A. The Concept of Listening Ability
1. The Concept of Listening
This chapter contains some related theories on listening skill and speaking performance. It include concept of abiliti, listening, communication. At the some time, what is correlation between listening skill and speaking performance.
The basic idea of teaching listening is that it impossible for people to be able to speak without learning to listen first. Theoritically by masteing basic skill, listening skill, the another language skill will develop naturally. This idea is in line with the theory proposed by the second language acquisition expert.
The ability to hear most of us begin to hear sounds before we are even born. The physical com-ponents of the listening process combine with the cognitive development in a child, resulting in sophisticated listening skills. The natural ability to hear, however, is often mistaken for a fully developed skill that needs no further fine-tuning.4
a. The Definition of Listening
Listening seem simple because it is something we o every day.
Yet, when one is lisening in a second or foreign language, we cn see
4 John Flowerdew and Lindsay Miller, Second Language Listening Theory and Practice, ( CAMBRIDGE: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 21
more easily how complex listening really is. There are definitions of listening by some expert:
Listening is the natural precursor to speaking; the early stages of language development in a person‟s first language and in naturalistic acquisition of other languages are dependent on listening.5 So listening is the first communication skill we engage in the moment we are born. Listening is also called passive skill. It has wrong idea because of listening to asking active from listener. In order to change the message from argument the speaker to listener must be active. It contributes knowledge from linguistic and non- linguistic source. The nature of listening comprehension is students should be encouraged to do in an active the process of listening for meaning. It used not only linguistic guidance but also his nonlinguistic knowledge.6
Listening plays an important role in communication in people‟s daily lives. As Guo and Wills state “it is the medium through which people gain a large propotion of their education, information, uderstanding of the world and human affairs, ideals, sense of values”. Emphasizing the importance of listening in language learning, Peterson states that “no other type of language input is easy to process as spoken language, received through
5 I.S.P Nation and J Newton, Teaching ESL/EFL Listening and Speaking,(New York:
Roudlege ,2009), p. 37
6 William Littlewood, Communicate Language Teaching An Introduction, (New York : Cambridge University Press, 1991), p.66-67
15
listening. Through listening, learners can build an awareness of the interworkings of language systems at various levels and thus establish a base for more fluent productive skills”.
Listening has an important role not only in daily life but also in classroom settings. Most people think that being able to write and speak in a second language means that they know the language;
however, if they do not have the efficient listening skills, it is not possible to communicate effectively.7
From the explanation above listening skill is a key to receiving messages effectively. It is a combination of hearing what another person says and psychological involvement with the person who is talking. Listening is a skill of Language. It requires a desire to understand another human being, an attitude of respect and acceptance, and a willingness to open one's mind to try and see things from another's point of view. It requires a high level of concentration and energy. It demands that we set aside our own thoughts and agendas, put ourselves in another's shoes and try to see the world through that person's eyes.
7 YILDIRIM, Selin. The importance of listening in language learning and listening comprehension problems experienced by language learners: A literature review,
AbantÜniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi Dergisi, 16 (4), p.2097.
b. The Process of Listening
Listening is assuming greater and greater importance in foreign language classrooms. There are several reasons for this growth in popularity.8
Actually there are many process of listening occur in five stages. They are hearing, understanding, remembering, evaluating, and responding.
a. Hearing
It is referred to the response caused by sound waves stimulating the sensory receptors of the ear; it is physical response; hearing is perception of sound waves; you must hear to listen, but you need not listen to hear (perception necessary for listening depends on attention).Brain screens stimuli and permits only a select few to come into focus- these selective perception is known as attention, an important requirement for effective listening.
b. Understanding
This step helps to understand symbols we have seen and heard, we must analyze the meaning of the stimuli we have perceived; symbolic stimuli are not only words but also sounds like applause and sights like blue uniform…that have symbolic meanings as well; the meanings attached to these
8 Jack C Richard and Willy A Renandya, Methodology in language teaching,(USA:
Cambridge University Press New York,2002)p.238-240
17
symbols are a function of our past associations and of the context in which the symbols occur. For successful interpersonal communication, the listener must understand the intended meaning and the context assumed by the sender.
c. Remembering
Remembering is important listening process because its mean that individual has not only received and interpreted a message but has also added it to the minds storage bank. In Listening our attention is selective, so too is our memory- what is remembered may be quite different from what was originally seen or heard.
d. Evaluating
Only active listeners participate at this stage in Listening. At this point the active listener weighs evidence, sorts fact from opinion, and determines the presence or absence of bias or prejudice in a message; the effective listener makes sure that he or she doesn‟t begin this activity too soon; beginning this stage of the process before a message is completed requires that we no longer hear and attend to the incoming message-as a result, the listening process ceases.
e. Responding
This stage requires that the receiver complete the process through verbal and/or nonverbal feedback; because the speaker has no other way to determine if a message has been received, this stage becomes the only overt means by which the sender may determine the degree of success in transmitting the message.9
Listening it self is a process of interpreting meaning of the spoken language. Farrel states that there are two process in meaning interpretation activity that happens in listening. These processes are:10
a. Top-down Process
Top-down listening is a point of view that sees listening is a skill that built up from complex skill in which the listeners use what they know of communication context –the situation which cause language be used- to predict what the message will contain. It involves the listeners in going from the whole –their prior knowledge- to the parts. On the other words, top-down process refers to the use of background knowledge in understanding meaning of a message.
9 Tyagi Babita, Listening: An important skill and its various (Journal International:
2013), p.2
10 Farrel S.C. Thomas, Succending with Engkish Language Learners (Thousand Oaks:
Corwin Press, 2006). P.108-109.
19
b. Bottom-up Process
Bottom-up listening is the process of listening where the listeners assemble the message piece-by-piece by the speech stream, going from the parts to the whole. On the other words, bottom-up listening is the process of listening which use the incoming input as the basis for understanding message.
c. Types of Listening
People have their purpose in doing something, so does in listeningactivity. In a condition, people need listening for the purpose of theircurious or desire to know the information of what they listen. However,there is a situation when people need to listen in order to keep interactionbetween two people or more go on. Nation and Newton divide the types oflistening into two types:11
1) One-way listening (transactional listening)
This type of listening is associated with the transfer of information. It isthe process of the information is being transmitted like the activity oflistening to some teaching materials that given by the teachers.
2) Two-way listening (interactional listening)
This type of listening is associated with keeping the social relations. Itmeans that two-way listening is the
11 I.S.P Nation and J Newton, Teaching ESL/EFL Listening and Speaking,(New York: Roudlege ,2009), p. 40.
activity of listening in everyday lifesuch as when people listen to their interlocutor in order to reply them inconversation
d. Aspects of Listening
Listening comprises of some key components, they are:
1) discriminating between sounds
2) recognizing words and understanding their meaning 3) identifying grammatical groupings of words
4) identifying expressions and sets of utterances that act to create meaning
5) connecting linguistic cues to non-linguistic and paralinguistic cues
6) using background knowledge to predict and to confirm meaning and
7) recalling important words and ideas.12 e. The Importance of Listening
Listening plays an important role in communication in people‟s daily lives. However, listening has an important role not only in daily life but also in classroom settings.13
The importance of listening in language classroom as follows:
12Babita Tyagi,”Listening : An Important Skill and Its Various Aspects,”The Criterion An International Journal in English 12, No 1, (2013): 1.
13 Yıldırım, S., Yıldırım, Ö,”The Importance Of Listening In Language Learning And Listening Comprehension Problems Experienced By Language Learners: A Literature Review,”Abant İzzet Baysal Üniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi Dergisi 16, No 4 (2016): 2097.
21
1) Listening is vital in the language classroom because it provides input for the learner. Without understanding input at the right level, any learning simply cannot begin.
2) Spoken language provides a means of interaction for the learner. Because learners must interact to achieve understanding. Access to speakers of the language is essential. Moreover, learners‟ failure to understand the language they hear is an impetus, not an obstacle, to interaction and learning.
3) Authentic spoken language presents a challenge for the learner to understand language as native speakers actually use it.
4) Listening exercises provide teachers with a means for drawing learners‟ attention to new forms (vocabulary, grammar, new interaction patterns) in the language.
f. Some Problems in Listening
Being learned as a foreign language, English is sometimes not familiar or even a new language for those students who learn English in this country. Learning a new language means learning a new system of the new language.
Therefore, it is not an odd that students face some problems in the learning process. Why does the writer state that learning English can lead some problems?
1) Problems in New Sound System
English has unpredictable pronunciation and spelling. The written forms are usually different and the pronunciation that people used to know give them confused when they find a word with different way to be pronounced and not like they used to know. This may be difficult to some students to listen and to figure out the written form to process the meaning of what the speakers are saying. For the example is the word “enough” the/gh/ is pronounced as /f/ like in the word “fish”, “blood” is not pronounced like
“book” because the /oo/pronounced by /Ʌ/.This kind of sounds is not found in Indonesian language system, so this may confuse English foreign learners listening to this kind of sounds. Like what stated by Penny Ur that English language learners may have difficulty when the new sound does not exist in the native language.14 The more different the foreign language system to native language the more difficulties the learners will face. Nation stated that
“learners‟ first language can have major influence onlearning the sound system of another language”.15 It influence since the speaker typically pronounce the foreign language like a substitution of their natives. This may
14 Ur Penny, Teaching Listening Comprehension (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p.11.
15Nation & Newton, Op. cit., p.8
23
become a long-term difficulty for language learners if they do not notice the language system carefully.
2) Problems in New Vocabularies
Understanding other language vocabulary is very gradual process and it is partly a matter of time. Vocabulary activation is very important in listening process. It will very useful to comprehend the speech being spoken by the speakers. Comprehending the meaning of spoken language is not gotten by translating word to word from foreign language to the native one, but it tends to know the purpose and the context of the spoken language.
In vocabulary aspect, English has too many idioms.
English native speakers tend to use idioms rather than the usual form that the foreigners know and the meaning is really different from the words formed of, such as the use of hang up, look after, break up, break down, etc. English also has too many exceptions in which in every rule in English has exception such as collocation. “Collocation refers to the degree to which words tend to appear together.”16 For the example is the word quick, fast and rapid, these three words have the same meaning but the word food can only be attached to the word fast (fast food) and cannot used quick
16 Snow Don, From Language Teachers to Language Learners, (Alexandria: TESOL, 2007), p.172
or rapid. Those exceptions above can lead students‟ errors in listening because the studentscan only listen and not look at the written form of what they listen.
g. The Testing of Listening
Like other language skills (speaking, reading, and writing), thelistening skill can be tested. The testing of listening can be such as understanding utterances, implying, and sometimes making inference of the spoken language. Although listening skill is usually correlates to speaking, it is possible to separate these two skills in testing in order to make the test more focused on one skill. Heaton stated that “Although the auditory skills are closely linked to the oral skills in normal skill situation it may sometime to separate the two skills for teaching and testing.”17
A good listening test is if the test that is tested is on a recording. The reason is because the recording has higher reliability than non-recorded. Nation stated that “A listening test will be more reliable if the material that the learners listen to is on tape. The tape recording ensures that whenever the test is used, the speed of the speaking and the accent will be the same.”18
17Heaton J.B., Writing English Language Tests, (New York: Longman, 1995), p.64.
18 I.S.P. Nation, Teaching Listening and Speaking, (Wellington: Victoria University, 1995), p.186.
25
h. The Measurement Rubrics of Listening
Skor Indicator
Excellent to Very Good 100-90
Excellent at identifying the main idea, general, andspecific information. Accurately infers impliedinformation. No problems at recognizing vocabularyand expressions.
Very Good 89-80
Very good at identifying the main idea, general, andspecific information. Shows good ability to inferimplied information. Almost no problems atrecognizing vocabulary and expressions.
Good 79-70
Good at identifying the main idea, general, andspecific information. Shows some ability to inferimplied information. Some minor problems atrecognizing vocabulary and expressions.
Fair 69-60
Still able to identify the main idea, general, andspecific information. Still shows ability to inferimplied information.
Some problems at recognizingvocabulary and expressions.
Unsatisfactory 59 or
Below
Unable to identify the main idea, general, andspecific information. Fails to infer impliedinformation. Many problems at recognizingvocabulary and expressions.
B. The Concept of Speaking Performance