STUDENTS’ LISTENING ABILITY IN ACADEMIC ORAL LANGUAGE

SKILLS

Febiola Mida Rotua Sihombing

English Department
Universitas Negeri Medan
[email protected]

ABSTRACT

Speaking ability is very important to have good communication, especially in

international communication. The English learners should have this ability and
they must focus the learning on speaking skill. The learners’ failures in learning
speaking were caused by the inappropriateness of the strategy or method learning.
It happened to them unconciously. It means they are not aware of making
inappropriateness in the method. The appropriate method should be applied in
learning so that the success can be achieved. To realise the success in improving
speaking ability can be done by using community-based learning method. The
learning communities should be made to conduct the community-based learning.
In these learning communities, the process of learning speaking can be appliead
like it is in real communities. Real-like communities makes the learning process
run well, because the condition is like the reality. The good process in learning
makes the learners feel in the real society and feel enjoyable and confortable. If
the learners have good feeling, they will learn speaking eagerly and spiritfully, so
they will be succesfull in learning, especially speaking. Improve students' hearing
ability with the method of listening to native speakers that was tested during the
midterm examinations was a research student of English Education in academic
oral language skills. In this case the writer focusing on class English Education
19'C. This research aims to know the student's ability to hear English. The lecturer
gave several questions and answered questions by giving listening to students. To
collect data that was actually carried out by researchers, The populations of this
research have been taken from students of English Education 2019, State
University of Medan. In this research used sample from English Education 2019
class C. Total of the students in class C are 28 person. 5 students are male students
and 23 students are female students.

Keywords : Skills, Language Skills,Listening Skill

INTRODUCTION

In Indonesia, English as a foreign language has been learned at school, from

elementary school until senior high school. It has four skills that have to be
mastered by students. These skills are reading, listening, writing, and speaking.
From these skills, listening is a skill that felt difficult to be mastered, because it
needs more attention and concentration to comprehend the sounds (listening
material).As defined by oxford (1993: 206), listening is a complex problem
solving skill and it is more than just perception of the sounds. Listening includes
comprehension of meaning words, phrases, clauses, sentences, and connected
discourse. Furthermore, according to Bulletin in Saricoban (1999), listening is one
of the fundamental language skills. It is a medium through which children, young
people and adults gain a large portion of their information, their understanding of
the world and of human affairs, their ideals, sense of values, and their
appreciation. Rivers in Hasyuni (2006: 8) says that listening is a creative skill. It
means we comprehend the sound falling on our ears, and take the raw material of
words, arrangements of words, and the rise and fall the voice, and from this
material we creative a significance. Russel and Russel in Hasyuni (2006:8) also
say that listening skill is listening with comprehension, attention and
appreciation. Then, listening activity needs integrating skill of language, such as
pronunciation,vocabulary mastery,writing,speaking, and reading.

Listening skill can be meant as ability to pay attention or to hear something. But,
listening is not same as hearing. Hearing is essentially an automatic, passive
activity. It is possible to hear sounds without consciously engaging in the process.
While, in listening the brain doesn’t automatically translate the words into the
message they are conveying. That is essentially what listening is determining the
meaning and the message of the sounds or words. It is active process that involves
much more than assigning labels to sounds or words. As mentioned in Mee
(1990), listening is a complex process in which many things happen
simultaneously inside the mind. Besides being complex, listening is far more
difficult than many people can imagine. So, we can say that listening is the ability
to identify and understand what others are saying. It is also a complex activity,
and we can help students comprehend what they hear by activating their prior
knowledge. Furthermore, it will consider another way teachers can help ease the
difficulty of listening by training students in different types of listening.

Listening skill is one of the four basis language skills in English beside reading,
writing, and speaking. Listening ability is needed by the students for facing both
local and national tests of English tested in written form, so that listening should
be learned earlier since kindergarten until the higher education level. Listening is
the activity of paying attention to the speaker and trying to get meaning from
something heard (Underwood (1989:1)). In receiving something, the listeners will
hear language produced by other people first, and he or she is going to respond
what they mean and their goals. The language learners will be successful if they
master the language they learn to the point of using it in communication. That idea
is supported by Littlewood (1981: 1) who states learners do not only need the
ability to understand the linguistic forms but also the ability to use the language in
actual use.Listening is often considered as the most difficult skill. The learner
cannot get the listening achievement which is the most important aspect in
listening comprehension, especially in English. This is the duty of the teacher to
solve the problem. They have to show the way how to comprehend listening so
the learners can understand the listening material given. Listening is a skill in a
language thatis applied to English lesson especially for English education
students. It is important as the preparation of learning foreign language especially
English language. The students have to answer the question related to the listening
materials.
Listening skill are important for learning since they enable the students to get
insight and get information, also to obtain success in communicate with
others.Existence within and outside the school or other place give many listening
opportunities, but some students had fail to capture them because they let their
mind going wander or they may only focus on what they want to say rather than
listen to what speaker saying. Listening is a communication skill that consuct the
students to understand, translate, and assess what they heard. Have a good ability
to listen can improve personal interaction like reducing problems, fostering
understanding, and increasing cooperation.

When people are not listen carefully or became unfocused on the speaker or
thinking about other things while listening it is wrong, because listening is a
planned way to listen and respond to others and pay attention to the speaker.There
are three elements stand up listening: comprehending, retaining, and
respondinglanguage learning depends on listening. Listening supply the aural
input that serves as the basis for language accession and eneables learners to
interact in spoken communication. Good language instructors or teacher will show
students how they can modify their listening behavior to cope with variety of
situations, listening purpose, and types of input. The instructor help the students to
develop their listening strategies and match the suitable strategies each listening
situation.

Listening strategies are techniques or action that used by the students or listener to
comprehend and recall of listening input. The strategies of listening can be
classified by how the students or listener processes the input the listener taps into
background of the topic, contextt or situation, type of text, and language
background information that they heard to interpret, and anticipate what will
appear next.
Listening activities do not onlyneed the learners’ ability in masteringbasic
language knowledge and knowingvarious issues, but they also have toprepare
listening strategies in order tohelp them in figuring out someproblems that they
will face in theprocess of listening, for example; whenthe learners get difficulties
to completesome listening tasks that relate to thestudents’ listening
comprehension skill,they may apply a strategy that cansupport them in completing
the task.Inthis case, the students may apply notetaking strategy to notice
importantpoints from the audio. Then, they cananswer all of the questions by
using thenotes that they had written. The learnersmay also apply bottom up ortop
downstrategies to guidethem in the processof comprehension.In bottom
upstrategy, the learners may activate theirbackground knowledge about a
topicdiscussed in the audio before startingthe listening activities. In top
downstrategy, the learners may start thelistening activities by listen to the specific
information in the audio, andcorrelate it with their backgroundknowledge.Hsueh-
Jui (2008) states thatthere issignificance relationship amongstudents’ listening
strategy, style, andproficiency levels.In short, the studentsshould have the
capability to apply listening strategies in listeningactivities. However, without
practice allof those points will not be reallyhelpful.

Learners’ listening practice isalso one of theinfluentialfactorsinimproving their

listeningcomprehension skill. They have topractice a lot to improve their
skill,especially in comprehending monologsor dialoguesuttered
byspeakers.Commonly, the students get difficultieswhen they are in that situation.
Theyclaim thatspeaker’s style incommunication guides them into abillion of
confusioneven the teacherhas played the audio for two or threetimes. It is one of
the students’ reasonswhen they get difficulties in listening.Infact, it is not a big
problem, they areonly not familiar with the nativespeakers’ styles in
communication.Inshort, the students need to practicetheir listening activities
because thelearners have to face language learningexperience to enhance their
listeningskill. Then, the learners and teachers should work collaboratively in this
step.
Teachers’ roles in teaching andlearning activities in the class will alsolead the
students’ success in completinglistening activities. There are someefforts that
teachers can do such asrunning and presenting listeningactivities in the class
interestingly.English language teachers have to beable to provide the learners
withintensive listening class that guide themto beat all challenges in
listeningactivities. On the ground observation insome schools, commonly English
students’ listening strategy, style, andproficiency levels.In short, the
studentsshould have the capability to apply teachers do not often involve
thestudents in listening practice. Manyteachers try to skip listening activities inthe
class becauseofvarious reasons,such as lack of sources, tools,electricity, and
others. The students getfamiliar how to developtheir reading,writing, speaking
skills, but they getharderproblems in listening due to lackexposure of the skill.

METHOD

This research uses a quantitative design. This study also uses deductive reasoning,
where the researcher formulates a hypothesis, then collects data in the
investigation of the problem, after which the data that has been obtained are
analyzed and conclusions are made. The type of quantitative design in this
research is descriptive quantitative. Descriptive research seeks to describe the
current status of the identified variables. This research project is designed to
provide systematic information about a phenomenon. Researchers do not usually
start with a hypothesis, but tend to develop it after gathering data. Data analysis
and synthesis provides hypothesis testing. Systematic information gathering
requires careful selection of the units studied and careful measurement of each
variable.

The populations of this research is from students of English Education 2019, State
University of Medan and in this research used sample from English Education
2019 class C. The technique of collecting data used in this research was a test.
Tests are given to students to gain understanding of students in listening English
test and then technique of analyzing data used statistic.Descriptive statistics are
statistics which serve to describe or provide an overview of the object under study
through sample or population data as it is without analyzing and making general
conclusions.Descriptive statistics are the mean, median, and mode.
The "mean" is the "average" you're used to, where you add up all the numbers and
then divide by the number of numbers. The "median" is the "middle" value in the
list of numbers. To find the median, your numbers have to be listed in numerical
order from smallest to largest, so you may have to rewrite your list before you can
find the median. The "mode" is the value that occurs most often. If no number in
the list is repeated, then there is no mode for the list.

DISCUSSION

The data collection report is written in a table and this is sourced from students of
DIK 19 C class of the Unimed English Education Study Program. Where obtained
data about listening problems that students have, as follows:
N NAM NIM Score
O A ( part
A,B,
C,and
D)
1 Riska 8+18
219112
Ayund +4+5
1005
a = 35
2 Kristin 8+19
a 219112 +6+6
Lumba 1006 = 39
n Gaol
3 Cindy 8+19
219112
Juwita +6+3
1015
Angela = 36
4 Guido 219112 8+19
Tamba 1016 +6+3
Raja = 36
Turnip
5 Aldi 212112 8+18
Aditya 1027 +4+5
Arniz = 35
6 219112 8+18
Nunice
1028 +4+5
Laia
= 35
7 Unetta 219112 8+20
Febria 1029 +4+6
na = 38
Sihite
8 Veroni 219242 6+13
ca 1008 +6+3
Marga = 28
retha
Siring
o-
ringo
9 Marcel 219242 5+20
la 1009 +6+6
Simbol = 37
on
1 Endan 219242 8+19
 Mean

     
x̄=X1+X2+…+Xn   

  

x̄ = 35+39+36+36+35+35+38+28+37+38+39+35+35+36+39+

35+39+39+35+35+35+30+39+27+35+35+30+36

28

991
x́ =
28

Note:
= 35,39 x̄ : mean or average
x : datum
# From the data of English Education 2019 C
n : total of data
get the Mean is 35,39 .

Median
Note:
Me : Median
n : Total of data
x : Data

27,28,30,30,35,35,35,35,35,35,35,35,35,35,35,36,36,36,36,37,38,38,39,39,39,39,3
9,39
 1
Me= ( 35+35 )
2

1
¿ ( 70 )=35
2

# From the data of English Education 2019 C get the Median is 35 .

Modus/ Mode

The Mode is the most frequently occurring value in the set of scores. The most
frequently occurring value is the mode.

12

10

0
27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

# From the chart above can conclude that the Modus/ Mode are 35. There are
eleven students get score 35 #

The Student’s Listening Ability

Listening skills make a big contribution to language learning. That's because

listening skills can provide input for mastery of the teaching language.With this
ability, a human being can know and understand information in the form of
conversations, opinions, facts, or knowledge that is conveyed through people,
 media, or writing. The role of listening skills in one's quest for knowledge is
enormous. Most of the knowledge gained by humans is using this listening skill,
therefore practicing listening skills from an early age will have a positive impact
in the future.
From the data taken from the results of the midterm exams using a sample from
the 2019 English Education class Class C. The number of class C students is 28
people. 5 male students and 23 female students and almost all students get fairly
good scores with a maximum score of 40.

How to Improve Listening Skill

The way to improve our listening skills are:

1. Recognize Native Ways of Speaking.

How to pronounce English words and sentences is called pronunciation.

Pronunciation is what makes us dizzy in listening to English. Because a foreign
language plus a way to pronounce that is much different from Indonesian, it will
make us think even harder when we hear foreigners speak. Therefore, it is also
important to learn this pronunciation. If we know how native speakers say words
and sentences, as well as how to speak, it will certainly make our listening easier.
For example, native people usually combine word with word (linking words) so
they speak very fast. For example: ” What are you doing ” they can say it to be ”
watca doin “

2. Using Listening Learning Media

In today's digital era, there are many media for learning. Some applications such
as google text-to-speech text to voice on Android smartphones can convert text
into English native speaker voice. So, we can find out the pronunciation of
various vocabs directly. Apart from google text-to-speech, there are lots of online
and offline dictionary applications available for free on the Playstore and
Appstore. Now many of these dictionaries are equipped with a voice. Just like
 alfalink (a digital dictionary brand) which is famous for its talking dictionary.
Only difference, the dictionary downloaded from Google Playstore is free. Not
only dictionaries, you can also search for various applications that provide audio
conversations, speeches, books, fairy tales and so on. Not only hear, but you can
also immediately see the text so you can immediately match it. For those of you
who use laptops or desktops, currently the online google translate dictionary also
uses the audio feature, you know, to help users know the pronunciation of the
various vocabulary.

3. Speaking with Native Speaker

This one method is not easy. But if you know technology, everything will be
more affordable. Chat directly with native speakers is an effective way of
learning English. Besides being able to learn the pronunciation of the experts, we
can also directly evaluate our listening. But unfortunately, it is rare to have the
opportunity to meet these foreigners, unless we come directly to their country.
For those of you who are constrained by costs, don't worry because with the help
of media and technology, everything can be realized. One alternative for those of
you who want to chat directly with native speakers to improve your English is to
meet online. Can be via hangouts, telephone, skype, and others. There are several
websites that offer online courses with native speakers, such as English First.
There is also a manual way, namely by finding language exchange friends on
interpals.net. The YouTube channel also allows us to learn English, even though
it is only one way, but it is quite helpful to get used to English listening practice.

4. Practice Makes Perfect!

Exercise is the only way to make our listening quality better. Because in essence,
there is no word instant in learning. Practicing every day can definitely make us
no longer think hard when we hear conversations or lectures in English. Exercises
that can be done are practicing listening to audios, or doing listening questions.
About listening, you can again get it for free or paid on various websites. For
example, doing the TOEFL listening questions. That way your ability will be
more measurable by how many questions are correct.

Conclusion

One of the language skills is listening skills. According to Abdul Wahab Rosyidi,
listening is an ability that allows a language user to understand the language used
orally, listening skills are an important part and cannot be ignored in language
learning, especially if the goal of implementation is complete mastery of language
skills. Listening skills are a person's ability to digest or understand words or
sentences taught by speech partners or certain media. This ability can actually be
achieved by continuous practice to listen to the differences in the sound of word
elements with other elements according to the correct alphabet, either directly
from the original speaker or through recordings. Listening skills are an important
aspect of communicating, listening involves the ear's sense of hearing. Listening
actively and effectively is by combining the sense of hearing with the mind, so
that it can capture and interpret the message conveyed.

From the research that has been done about the listening ability in faced by
English Education 2019 class C ,Unimed in the academic year of 2019/2020, the
researcher concludes that From the data taken from the midterm exam results used
sample from English Education 2019 class C. Total of the students in class C are
28 person. 5 students are male students and 23 students are female students.
almost all students get a good enough score with a maximum score is 40. The
mean score from class C is 35,39 from maximum score is 40. It’s good enough
score because the mean not far from the maximum score. This indicates that
students’ have good listening ability.
 REFERENCES

Field, J. (2008). Listening in the Language Classroom. 1st ed. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Renandya, W. A., & Farrell, T. S. (2011). Teacher, the Tape is Too Fast!
Extensive Listening in ELT. English Language Teaching Journal, 65(1), 52-59.

Rost, M. (2001). Listening. In: R. Carter & D. Nunan, eds. The Cambridge Guide
to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. 1st ed. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, pp.7-13.

Rost, M. (2005). L2 Listening. In: E. Hinkel, ed. Handbook of Research in Second

Language teaching and Learning. 1st ed. Mahwah: Lawrence Earlbaum
Associates, pp. 503-527.

Anderson, A. & Lynch, T. (1988). Listening. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Brown Steven. 2006. Teaching Listening. New York: Cambridge University

Press.

Rixon, S.. Developing Listening Skills. London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd.1986.

Zezens Pratama ( 2018 ). Improving Students’ Listening Ability Through

watching English Movies. Jakarta. Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University
Jakarta.
Siti Nurphami. Journal: Improving Listening Skill by Activate Students’ Prior
Knowledge. Vol 1, No. 01, 2015.

Dadang Solihat, dkk. Improving Students’ Listening Skill by Using English Songs.
Journal of English Education. Vol 3, No. 1, 2014