CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background

Language is a medium of communication, which helps the members of a

community in the society, to communicate and interact with one another. This involves

both verbal and non-verbal communication. Language focuses on listening and reading

that can be named as passive or receptive skills, while speaking and writing can be

named as, active or productive skills.

Listening is one of the important skills in learning a language. If we dig in deep,

it is worth mentioning here that for acquisition of a language listening plays a pivotal

role. The process of acquiring a language starts with listening and ends up in the

production of writing. After birth, a child hears variety of sounds and can distinguish

among them. Every language has a common and a natural sequence for the

development of the language skills. Similarly English language has the natural

sequence of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Listening skill is ranked first of

all the four folds. This highlights the importance of listening skill in the life of human

beings.

Listening plays a vital role in daily lives. People listen for different

purposes such as entertainment, academic purposes or obtaining necessary

information. As for foreign language learning, listening is of paramount

important since it provides the language input (Rost 1994:141-142). Without

understanding input appropriately, learning simply cannot get any

improvement. In addition, without listening skill, no communication can be

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achieved (Cross, 1998). As for that, language learners, especially those who

learn English as a foreign language in a non-native setting, find it difficult to

acquire good listening skill.

Students normally face and encounter listening problems especially in foreign

languages. English is spoken across the world with different dialects and accents;

therefore, the foreign learners encounter difficulty in understanding this language.

Listening is probably more difficult than reading because students often recognize the

written word more easily to recognize than the spoken word. Because of these issues,

many students find listening difficult. To overcome this, we must find out what are the

problems faced by students during listening comprehension. when we know what the

problems faced by our students will be able to help them to solve the problems and

that’s why this research is done to find out the problems faced by English Department

students batch 2012 of FKIP UNLAM in listening comprehension. There are 4 levels

for Listening course in English Department of FKIP UNLAM, each level has 2 credit.

1.2 Research Focus or Statement of the Problems

The problem of this research is focused on the question: “what are the

problems faced by English Department students batch 2012 of FKIP UNLAM in

listening comprehension?”

1.3 Objective of the Study

The objective of this research is to describe the problems faced by English

Department students’ batch 2012 of FKIP UNLAM in listening comprehension.

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1.4 Significance of the Study

This study are hoped to be significant as

1. An information to listening course lecturer about the problems that faced by

students in listening comprehension.

2. Help students to realize the problems that they encounter during listening

comprehension.

3. A reference for other researchers who are interested in the same field.

1.5 Scope

In order to be feasible, the scope of this study is limited as followed:

1. The location of the research is at Language Laboratory in Lambung Mangkurat

University Banjarmasin.

2. The problems that students faced during listening comprehension.

3. The subject of this research is the listening III course students of FKIP UNLAM

Banjarmasin Batch 2012.

1.6 Definition of the Key Terms

1. Problem

A problem is an obstacle, impediment, difficulty or challenge, or any

situation that invites resolution; the resolution of which is recognized as a

solution or contribution toward a known purpose or goal. According to Roger

Kaufman (1978), problem is a gap that needs to be closed between the results

achieved in the present and expected results.

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2. Listening

According to Michael Rost (2001), the term listening is used in

language teaching to refer to complex process that allow us to understand

spoken language. This theory explains that listening is not only

recognizing the sound but also student must get the meaning of word.

3. Listening Comprehension

Saricoban (1999) noted that listening comprehension is the ability to

identify and understand what others are saying. This involves understanding

a speaker’s accent or pronunciation, his or her grammar and vocabulary, and

grasping the meaning conveyed. Listening comprehension can also be

defined broadly as human processing which mediates between sound and the

construction of meaning (Morley,1991)

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 CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

2.1 The Definition of Listening

Listening has meaning to listen or pay attention carefully to what others

are saying. Obviously deliberate factor in listening activities quite large, larger

than listening because listening activities no effort to understand what is at see

him while the levels of listening comprehension has not been done. In listening

to the sounds of language activities captured by a hearing aid then identified,

grouped into syllables, words, phrases, clauses, sentences, and finally a discourse

(Sutari, dkk.1997: 17).

Tarigan (1983:19) states that listening is a process of listening to the

verbal symbols of caring, understanding, appreciation, and interpretation for

obtaining the information, content capture and understand the meaning of the

communication that is not conveyed by the speaker through speech or spoken

language .

Understanding listening in Akhadiah (in Sutari, dkk.1997: 19) is a process

that includes activities listening to the sounds of language, identifying, interpret,

and react to the meaning contained therein.

Listening is one of the skills needed by a facilitator. Listening is not just

hearing something "go out the right ear left ear" or vice versa. Adnan stated that

listening is listening to understand what others are saying with a serious process

that cannot be done simply by relying on habits, reflexes and instincts.

Based on the opinions of experts it can be concluded that listening is

listening to the sound symbols of deliberate and attentive with the understanding,

appreciation, interpretation, response, and evaluation to obtain the messages,

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information, content capture and respond to the meaning contained in it.

In daily life listening activities never exceeded. Consciously or

unconsciously listening deed done of purpose. Listening made to obtain the

information, content or messages capture and understand the communication.

Listening is essentially a gathering to listen to or understand the material.

Therefore it can be concluded that the "main goal is to capture listen, understand,

or appreciate the message, an idea, an idea implicit in gathering materials" (Tarin,

1991:4).

If someone asks: "What is the function of listening to you?" Then

practically we can give an answer, such as:

1. I listened to obtain information that there is a link or anything to do with

my job or profession.

2. I listened to me to be more effective in interpersonal relationships in

everyday life at home, at work, and in public life.

3. I listened to collect data so that I can make decisions that make sense.

4. I listened to in order to provide appropriate responsiveness to everything

I've heard (in Tarin Hunt, 1987:55).

Indeed, the purpose of people to listen to something that wide range,

among others:

1. There are people who listen with the main objective to gain knowledge

of the speaker's utterances materials; in other words, listening to learn.

2. There are people who listen with an emphasis on enjoyment of any of

the material that is played or staged (especially in the arts); short, he

listened to enjoy the beauty of audio and visual (audiovisual).

3. There are people who listen with the intent to be able to judge what is

listened to it (good-bad, beautiful-ugly, right-nonsense, logical-illogical,

etc.), in short, listening to evaluate.

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 4. Some people listen to in order to enjoy and appreciate what is listened

to it (for example: reader stories, poetry readings, music and songs,

dialogues, panel discussions, debates), in short, the person listening to

appreciate thematerial gathering.

5. There are people who listen with the intent to communicate ideas,

thoughts, and feelings to others smoothly and precisely. Many examples

and ideas that can be obtained from the speakers, and all of these are

essential ingredients to support in communicating his own ideas.

6. There are also people who listen with the intent and purpose in order to

distinguish the sounds correctly; the sound that distinguishes meaning

(distinctive) sound which does not distinguish the meaning, typically look

real to someone who is learning a foreign language fun listening to a native

speaker speech (native speaker).

7. There is another person with the intent to listen to creative problem

solving and analysis, because of the speaker may gain a lot of valuable

input.

8. Furthermore, there are more people who are keen to listen to any speaker

to convince him of a problem or idea that has been doubted; in other words,

he listened to the persuasive (Logan and Shrope in Tarin, 1987:56).

According Sutari (1997:22), the purpose of listening is: (1) to get the facts

(2) analyze the facts (3) evaluate the facts (4) inspiration (5) get entertainment (6)

improve the ability to speak.

Based on the above, it can be concluded that basically listening purposes can

be viewed from various aspects, namely: Listening aims to learn, listening aims to

enjoy, listening aims to evaluate, listening aims to appreciate, listening aims to

communicate ideas, listening aims to differentiate sounds, listening aims to solve the

problem, and listening aims to convince.

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2.2 Listening Comprehension

With regard to the term ‘listening comprehension’ in language learning,

scholars have proposed a number of different definitions. Chastain (1971), for
example, defined listening comprehension as the ability to understand the speech
of native speakers at normal speed in listening situations. Similarly,
Saricoban(1999) noted that listening comprehension is the ability to identify and
understand what others are saying. This involves understanding a speaker’s
accent or pronunciation, his or her grammar and vocabulary, and grasping the
meaning conveyed.
Listening comprehension can also be defined broadly as human
processing which mediates between sound and the construction of meaning
(Morley,1991). That is, after people receive sounds from the environment, they
try to get the meaning out of the sounds they hear. In a similar token, listening
comprehension is described as a complex process of what people use to
understand speech. Dirven and Oakeshott-Taylor (1984) suggested that those
complex activities cannot be understood by simply looking at the linguistic cues
or knowledge of the language, but non-linguistic cues or knowledge of the world
also have to be considered in the comprehension process. A similar view is
proposed by Byrnes (1984), who defined listening as a complex skill in which
people have to employ all types of knowledge to interpret the meaning. She
explained that listening is more than the perception of sounds. Rather, it
includes comprehension of words, phrases, clauses, sentences and connected
discourse.
Although these definitions vary to some extent, basically listening is

considered as an activity in which listeners employ a variety of processes in trying

to comprehend information from oral texts. In this way, listeners construct

meaning from the passage and relate what they hear to their existing knowledge.

Additionally, it is meaningful to consider listening comprehension as a two stage

process.

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2.3 Potential problems in Listening Comprehension

Underwood (1989) offers seven conceivable causes of obstacles to efficient

listening comprehension, most of which are related to what was already mentioned.

1. Listeners cannot control the speed of delivery. Underwood says,

“Many English language learners believe that the greatest difficulty

with listening comprehension, as opposed to reading comprehension,

is that the listener cannot control how quickly a speaker speaks”

(Underwood, 1989, p. 16). They cannot catch up with the speed of the

speaker’s and it makes student cannot comprehend what speaker says.

2. Listeners cannot always have words repeated. This is a serious

problem in learning situations. In the classroom, the decision as to

whether or not to replay a recording or a section of a recording is not

in the hands of students. Lecturers decide what and when to repeat

listening passages; however, it is “hard for the teacher to judge

whether or not the students have understood any particular section of

what they have heard” (Underwood, 1989, p. 17). Mostly lecturer

only plays the recording once, so students cannot re-listen the words

or sentence spoken by speaker that they miss.

3. Listeners have a limited vocabulary. The speaker may choose words

the listener does not know. Listeners sometimes encounter an

unknown word, which may cause them to stop and think about the

meaning of that word and thus cause them to miss the next part of the

speech.

4. Listeners may fail to recognize the signals, which indicate that the

speaker is moving from one point to another, giving an example, or

repeating a point. Discourse markers used in formal situations or

lectures such as “secondly,” or “then” are comparatively evident to

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 listeners. In informal situations or spontaneous conversations, signals

are vaguer as in pauses, gestures, increased loudness, a clear change

of pitch, or different intonation patterns. These signals can easily be

missed especially by less proficient listeners.

5. Listeners may lack contextual knowledge. Sharing mutual knowledge

and common context makes communication easier. Even if listeners

can understand the surface meaning of the text, they may have

considerable difficulties in comprehending the whole meaning of the

passage unless they are familiar with the context. Nonverbal cues, such

as facial expression, nods, gestures, or tone of voice, can also be easily

misinterpreted by listeners from different cultures.

6. It can be difficult for listeners to concentrate in a foreign language. In

listening comprehension, even the shortest break in attention can

seriously impair comprehension. Concentration is easier when

students find the topic of the listening passage interesting; however,

students sometimes feel listening is very tiring even if they are

interested because it requires an enormous amount of effort to follow

the meaning. If they are not focus and lost concentration they will miss

some part of the speaker says.

7. Students may have established certain learning habits, such as a wish

to understand every word. Consequently, students tend to become

worried if they fail to understand a particular word or phrase and they

will be discouraged by the failure. It is thus sometimes necessary for

students to tolerate vagueness and incompleteness of understanding.

They get left behind trying to work out what a previous word meant.

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 Alex Case also stated eleven possible reason why student think listening is

difficult.

1. They are trying to understand every word

despite the fact that we can cope with missing whole chunks of speech
having a conversation on a noisy street in our own language, many
people don't seem to be able to transfer that skill easily to a second
language. One method of tackling this is to show them how to identify
the important words that they need to listen out for. In English this is
shown in an easy-to-spot way by which words in the sentence are
stressed (spoken louder and longer). Another is to give them one very
easy task that you know they can do even if they don't get 90% of what
is being said to build up their confidence, such as identifying the name
of a famous person or spotting something that is mentioned many times.
2. They get left behind trying to work out what a previous word meant
this is one aspect of the problem above that all people speaking a foreign
language have experienced at one time or another. This often happens
when you hear a word you half remember and find you have completely
lost the thread of what was being said by the time you remember what it
means, but can also happen with words you are trying to work out that
sound similar to something in your language, words you are trying to
work out from the context or words you have heard many times before
and are trying to guess the meaning of once and for all. In individual
listening’s you can cut down on this problem with vocab pre-teach and
by getting students to talk about the same topic first to bring the relevant
vocabulary for that topic area nearer the front of their brain. You could
also use a listening that is in shorter segments or use the pause button to
give their brains a chance to catch up, but teaching them the skill of
coping with the multiple demands of listening and working out what
words mean is not so easy. One training method is to use a listening or
two to get them to concentrate just on guessing words from context.
Another is to load up the tasks even more by adding a logic puzzle or
listening and writing task, so that just listening and trying to remember
words seems like an easier option. Finally, spend a lot of time revising
vocabulary and doing skills work where they come into contact with it
and use it, and show students how to do the same in their own time, so

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 that the amount of half remembered vocab is much less.
3. They just don't know the most important words
Again, doing vocabulary pre-teaching before each listening as a short
term solution and working on the skill of guessing vocab from context
can help, but please make sure that you practice this with words that can
actually be guessed from context (a weakness of many textbooks) and
that you work on that with reading texts for a while to build up to the
much more difficult skill of guessing vocab and listening at the same
time. The other solution is simply to build up their vocabulary and teach
them how they can do the same in their own time with vocabulary lists,
graded readers, monolingual dictionary use etc.
4. They don't recognize the words that they know
if you have a well-graded textbook for your class, this is probably a more
common (and more tragic) problem than not knowing the vocabulary at
all. Apart from just being too busy thinking about other things and
missing a word, common reasons why students might not recognize a
word include not distinguishing between different sounds in English
(e.g. /l/ and /r/ in "led" and "red" for many Asians), or conversely trying
to listen for differences that do not exist, e.g. not knowing words like
"there", "their" and "they're" are homophones. Other reasons are
problems with word stress, sentence stress, and sound changes when
words are spoken together in natural speech such as weak forms. What
all this boils down to is that sometimes pronunciation work is the most
important part of listening comprehension skills building.
5. They have problems with different accents
In a modern textbook, students have to not only deal with a variety of
British, American and Australian accents, but might also have Indian or
French thrown in. Whilst this is theoretically useful if or when they get
a job in a multinational company, it might not be the additional challenge
they need right now- especially if they studied exclusively American
English at school. Possibilities for making a particular listening with a
tricky accent easier include rerecording it with some other teachers
before class, reading all or part of the tape script out in your (hopefully
more familiar and therefore easier) accent, and giving them a listening
task where the written questions help out like gap fills. If it is an accent
they particularly need to understand, e.g., if they are sorting out the

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 outsourcing to India, you could actually spend part of a lesson on the
characteristics of that accent. In order to build up their ability to deal
with different accents in the longer term, the best way is just to get them
listening to a lot of English, e.g. TV without dubbing or BBC World
Service Radio. You might also want to think about concentrating your
pronunciation work on sounds that they need to understand many
different accents rather than one, and on concentrating on listening with
accents that are relevant for that particular group of students, e.g. the
nationality of their head office.
6. They lack listening stamina/ they get tired
this is again one that anyone who has lived in a foreign country knows
well- you are doing fine with the conversation or movie until your brain
seems to reach saturation point and from then on nothing goes in until
you escape to the toilet for 10 minutes. The first thing you'll need to bear
in mind is to build up the length of the texts you use (or the lengths
between pauses) over the course in exactly the same way as you build
up the difficulty of the texts and tasks. You can make the first time they
listen to a longer text a success and therefore a confidence booster by
doing it in a part of the lesson and part of the day when they are most
alert, by not overloading their brains with new language beforehand, and
by giving them a break or easy activity before they start. You can build
up their stamina by also making the speaking tasks longer and longer
during the term, and they can practice the same thing outside class by
watching an English movie with subtitles and taking the subtitles off for
longer and longer periods each time.
7. They have a mental block
This could be not just a case of a student having struggled with badly
graded listening texts in school, exams or self-study materials, but even
of a whole national myth that people from their country find listening to
English difficult. Whatever the reason, before you can build up their
skills they need their confidence back. The easiest solution is just to use
much easier texts, perhaps using them mainly as a prompt to discussion
or grammar presentations to stop them feeling patronized. You can
disguise other easy listening comprehension tasks as pronunciation work
on linked speech etc. in the same way.
8. They are distracted by background noise

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 Being able to cope with background noise is another skill that does not
easily transfer from L1 and builds up along with students' listening and
general language skills. As well as making sure the tape doesn't have lots
of hiss or worse (e.g. by recording tape to tape at normal speed not
double speed, by using the original or by adjusting the bass and treble)
and choosing a recording with no street noise etc., you also need to cut
down on noise inside and outside the classroom. Plan listening for when
you know it will be quiet outside, e.g. not at lunchtime or when the class
next door is also doing a listening. Cut down on noise inside the
classroom by doing the first task with books closed and pens down.
Boost their confidence by letting them do the same listening on
headphones and showing them how much easier it is. Finally, when they
start to get used to it, give them an additional challenge by using a
recording with background noise such as a cocktail party conversation.
9. They can't cope with not having images
Young people nowadays, they just can't cope without multimedia!
Although having students who are not used to listening to the radio in
their own language can't help, most students find not having body
language and other cues to help a particular difficulty in a foreign
language. Setting the scene with some photos of the people speaking can
help, especially tasks where they put the pictures in order as they listen,
and using video instead makes a nice change and is a good way of
making skills such as guessing vocab from context easier and more
natural.

10. They have hearing problem

As well as people such as older students who have general difficulty in
hearing and need to be sat close to the cassette, you might also have
students who have problems hearing particular frequencies or who have
particular problems with background noise. As well as playing around
with the graphic equalizer and doing the other tips above for background
noise, you could also try setting most listening tasks as homework and/
or letting one or more students read from the tape script as they listen.
11. They can't tell the difference between the different voices
this was the problem that took me longest to twig, but voices that are
clearly distinct to a native speaker can be completely confusing for a

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 non-native speaker. I haven't quite worked out why those problems occur
on some occasions and not on others, but the native speaker could be
identifying a lisp, an accent or a difference in range of tone that escapes
a student. You can avoid these problems by using texts with one woman
and one man, or you can practice them with tasks where the students
only have to count how many times the speaker changes.
From the two opinion we can conclude that the problem in listening

comprehension related to the concentration, difference between voice, lack of

vocabulary and habit to translate all the word.

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 CHAPTER III

METHOD OF RESEARCH

3.1 Approach and Type of Research

The approach that the researcher used in this research are qualitative and

quantitative approach. Fraenkel and Wallen (2006:431) states that qualitative

researchers are concerned with the process as well as product. Qualitative

researchers are especially interested in how things occur. Thus, qualitative

approach is chosen in order to describe the problems faced by the students in

listening comprehension from the data w h i c h i s g a i n e d . The quantitative

approach means evaluating numerical, measurable information. In quantitative

measurement, research or analysis contains hard data such as numbers, values,

statistics, fact, figures. Research design that is used in this present study is

descriptive method. Seliger a n d S h o h a m y ( 1989:124) mentions t h a t

t h e descriptive method involves a collection of technique used to specify,

delineate, or describe naturally occurring phenomena. A descriptive thesis

examines group of people, idea or theory with a particular focus on facts and

conditions of the subject. This research tries to identify the students’ problem in

listening comprehension of listening III course students of FKIP UNLAM

Banjarmasin batch 2012, and then describes the problems.

3.2 Subject of the Research

According to Arikunto (2006:130), population is the whole research

subject. While, Fraenkel and Wallen (2006: 92) said that “The larger group to

which one hopes to apply the result is called the population”.

The whole students in batch 2012 English Department of Lambung

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Mangkurat University (including the Regular A and Regular B) who take

listening III course make the population of this study. There are about 130

students in both Regular A and Reguler B. Researcher use total population

sampling for the sampling technique.

3.3 Instrumentation

In terms of the method, questionnaire was employed for this study.

Questionnaires are more amenable to quantification, cheap and easy to answer.

They are good ways for collecting information (Cohen & Manion 1989, Weir

& Roberts 1994). Moreover, questionnaires considered more reliable ways

since they are anonymous and this encourages greater honesty (Cohen

2000:269).

Questionnaire sheet is used as the instrument. All questions are about

the students’ problems in listening process. To identify problems, students

are asked to put their answer on a scale of frequency ranging from never to

always. The answer will be presented in four levels: Never, sometimes,

often and always.

Scale Description

1 Never ( 0% )

2 Some times ( 1% - 45% )

3 Often ( 46% - 75% )

4 Always ( 76% - 100% )

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3.4 Validity and Reliability

Validity is a measure which shows degrees of legitimate (validity) of an

instrument. The instrument can be called valid if the test measures what should

be measured (Arikunto, 2006: 168). To make sure that the data collected is

valid the researcher only asks the relevant question which is about

students problems during listening comprehension.

Reliability refers to the consistency of the scores obtained -

how consistent they are for each individual from one administration

of an instrument to another and from one set of items to another

(Fraenkel &Wallen,2006:157). To ensure that the data collected is

reliable, researcher used questionnaire as the instrument. Questionnaire

will be made anonymous so that students have freedom to choose the

answers acording to the problems that they have without any pressure.

3.5 Setting of the Research

The location of this research is in Language Laboratory UNLAM Gedung

Perpustakaan Pusat Lt.3UNLAM Jl. Brigjen H.Hasan Basri 70123, Banjarmasin.

3.6 Data and Source of Data

In this study the data are obtained from the result of the survey with

questionnaire will tell us the problems that listening III course students batch 2012

faced during listening comprehension.

3.7 Data Collection

The data collection in this research is done through the following steps:

1. The researcher constructs the instrument.

Researcher making the questionnaire, and make the question that related
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 to this which is the problems in listening comprehension.

2. The researcher distributes the questionnaire to the participants directly.

3. The data that are collected from questionnaire will be checked by

researcher.

4. The researcher counts the percentage of the problem.

3.8 Data Analysis

In this research, the data is analyzed by using a descriptive analysis. The data

are gained through questionnaire. After the data collected, researcher counts the

data and makes percentage with the data which is the students’ problem.

Formula:

Percentage % = n x 100%
N
n = the number of students who choose a certain scale
N = the total number of students
% = Percentage of the problem
From the result based on the questionnaire, the researcher will be able to

find the problems faced by listening III course students batch 2012.

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References

Cohen, L & Manim, L. (1998). Research methods in Education. Croom Helm

Hasan, A. (2000). Learners’ perceptions of listening comprehension problems. Language,

Culture and Curriculum, 13, 137-153.

Yagang, F. (1994) Listening: Problems and solutions. In T. Kral (ed.) Teacher Development:

Making the Right Moves. Washington, DC: English Language Programs Divisions,

USIA

OSADA, N. (2004) Listening Comprehension Research:A Brief Review of the Past Thirty

Years. WasedaUniversity

http://teachingdictation.blogspot.com/2010/01/definition-of-listening.html

http://www.usingenglish.com/articles/why-your-students-have-problems-with-listening

comprehension.html

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