarten students? 3. What are the listening assessments suitable for kindergarten students?
4. What are the characteristics of low and high confidence students?
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5. What factors break the students ’ confidence in listening skill?
6. What factors build the students ’ confidence in listening skill?
7. Which approach is more effective t o improve the children’s listening skill,
analytical phonics method or synthetic phonics method? 8. Which one is better, the group of students who have high self-confidence or low
self-confidence in their listening skill? 9. Is there any interaction effect between self-confidence and the teaching methods
on the students’ listening skill?
C. Problem Limitation
This thesis is limited to: 1. The implementation of analytical phonics method and synthetic phonics method
are conducted in single word and simple sentence that are related to the context because the students have learnt the basic phonics of consonants.
2. Phonics methods compared are analytical and synthetic. 3. The students learn the vowel phonics.
4. The materials in the thesis are taken from many sources in the internet. 5. The self-
confidence is limited to the students’ self-confidence in facing listening activity.
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D. Statement of the Problems
According to the problem identification above, the problems are stated as follows: 1. Is analytical phonics method more effective than synthetic phonics method to
teach listening for the second grade students of Tunas Bangsa Kindergarten in the academic year of 20102011?
2. Do the second grade students of Tunas Bangsa Kindergarten having high self- confidence have better listening skill than those having low self-confidence in the
academic year of 20102011? 3. Is there any interaction effect between phonics methods and self-confidence on
the students’ listening skill of Tunas Bangsa Kindergarten in the academic year of 20102011?
E. Objectives of the Study
