An Analysis on Students’ Difficulties in Listening: Study of The Eight Grade Students’

of The SMPN 1 Jawai Selatan In The Academic Year 2016/2017

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

This chapter present the discussion on the background of the study, statement of
the problems, objective of the study, scope and limitation of the study, significance of the
study, assumption of the study, and definition of key terms.

1. Background of the Problem

Nowadays, in Indonesia, English is taught as a foreign language that has four
macro-skills, namely listening, reading, speaking and writing. The four skill are
supported by the learning of language elements. They are structure, vocabulary,
pronunciation and spelling. According to Adnan (2012) among the four skills
(listening, speaking, reading, and writing) that are recognized as the keys to
‘knowing’ the language, listening is probably the least important to be taught.
Hamouda (2013) states that no one can deny the importance of listening skills i
foreign language because the key to acquire a language is to receive language input.
Based n the Hamouda statement above, clearly, listening as one of the macro-skill in
English is one of the important language elements the students should be master.
Listening plays an important role in communication as it is said that, the total
time spent on cmmunicating, listening takes up 40-50%; speaking 25-30% ; reading
11-16%; and writing about 9% (Mandelsohn, (1994) in Gilakjani and Ahmadi, 2011).
Gronet and Van Duzer in West and Turner (2009:192) state that listening is essential
to our relationships with others, whether they are coworkers, family members, friends,
or other important people in our lives. In brief, it is very important for people to learn
how to have better listening for th importance of their lives.
Based on the Mendelsohn, (1994) in Gilakjani and Ahmadi (2011), listening is
used at least two times as much as speaking and at least four times as much as reading
and writing. Through listening, people can interact to another person; they can share
their ideas by listening each other. If one of them speaks all the times, but the other
does not listen, the communication ill surely never happen and the message is never
 delivered. Therefore, it can be said that listening is an essential thing in people’s lives
either for communication or many other purposes.
Learning listening is not an easy thing to do because listening is different from
hearing. Learning hearing does not need the thinking from listener and it just need a
small conscious effort to do it. Meanwhile, learning listening is an active learning
process, specifically learning English itself. According to Graham (1992:6), learning
listening is hard work. It involves seeing, paying attention, posture, body language,
and other skill. He also adds that just because people hear well does not mean that
they are good listener. In the other words, it may be said that learing listening is a
conscious activity based on attitude, attention and adjustment to summarize what the
speaker has said. Learning listening is not a simple thing to do. It needs such a great
attention and thinking either mentally or physically from listener and it also needs
great effort from listeners to do it so that in learning listening, it needs frequent
regular practice.
2. Statement of Problem
In order to help the researcher focused in conducting this study, the researcher
was aware to the questions that were be analyzed. The researcher question in this
study were:
1. How is the ability of the students’ listening mastery at eight
gradestudents’ of SMPN Jawai Selatan in the academic year of
2016/2017?
2. How do the eight grade students of SMPN 1 Jawai Selatan in the
academic yearof 2016/2017 subdue their difficulties in listening?
3. Objective of the Study
Based on the research questions, the purposes of this study are:
1. To find out how is the ability of the students’ listening mastery at eight
grade students of SMPN 1 Jawai Selatan i the academic year 2016/2017?
2. How do the eighth grade students of SMPN 1 Jawai Selatan in the
academic year of 2015/2016 subdue their difficulties in listening?

This study is expected to found out what the difficulties were faced by the
students in listening. This reserch is very usefull for the students, English teachers and aso
for the other researchers. They areas follow:

1. For the students

 The result of this study hopefully can provide infomation about listening.
Therefore, the students will have more understanding about it. They know the importance
of listening and can elaborate the meaning. Moreover, the can identify and anticipate their
difficulties of listening.

2. For the English Teachers

The result of this study can give the teachers point of view and some
information about the technique of teaching listening and students’ difficulties in learning.
These enable them to understand the core of teaching English listening, to know factors
that caused the difficuties in learning listening which their students faced, and determine
appropriate steps to overcome the problem. The findng of this research can help the
teachers to find the strategies that can improve the students’ understanding in listening.

3. For the Other Researcher

The finding of this study can be useful for other researchers, such as give an
overview about the students’ difficulties in listeninh. The information of this reseacrh can
be use as the reference for the other researchers and the also can do further research that
relevant to the difficulties are that students faced in listening.

5. Scope of the Study

The scope of the study are limited to the subject and object investigated.

1. Subject

The subject of this study at eighth grade SMPN 1 Jawai Selatan in academic
year 2016/2017.

2. Object

The object of this study is effect of studying analysis on students difficulties in

listening.

6. Definition of Key Terms

There are some terms included in the study. To make it clear and to avoid
misommunication between the researcher and the readers, the researcher provided the
explanation of those term. The terms were as follows:
Analysis : detailed examination of the element or structure.

Difficulties : a factor causing trouble in achieving a positive result or tending to

produce a negative result.

Listening skill : a conscious activity to create mental representative of what is heard

from spoken or nonverbal messages.

Eight Grade of Students of SMPN 1 Jawai Selatan : Subject of the research that faced the
problem in listening which located in Sambas regency.

CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

This chapter presents about some related information topic of the recent study. It is
intended to provide some theoretical concepts which could support this investigation .
The discussion presented under the following sub headings: Nature of listening, type of
listening, importance of listening, difficulties of listening

1. Nature of Listening

1.1 Listening

Listening plays an important role in our life to communicate with other people
and also in this case in order to improving our skills in English. Listening is the ability to
identify and understand what others are saying. This involves understanding a speaker’s
accent or pronunciation, his grammar and his vocabulary, and grasping his meaning
(Howatt and Dakin 1974).

According to Richards and Schmidt (2002) state that listening is the prosess of
understanding speech in a first or second language. And also, according to Graham
(1992:5), listening is the process to interpreting and understanding wht listeners hear. It
picks up where hearing leaves off, and most importantly, listening requires active mental
involment. In the other words, listener cannot just hear the spoken text but it needs all the
things that the listener has, included attention and thought, etc.

2. Type of Listening
 There are five (5) types of listening according to Leslie Childs (1999). They
are as followed:

a). Non-Listening

Non-listening takes place when receivers consciously or unconsciously

decides not to “hear” anything at all. Their brains seem to simply stop processing sound
waves and little or no meaning gets though.

b). Marginal Listening

Marginal listening is a little skim reading. Listeners pays only enough

attention to the sounds around them to “tune-in” when the messages are important and
“tune-out” when that aren’t. Marginal listening means ”keeping your ears open” for key
words or sounds that will tell you when to start listening and paying attention. For
instance, although parents always her their child crying, they often only pay attention to
crying that signals pain or fear.

c). Attentive Listening

Attentive listening means listening with a purpose. This iss the kid of listening
to do when you have decided to pay attention because you need the information.

d). Critical Listening

Critical listening is really a part of attentive listening. It takes place when you
re looking for correct and accurate information.

e). Apprepriate Listening

the word apprepriate means to grasp the quality or significance of something and is often
used to mean the ability to understand, enjoy or admire the excellence of something.

3. importance of Listening

In daily life, listen to other shows how respect the comunicate to the
communicator. According to the Reichert (2006), listening is a main term of leadership
skill. And also Lucas (1992:31) state, if listeners do not listen well, they will not
understand what they hear and may pass along missunderstanding to others.
 As stated by several expert above that there are so many importances of
listening in this life. One main thing which proes that listening is very essential in this
life is communicatin, if nobody listens, no communication will happen so that being
good listener should be first priority which may support other skills developed.

4. Difficulties of Listening

According to Goh (2000:117) listening difficulties are defined as the internal

and external characteristics that might interrupt text understanding and real-life
processing problems related to cognitive procedures that take places at various stages of
listening comprehension.

CHAPTER III

METHODOLOGY OF RESEARCH

1. Method of The Study

The form of this study has conducted in descriptive design, in order that the
researcher intended to study on the students’ difficulties in listening that faced by the Eight
grader students of SMPN 1 Jawai Selatan in the academic of year 2016/2017.

Descriptive reseach can be use in quantitaative or qualitative, which in this study, the
researcher used qualitative stud. According Creswell (2005:39) that qualitative is type of
education reserch in which the researcher relies on the view of participant, ask board, general
question, collect data consisting largely of words (or text) from participant, describe and
analyze these words for themes, and conducts the inquiry in a subject, based manner.

The researcher used descriptive research design in this research i order to achieve the
objective and gain deep data towards students’ difficulties in listening. Descriptive research
used to describe characteristic of a population or phenomena being studied. The researcher
chose this as his research design because the researcher expecte to find out the fact about
students’ difficulties in listening on English Grader students of SMPN 1 Jawai Selatan in the
academic year 2016/2017.

In brief, the researcher designed this research with more flexible and applicable form
of methods based on the experts statements above with the intention to find out what the
difficulties in listening.
2. Population and Sample

Population is represent entire/all object research. Nawawi (2003) in Iskandar

(2009:118) population is grand total of subject research which can be consisted of by the
human being, object, animal, flora, symptom, assess the test or events as data source owning
certain characteristic in a research. While according to Sudjana (2005:74) population is
totally of all value which possible, result of counting/calculating or measurement,
quantitative and also qualitative hit the certain characteristic from all clear and complete corp
member is which wish learned by the nature.

In this study, the researcher conducted it in SMPN 1 Jawai Selatan in the academic
year 2016/2017. This school located on Jl. Jelu Air, Sambas regency, West Borneo Province.
SMPN 1 Jawai Selatan is a junior high school which has three classes with total 72 students,
second year students consist of 22 students and students in second year students as population
in this study.

Sample is shares as proxy from accurate population ( Arikunto, 2006:87). While

according to Sugiyono (2003:56) sample is “some of amount and characteristic owned by
poulation. The second year student of SMPN 1 Jawai Selatan has 3 classes. Those are: VII,
VIII, IX. In this research, the researcher took the data by using purposive technique. The
purposive sampling technique is the deliberate choice of an informant due to the qualities the
possesses.

In thi study, the researcher has chosen one class from the second year that had the
lowest achievement as the sample. According to the information from the English teacher and
from students’ score sheet, VIII class was the class which had the lowest achievement in
listening. Which in the research, the researcher chose 20 students of classs VIII as the sample.

3. Technique and Data Collection

In order to collecting the data, the researcher has used three kind of min instruments
and with one additional instrument in order to strengthen data validity, they were:
questionnaire, unstructures interview, and documentary and also a test to gain the students
achievement in listening. First, the researcher distributed the prepared questionnaire to the
selected respondents. The questionnaire was used to acquire information about students’
difficulties in listening. It consisted of eight questions in which the questions were related to
te students’ difficulties in learning listening.
 The next step, that the researcher did ws asking some questions related to the research
by interviewing the resondents by using the unstructured interview. The researcher recorded
the interview by using tape recorder in order to memorie the result of interview itself. Also,
the researcher used the documentation by using camera to take the picture while the students
were doing their activies in teaching and learning process. Then, the researcher took the
students’ scoring sheet fro the english teacher which the scores were gained from the test that
the researcher prepared in order to gain the information about their achievement in learning
listening. In this study, the researcher triangulated the result of questionnaire and interview in
order to know wht students’ difficulties in learning listening are. Brink (1993:37) states:
“triangulation refers to the use two or more data sources, methods, investigators, theoretical
perspectives and approaches to analysis on the study of a single phenomenon and then
validating congruence among them.”

4. Technique of Data Analysis

The obtained data were analyzed by the following the steps proposed by Miles and
Huberman (1984:21): Data reduction, displaying data and drawing conclusion.

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Creswell, J. W. (2005). Educational Research, Planning, Conducting and Evaluating

Quantitative and Qualitative Research. New Jerset: pearson education, INC.

Goh, C. (2000). Acognitive perspective on Language learners’ listening comprehension

problems. 28, 55-57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s034251x(99)00060-3 (viewed on 19May
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