CREATING LISTENING MATERIAL USING ADOBE AUDITION CS5.

5
MOH. KUSEN
SMA NEGERI 1 KEDIRI, EAST JAVA
Abstract
Teachers have very significant contribution to improve quality of
learning. This condition places them in demand for the better quality for their
personal in response toward the advance of education in many sides. Active
and innovative acts are needed. ICT literacy for teachers has become the
priority in conducting classroom management. Language teachers especially
have to aware that ICT can ease them in the form of medium for teaching as
well creating teaching materials. Teaching listening in language class requires
teachers to be able to select the most appropriate materials for their students.
Therefore, it is wise when teachers themselves accommodate ICT for the sake
of listening material providence. Adobe Audition CS5.5 gives the opportunity
for teachers to select, to modify, and even to create the listening materials for
classroom benefit. To bear in mind, teachers are benefited by Adobe Audition
CS5.5 not only before teaching but also during the teaching-learning process as
well. However, there has to be well understanding on how to deal with any
toolbars provided in it when using it in editing, creating, and using it for
teaching in the classroom.
Key words: Listening Material, teaching listening, and Adobe Audition CS5.5

A.

Introduction
Teacher plays greater role to bring about students especially for their academic

achievement. In this way, teacher has to be able to adapt and adopt any improvement
dealing with the subject handled as well as other resources to maximize his or her potency
to become professional. Cooper, et. Al. (2011: 1) mention their statement about what
teacher is. Teacher is a reflective practitioner who continually evaluates the effects of
his/her choices and actions on others (students, parents, and other professionals in the
learning community) and who actively seeks out opportunities to grow professionally.
It has become the well spread news that teachers living condition nowadays has
been considered as prosperous compared to the previous 20 years. Again Cooper, et. Al.
(2011: 2) state that compared to the teachers of the 19th and much of the 20th century,
todays teachers are better educated, earn more money, and are more highly respected

members of society than their earlier counterparts. Society requires its teachers to obtain a
college education and specific training as teachers. This increase in the educational level of
teachers is recognition that, if teachers are to facilitate the intellectual, personal, and social
development of their students, then they must be much better educated than ever before.
Therefore, teachers are actually demanded to be even more qualified than ever. Their
qualification must be improved in so many ways, such as communication skill, organizing
skill, presentation skill, knowledge base, as well as technical skill. In addition to this
teacher qualification, Smith in Cooper et. Al (2011: 3) argues that teacher in many ways
should be characterized as having good command of theoretical knowledge about learning
and human behavior, displaying of attitudes that foster learning and genuine human
relationships, having good command of knowledge in the subject matter to be taught, and
having repertoire of teaching skills that facilitate student learning. In reference toward
teachers repertoire of teaching skills that facilitate student learning, there must active and
innovative acts from teacher to gain the success of learning. ICT literacy can be placed as
priority in this case. For sure, this very matter is not easy to implement. Evans (2009: 62),
points out that even though it is a requirement to incorporate ICT into secondary
classrooms, changing established teachers pedagogic practice is not easy. It has been well
documented that change is non-linear (for example, simply providing access to technology
does not ensure its use), is complex and needs to be rooted in support structures that are
embedded within teachers social and working contexts.
Language learning still remains some problems for learners. One of the barriers that
students face in language learning is on listening skill. Students encounter problems in
listening for some factors. Among factors causing students face difficulties in listening are
sound identification, lexical meaning of the words heard, drawing inferences, and many
others. Ur (1991: 111-112) mentions that students face problems in listening due to 1.

Trouble with sounds; since most listeners rely mostly on context for comprehension, they
are often themselves unaware of inaccurate sound perception. 2. A must to understand
every word; this is a very common problem, often unconsciously fostered by teachers
and/or listening comprehension materials which encourage the learner to believe that
everything that is said bears (equally) important information. The effort to understand
everything often results in ineffective comprehension, as well as feelings of fatigue and
failure. Teachers may need to give learners practice in selective ignoring of heard
information - something they do naturally in their mother tongue. Teachers should explain
this point to the learners, and set them occasional tasks that ask them to scan a relatively
long text for one or two limited items of information. 3. Inability to understand fast natural
native speech; learners will often ask teachers to slow down and speak clearly - by which
they mean pronounce each word the way it would sound in isolation; and the temptation is
to do as they ask. But if teachers do, they are not helping them to learn to cope with
everyday informal speech. They should be exposed to as much spontaneous informal talk
as they can successfully understand as soon as possible; and it is worth taking the time to
explain to them why. One of the advantages of teacher-produced talk is that you can
provide them with this sort of discourse at the right level for them, getting faster and more
fluent as their listening skills develop. 4. The need to hear things more than once; there
may be very good pedagogical reasons for exposing learners to texts more than once. But
the fact remains that in real life they are often going to have to cope with 'one-off'
listening; and teachers can certainly make a useful contribution to their learning if teachers
can improve their ability to do so. Teachers can for example, try to use texts that include
'redundant passages and within which the essential information is presented more than
once and not too intensively; and give learners the opportunity to request clarification or
repetition during the listening. 5. Difficulty to keep up; the learner feels overloaded with

incoming information. The solution is not (so much) to slow down the discourse but rather
to encourage them to relax, stop trying to understand everything, learn to pick out what is
essential and allow them to ignore the rest. 6. Exhaustion; this is one reason for not making
listening comprehension passages too long overall, and for breaking them up into short
'chunks' through pause, listener response or change of speaker.
Considering the importance of ICT usage in listening classroom and some problems
faced by some learners, teachers should be imposed to make a use of ICT in designing the
interesting listening materials and making a use of it for the attractive teaching that can
solve any deficiencies in listening skill. Adobe Audition CS5.5 offers possibility for
teachers to enhance their skills in providing listening materials and in using them in
teaching learning process. Jago (2012: 1) states that Adobe Audition is a highly regarded
audio post-production application that blends fast performance and professional tools with
an extremely user-friendly interface. It includes a multitrack editing environment, a
comprehensive mixer, track-based controls and effects, and a separate effects rack, as well
as extraordinary audio correction tools. For this reason, it is definite that teachers are
strongly recommended to use ICT in especially in creating listening materials and using it
in classroom practices.

B.

Discussion

1.

Listening Material
Classroom listening is not real-life listening. However, in order to provide
students with training in listening comprehension that will prepare them for effective
functioning outside the classroom, activities should give learners practice in coping
with at least some of the features of real-life situations. There are a lot of English
texts that are used as teaching materials. However, the question that should be arisen

is how they can be beneficial for students learning. Good listening materials, in fact,
should qualify the appropriate selection of content and how it is transferred. Wilson
(2008: 25) states that what makes a good listening text for language classes are
believability, relevance to the listener, new information and appropriateness in terms
of language level. For these aspects, in accordance to language classroom usage, they
are specified to content and delivery.
Teachers need consider some important consideration when they come to
content and delivery. When teachers need to adopt which materials are suited to the
certain level of class, they have to think about interest factor, speech acts, discourse
structure, and cultural accessibility, density, language level, as well as entertainment
factor. Wilson (2008: 26-27) explains that interest factor from student will also build
students motivation in learning. Genre of informative text, for example, is less
preferred than that of narrative. Further, he argues that the speech acts involve the
utterances that take different functioning for communication; whether the talk refers
to arguing, suggesting, prohibiting, or any others. Discourse structure reveals the
organization of a piece of text. Such examples, as cause and effect relationship
compare and contrast, show how a text is organized. Further, cultural accessibility
provides the background of the talk for the students. Some texts may not provide
enough cultural value in that way should be avoided. Density refers to the amount of
information in the text. How much the text would be will be very influential for
students. The lengthy of the text should be considered to avoid students frustration.
For the case of language level, teachers need to carefully select a listening text that
contains many new lexical items and high-level grammatical structures. When the
selection is not appropriate, students will be in great difficulty. Finally, A listening
text should make students feel enjoy and stimulate them in learning by providing

them an entertaining text. Meanwhile, for the delivery factor, teachers need to think
about intonation contour from the speaker, the loudness of the voice, and
accessibility of the devices used in the classroom. Again, Wilson (2008: 29-30)
provides comprehend characterization for delivery matter. He mentions that delivery
involve whether the text in live talk or recording, the quality of recording itself, the
speed and number of the speaker, and the accent of the speaker.
There are lot sources of listening materials. Flowerdew and Miller (2005)
mention that they are taken from Radio, Audio tapes, Language Laboratory, Video,
and Computer-Assisted Language Learning. Meanwhile, Wilson (2008: 40-48) adds
that sources of listening materials are from teacher talk, student talk, guest speakers,
textbook recordings, television, video, DVD, radio, songs, and the internet.

2.

Teaching Listening
When the qualified materials have been fulfilled, teachers should bear in mind
on how the procedure to teach listening is. Teaching Listening skill takes the
following sequence; Pre-listening, while listening, and post listening.
Pre listening gives the opportunity for students to have the initial condition of
listening task by the help of their teacher. They usually get vocabulary knowledge
and any information relevant to the text they are going to listen. Wilson (2008: 60)
states that the pre-listening stages help the students to prepare for what they are
going to hear, and this gives them a greater chance of success in any given task. The
first stage of pre-listening usually involves activating schemata in order to help
students to predict the content of the listening passage. The second stage is setting up
a reason to listen. Maybe, there is an information gap that needs to be filled or an

opinion gap or pre-set questions, or perhaps the students have asked questions based
on things they would hope to hear.
While listening exposes students to have more attention to language input in
the purpose of identifying the information from it. This involves the activity to find
the gist from the text. For this idea, Wilson (2008: 61) explores that during this
phase, the students hear the input once, probably listening for gist, although of course
there may be occasions when they need to listen for specific information or listen in
detail. They check their answers in pairs or groups. This is to give them confidence
and to open up any areas of doubt. They then listen a second time, either in order to
check or to answer more detailed questions. It is important that the students should
be required to do different tasks every time they listen (listening to check answers is
slightly different from listening to answer questions).
Finally, post listening provides students with cooling down activity to wrap up
their process during classroom process in listening activities. Again, Wilson (2008:
61) gives his argument that The whole class checks answers, discusses difficulties
such as unknown vocabulary, and responds to the content of the passage, usually
orally, sometimes in writing. This may be done in plenary (with the whole class) or
in pairs or groups.

3.

Adobe Audition CS5.5

Adobe Audition CS5.5 a software published by Adobe Corporation that
specifies its area on audio production, audio editing, and audio mixing. Jago (2012:
1) states that Adobe Audition is a highly regarded audio post-production application
that blends fast performance and professional tools with an extremely user-friendly
interface. It includes a multitrack editing environment, a comprehensive mixer, track-

based controls and effects, and a separate effects rack, as well as extraordinary audio
correction tools. This paper mainly discusses the basic guideline on how to work
with adobe Audition CS5.5 covering audio recording, audio editing, and audio
mixing as well as using the software in teaching listening.
The first use of Adobe Audition CS5.5 is what commonly audio software
provides; that is audio recording. This is done simply by clicking record button on
the front board of Adobe Audition CS5.5. When the record button has been clicked,
the operator may start to record the audio; either live or even from other sources.
Make sure that the speaker is active when willing to record. Before proceed this, the
operator of Adobe Audition CS5.5 has to provide the new file by clicking on the file
tab, then select new, then select audio file. Another way to start the new file is by
holding on ctrl shift N on the keyboard. The complete illustration for this stage is
displayed in graphic 1 below.

Graphic 1 Recording Process

The second use of Adobe Audition CS5.5 is audio editing. For this paper
presentation, editing involves copying, pasting, and normalizing. Adobe Audition
CS5.5 makes teachers easy in copying the part of sound that is even only the small

portion of selected wave. This is done by selecting the certain wave from the audio
opened, and then right clicking that wave then select copy.

Graphic 2 Copying Process

The next use of Adobe Audition CS5.5 is pasting. This is for the next step from
copying. This will make a copy from the selected wave that has been copied in the
previous stage. This is done by right clicking on the file or the space provided and
select paste. Another way to start the new file is by holding on ctrl V.

Graphic 3 Pasting Process

After copying and pasting, the next step is normalizing. This functions to
normalize the recording result. This will make balance between left and right wave
displayed in the front board of Adobe Audition CS5.5. This is done by clicking the
effect tab then select amplitude and compression then select normalize (process). See
the graphic below.

Graphic 4 Normalizing

The next use of Adobe Audition CS5.5 is its good usage for teaching. To make
this become applicable, teachers in the classroom only need to get familiar with
button in front board of Adobe Audition CS5.5; such zoom in, zoom out, Zoom out
full, play, pause, stop, move previous, move next, rewind, and fast forward. The
complete chart is displayed below.

Graphic 5 tool board in Adobe CS5.5

C.

Conclusion and suggestion

Teachers are in demand for being professional. One of the qualities that shows
teachers competency is their ability in ICT. ICT enhances the development of
teachers as they can make a use of it for teaching devices and as the tool for material
providence. Listening teacher is benefited from the existence of Adobe Audition
CS5.5. The software gives the opportunity for teachers to select, to modify, and even
to create the listening materials for classroom benefit. To be sure, teachers can use
Adobe Audition CS5.5 not only before teaching but also during the teaching-learning
process as well. However, teachers have to be accustomed to using any tools
provided in the front board of Adobe Audition CS5.5. Furthermore, teachers should
not have the feeling of easily satisfied of what has been mastered in Adobe Audition
CS5.5 since that there are still lot of facilities that are still needed more training in
using it. Teachers or users of Adobe Audition CS5.5 are recommended to share their
knowledge and skills to their peer teachers for the better fluency of maximizing it.

References

Cooper, James M., et. Al., (2011), Classroom Teaching Skills, Ninth Edition, Wadsworth,
Cengage Learning, Belmont, United States of America
Evans, Michael J. (2009), Foreign-Language Learning with Digital Technology,
Continuum International Publishing Group, New York
Flowerdew, John. and Lindsay Miller, (2005), Second Language Listening; Theory and
Practice, Cambridge University Press, New York, USA
Jago, Maxim., (2012), Introducing Adobe Audition CSS.S: Learn by Video, Peachpit
Press, Barkeley
Ur, Penny. (1991), Course in Language Teaching: Practice and Theory, Cambridge
University Press, the Edinburgh Building, Cambridge.
Wilson, JJ., (2008), How to Teach Listening, Pearson Education Limited, Edinburgh Gate,
England