CHAPTER II
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
A. Listening
1. Definition of Listening
Listening is an activity that always happens in our conversation.
Conversation consist of two activities; speaking and listening. When the
students listen to the teacher who is speaking, the students have to try to
understand the information given from the speaker. If the students listens
carefully to the speaker, it will be possible for them to catch the main point
of the information given. In this case, listening is different from hearing,
when the students are listening, it also has a process of hearing, but when
the students are hearing it is not always listening.
This statement is cited by Tarigan (1986: 28) that defines that the
listening is hearing activity to the spoken language with attention,
understanding, appreciation and interpretation to get information, content
or message and to understand the essence of the communication sent by
the speaker through speech or spoken language.
Based on the previous explanation, when the students really listen
to others, they elaborate their ideas, and express themselves in greater
depth: it will make the students understand in every single sentence so that
they get information. By knowing and understanding the information,
In summary listening is a activity which it requires the listener to
be actively and imaginatively involved in another situation to understand
provided material in the form of spoken language that is from your own. It
can be done by involving a five step process; attending, understanding.
interpreting, responding and remembering.
2. The Importance of Listening
Listening is very important especially in conversation. We cannot
develop speaking skill unless we develop listening skill. To have
successful conversation, students must understand what is said to them. In
the daily life adults use almost half their communication time for listening,
and students may receive as much as 90% of their in school information
through listening from teacher and speak to one another (Salisbury in
tarigan 1986: 132).
3. The Purpose of Listening
There are many aims of listening as follows:
a. listening to get knowledge and learning
b. listening to get enjoyable of something especially audio visual
c. listening, to differentiate the sounds accurately
It shows that listening is all important skill that will give much
knowledge to the students about what they hear and comprehend in
teaching learning process. Listening also leads the listener to get more
movie, they will feel more comfortable if they can hear the voice or sound
of that movie.
B. Vocabulary
1. Definition of Vocabulary
Vocabulary is one of the language components that have to be
mastered by the learners in learning foreign language. Vocabulary is a list
of words including their meanings and it is used to express our ideas and
feeling by communicating it in a language. Klatch & Brown (1995: 1)
define vocabulary as a list or set of words of a particular language or a list
or set of word that individual speakers of language might use. While
Vossoughi (2009:1) states, the vocabulary is the tool we use to think, to
express ideas and feelings, and to learn about the world. It can be
concluded that vocabulary is a set of words that is used to communicate in
a language.
2. The Importance of Vocabulary
Language skills mostly depend on the mastery of vocabulary. The
more vocabulary, the easier to use English. If the students lack vocabulary,
they will face some difficulties in using English.
Zimmerman (1997) as cited in Wu (2009: 10) states that
vocabulary is central to language and of critical importance to the typical
language learners. In order to master English well, students have to master
that the acquisition of an adequate vocabulary is essential for successful
second language use because without an extensive vocabulary, it will be
unable for learners to use the structures and functions they may have
learned for comprehensible communication.
3. Aspects of Vocabulary
In learning vocabulary, there are some vocabulary aspects that
teacher should convey to the students. Based on Lado (1972: 1) as cited in
DwiTantri (2013: 6), the vocabulary aspects consists meaning, spelling,
pronunciation, word classes, and word use.
a. Meaning
A word may have more than one meaning when it is used in
different context. In order to discover the meaning, the teacher can use
ways such as guided discovery, contextual guesswork and using
dictionaries.
Guided discovery involves asking question or offering example
that guides students to guess the meaning correctly. The meaning can
be conveyed by using demonstration or pictures (using object, using
gesture, blackboard drawing and pictures of book) and by verbal
explanation (analytical definition, putting the new words in a defining
context, and translating into another language) (Nations, 1990: 51 as
cited in Kareem, 2000: 6). Involving students in discovering the
meaning, it will be easy for students to remember the word and its
Contextual guesswork means making of the context in which
the word appears to drive an idea of its meaning, or in some cases,
guess from the word itself.
b. Spelling
In learning vocabulary, spelling is important because it aids in
reading. Spelling there may be different acceptable written forms for
the same words within the same variety of English or most commonly,
due to the fact that they belong to different varieties as happens with
many British or American English terms (Lopez, 1998: 38).
c. Pronunciation
Pronunciation is how words are pronounced. Pronunciation of
word is not related to the spelling so it is difficult to be learnt. Good
pronunciation helps receiver easier to communicate.
d. Word classes
Word classes are categories of word. There are grammatical
pattern that should be practiced fluently to the students such as noun
(countable and uncountable), verb complementation, phrasal verbs,
adjectives and adverb (Kareem, 2000: 4). The classification of the
words of a language in this way depends on their function in
communication. Nouns can occur in certain places of sentences and
serve certain function. Verbs also occur in certain places and have
special function, so word class membership is an important lexical
e. Word use
Word use is how a word, phrase, or concept is used in a
language. Word use may also involve grammar and thus be the subject
of profound analysis.
4. Types of Vocabulary
A language has so many vocabulary required by someone for
communication. These vocabulary are divided into two types, namely’
a) General vocabulary, which consist of everyday words widely
acknowledge meaning in common usage.
Example: school, hospital, table, etc.
b) Special/technical vocabulary, which is made up words from
everybody, general vocabulary which takes on specialized meanings
when adapted to a particular content area or particular subject matter
field.
Example: chlorophyll, stethoscope, etc (Zuraida, 2014:5)
Meanwhile, (Nunan, 1991: 118) ini line with (Hatch and Brown,
1995:370) mentions that there are two kinds of vocabulary should be
mastered by a language learner, namely:
a) Receptive or passive vocabulary is defined as words in which the
readers recognize and understand, but they do not necessarily use.
b) Productive or active vocabulary is defined as words in which the
readers both understand and use them to communicate both spoken and
By looking at former discussion about the divisions of vocabulary,
it comes into a conclusion that vocabulary can be divided into two types
based on the easiness to understand and produce. The first is the
vocabulary that is easy to understand in and produce. It is the combination
between general vocabulary and productive vocabulary. Then, the second
is the vocabulary that is hard to produce both in spoken and written form.
It is the combination between special/technical vocabulary and receptive
vocabulary. The assumption is learners will learn receptive vocabulary
first and then by knowing the vocabulary that is receipted the learners will
produce some communications (Schmitt. 2000: 5)
C. Basic Assumption
Listening is one of basic skills in English that must be mastered by
students in junior high school. In listening, vocabulary mastery is very
important because when we listen for something we have to know about
meaning, pronoun, and spelling. Therefore, listening is difficult activity for the
students because they must have a good listening comprehension and
vocabulary mastery.
It is important for teacher or researcher to know the students'
vocabulary mastery and listening comprehension because it be able to know
whether or not there is a correlation between vocabulary mastery and listening
