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DEVELOPING LISTENING SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS FOR THE SEVENTH GRADE STUDENTS BASED ON CURRICULUM 2013
Mokhamad Sabil Abdul Aziz
Sebelas Maret University
Graduate School of Faculty of Education and Teacher Training abdulaziz_msa@hotmail.com
Abstract: Curriculum 2013 strongly suggests teachers and students to use the textbooks which have been
developed by the government (the Ministry of Education and Culture law number 71 year 2013). It is seen that the English textbook for the seventh grade students which is entitled “When English Rings a Bell” (WERB) does not have adequate listening materials. Listening plays a critical important role in language learning, communication, academic pursuit, and current English curriculum (Rost, 2002; Vandergrifft, 2004 in Li and Renandya, 2012). Therefore, there should be adequate listening materials for English language learners. This paper presents the theories underpinning the development of listening supplementary materials for the seventh grade students based on Curriculum 2013. The theories presented in this paper are about (1) teaching listening, (2) supplementary materials, and (3) how to develop listening supplementary materials. By considering these theories, it is hoped that scholars, teachers, and material developers can have theoretical insights in developing listening supplementary materials.
Key words: listening supplementary materials, Curriculum 2013
In the academic year of 2014/2015, Curriculum 2013 has been implemented to the schools Indonesia. However, Curriculum 2013 is not yet a fix product. It still needs evaluation and improvement. Vividly, the curriculum development involves the process to determine the needs of learners, to determine an appropriate syllabus, course structure, teaching methods, and materials, and to design a program evaluation (Richards, 2001: 2). Dealing with English subject seventh grade, Curriculum 2013 employs development of material which is in line with the idea of the curriculum. The material itself is in term of a textbook for the English subject. The Ministry of Education (MOE) urges the teacher to use the textbook developed by the MOE. That is “When English Rings a Bell” (WERB) textbook for seventh grade students. It consists of 11 (eleven) chapters. Each chapter has different themes. Each provides integrated four-language-skills materials as well. The WERB textbook also has colourful pictures and figures. Moreover, it provides the students with many materials that they can use in daily communication. Therefore, this textbook is assigned as the primary source of materials in the class.
The WERB textbook is only the primary textbook. The teacher may use the other materials to support the teaching and learning process. Another reason is the WERB textbook has some weaknesses. The WERB textbook is not accompanied by audio recordings. Audio recordings are important indeed to help the teacher to conduct listening activities in the class. In addition, the listening materials in the WERB textbook are not sufficient. The dominant material is only repetition. Thus, the material does not promote communication both for the teachers and for the students.
Considering that the WERB textbook still has limited listening materials, teachers need additional listening materials. Therefore, listening supplementary materials should be developed. In order to provide a theoretical guideline for developing listening supplementary materials, there will be some theories presented in this paper. Those theories include are (1) teaching listening, (2) supplementary materials, and (3) how to develop listening supplementary materials.
Teaching Listening
Historically, listening was neglected in the teaching of English as a second or a foreign language (Helgesen, 2003; Nunan, 2002), viewed as a passive process (Lynch and Mandelsohn, 2002 in Al-Qaraghooly and Al-Bermani, 2010: 15), and considered as secondary skill (Nunan, 2002: 238). On the other hand, form the late 1960s, practitioners recognised the importance of listening, and began to set aside time for practicing the skill (Field, 2002: 242). Listening plays a critical important role in both language learning, communication, academic pursuit and current English curriculum (Rost, 2002; Vandergrifft, 2004 in Li and Renandya, 2012). Listening also has been regarded as the most widely used language skill in day-to-day life (Morley, 2001; Rost, 2001 in Batova, 2013: 1). In another words, teaching listening cannot be neglected because it is an important skill which is needed in real-life and academic contexts.
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Briefly speaking, the approach acquired in the present language teaching, including teaching listening, is Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) (Richards, 2006: 6). The emphasis of teaching listening in CLT is the need to teach listening for effective oral communication (Goh, 2008: 189). Consequently, the learner-centred is adopted in teaching listening (Jacobs and Farell, 2003: 8; Nunan, 2002: 240). Nunan (2002) suggests that there are two ways in implementing the learner-centred in teaching listening. Firstly, tasks have to focus on activating the students’ participation i.e. the students can be engaged in the task activity actively. Secondly, teaching materials have to be able to involve learners in their learning, and make the learners active in giving contribution in learning process.
Through a checklist of micro skills, the teachers can get a good idea of what techniques need to cover in the domain of listening comprehension (Brown, 2001: 255). Table 1 explains the micro skills proposed by Richards (1983 as cited in Brown, 2001: 256).
Table 1 Micro skills of listening comprehension
No. Micro skills
1) 2) 3)
4) 5)
6) 7) 8)
9) 10) 11)
Discriminate among the distinctive sounds of English.
Retain chunks of language of different lengths in short term memory.
Recognise English stress patterns, words in stressed and unstressed positions, rhythmic structures, intonation contourse, and their roles in signalling information.
Recognise reduced forms of words.
Distinguish word boundaries, recognise a core of words, and interpret word order patterns and their significance.
Process speech at different rate of delivery.
Process speech containing pauses, errors, corrections, and other performance variables.
Recognise grammatical word classes (nouns, verb etc.) systems (e.g. tense, agreement, pluralisation), patterns, rules, and elliptical forms.
Detect sentence constituents and distinguish between major and minor constituents. Recognise that a particular meaning may be expressed in different grammatical forms. Recognise cohesive devices in spoken discourse.
Supplementary Materials
As mentioned earlier, the curriculum in Indonesia is changing. The changing affects the development of teaching materials. The teaching materials are very crucial because it serves as one of the learning sources. In addition, materials are defined as any systematic description of the techniques and exercises to be used in classroom teaching (Brown, 1995: 139). In other words, it can also be defined as anything which is used to help to teach language learners (Tomlinson, 1998: xi). Moreover, the materials are used to facilitate the learning of a language (Tomlinson, 2012: 143). Therefore, teaching materials are considered as an important tool for the success of foreign language learning. The one that is commonly used in classroom context is in the form of textbook. Moreover, textbook should cover the materials to teach English skills which are listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
However, many textbooks are not accompanied by listening materials such as mentioned earlier. Especially, the WERB textbook for seventh grade students is not accompanied by listening materials as well. Therefore, the WERB textbook needs to be accompanied by listening supplementary materials. Why it is called as supplementary materials because it is used in addition to the textbook (Spratt, Pulverness, and Willliams, 2005: 114). In other words, anything used to accompany the textbook which is not available in the textbook, and comes from other sources, it can be called as supplementary materials.
Since listening materials is not available in the WERB textbook, the following discussion about listening materials is considered as supplementary materials for the WERB textbook. To begin with, there are many kinds of listening materials that can be used in the classroom, which are recorded materials in the form of tapes and videotapes, and ‘live’ listening (Harmer, 2001: 229). Specifically, listening materials or sources can be in the form of teacher talk, student talk, guest speakers, textbook recordings, television, video, DVD and radio, songs, and the internet (Wilson, 2008: 40). One thing that should be considered is listening materials include the input materials, accompanying tasks and means of assessment and feedback (Rost, 2011: 281).
From the explanations of the criteria of good materials from Robinett as cited in Brown (2001: 142); Cunningsworth (1995 as cited in Richards, 2001: 274-276); Bell and Gower (1998: 122-125); Tomlinson (1998: 7-21); and Graves (2000: 156), the researcher concludes that the criteria of good materials as seen in Table 2.
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Table 2 The Criteria of Good Materials No. Criteria
Aims and Approaches
1. Materials should correspond closely with the aims of the teaching programme and with the needs and objectives of the learners.
2. Materials should be suitable to the learning/teaching situation.
Design and Organization
3. Materials should have a clear layout by using attractive, usable, and durable format. 4. Materials should have students’ books, teachers’ books, workbooks, and recordings 5. Materials should have a clear sequence
Learning
6. Materials should engage in discovery, problem solving, analysis. 7. Materials should develop specific skills and strategies.
Language
8. Materials should target relevant aspects (grammar, functions, vocabulary, etc.). 9. Materials should integrate four skills of speaking, listening, reading, and writing. 10. Materials should use/understand authentic texts.
Social Context
11. Materials should provide intercultural focus. 12. Materials should develop critical social awareness.
Activity/Task types
13. Materials should aim for authentic tasks. 14. Materials should vary activities and purposes.
How to Develop Listening Supplementary Materials
In order to develop listening supplementary materials, we can adopt R & D design by Borg and Gall (1983: 775) which purposes 10 (ten) stages in developing a new product, which are:
1. Research and information collecting – Includes review of literature, classroom observations, and preparation of report of state of the art.
2. Planning – Includes defining skills, stating objectives determining course sequence, and small scale feasibility testing.
3. Develop preliminary form of product – Includes preparation of instructional materials, handbooks, and evaluation devices.
4. Preliminary field testing – Conducted in from 1 to 3 schools, using 6 to 12 subjects. Interview, observational and questionnaire data collected and analysed.
5. Main product revision – Revision of product as suggested by the preliminary field-test result. 6. Main field testing – Conducted in 5 to 15 schools with 30 to 100 subjects.
7. Operational product revision – Revision of product as suggested by main field-test result. 8. Operational field testing – Conducted in 10 to 30 schools involving 40 to 200 subjects. 9. Final product revision – Revision of product as suggested by operational field-test results.
10. Dissemination and implementation – Report on product at professional meetings and in journals. Work with publisher who assumes commercial distribution. Monitor distribution to provide quality control.
Conclusion
The WERB textbook for seventh grade students is clearly not accompanied by listening materials, such as audio recordings, video, textbook recording, and so forth. As a matter of fact, listening plays an important role in learning English. Through listening, the students get the input language which carries a message, and can be a model of spoken discourse. Therefore, there should be listening supplementary materials, which can accompany the WERB textbook and become the teaching and learning sources for the teachers and the students. The discussion of the theories as mentioned earlier can be a theoretical insight in developing listening supplementary materials for seventh grade students.
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