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STUDENTS’ DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING LISTENING
(A Study at English Department of STKIP PGRI West Sumatera in 2015/2016 Academic Year)
Picki Hamdani1), Suharni, M,P.d2), Edwar Kemal SS, Hum3)
1)English department student, collage of teaching and education (PGRI) West Sumatera
[email protected]
2)English department lectures, collage of teaching and education (PGRI) West Sumatera
[email protected]
3)English department lectures, collage of teaching and education (PGRI) West Sumatera
[email protected]
ABSTRACT
Listening is difficult to learn, because listening requires knowledge and students must actively listen, and listening is a very complicated process where students should be aware of consonant clusters, word order, stress, and intonation. This research is a descriptive study that intends to analyze the dominant difficulties faced by students in learning listening. The respondents of this research are 26 students at English Department of STKIP PGRI West Sumatera in 2015/2016 academic year were selected by simple random sampling technique. The data were collected by distributing questionnaires to students with 18 items of statement. Before the questionnaire distributed to respondent first questionnaire validated by the validator. Based on the data obtained during the research, researcher able to conclude that the difficulties faced by students in learning listening is trouble with sound with total percentage 32.1%. have to understand every word with total percentage 33.3%, and cannot understand fast, natural native speech with total percentage 30.8%. Furthermore, need to hear things more than once with total percentage 28.2%, find it difficult to keep up with total percentage 29.5% and last, get tired with total percentage 23.1% . So from the data above, the dominant difficulties faced by students in learning listening is have to understand every word.
ABSTRAK
Listening sulit untuk dipelajari karena listening membutuhkan pengetahuan serta siswa harus
aktif menyimak karena listening adalah proses yang sangat rumit dimana siswa harus sadar gugus konsonan, urutan kata, dan intonasi. Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian deskriptif yang bermaksud menganalisa kesulitan yang dominan dihadapi mahasiswa dalam pelajaran listening. Responden dari penelitian ini adalah 26 orang mahasiswa program studi Bahasa Inggris STKIP PGRI Sumatera Barat Tahun Ajaran 2015/2016 yang dipilih dengan teknik simple random sampling. Data dikumpulkan dengan membagikan angket kepada mahasiswa dengan jumlah 18 butir pernyataan. Sebelum angket disebarkan kepada responde terlebih dahulu angket di validasi oleh validator. Berdasarkan data yang didapatkan selama penelitian, peneliti dapat menyimpulkan bahwa kesulitan yang dihadapi mahasiswa pelajaran listening adalah trouble with sound dengan total persentasi 32.1%. have to understandevery word dengan total persentasi 33.3%, dan cannot understand fast, natural native speech dengan total persentasi 30.8%. Selanjutnya, need to hear things more than once dengan total persentasi 28.2%, find it difficult to keep up dengan total persentasi 29.5% dan get tired 23.1%. Jadi dari data di atas, kesulitan yang dominan dihadapi mahasiswa pada pelajaran listening adalah have to understand every word.
Keywords: Learning Listening, Difficulties in learning listening
2 INTRODUCTION
Listening is one of the basic skills that should be mastered by the student in learning foreign language. Listening, along reading, is a receptive skill. It requires a person to receive and understand incoming information (input).
Because listening is a receptive skill, students can listen to and understand things at a higher level that students can. Without having proper listening skills, it is difficult to communicate effectively with others.
However, listening is difficult to learn because listening is difference from hearing.
Hearing does not need prior knowledge and active listening. Meanwhile, listening needs prior knowledge and active listening in the listening process. Also, listening needs hardwork because listening is a very complicated process. The students should aware consonant cluster, word order, stress, and intonation.
At English Department of STKIP PGRI Sumatera Barat, listening is becoming a subject. As stated in the academic book STKIP PGRI Sumatera Barat in 2013/2014 academic year, there are listening I, listening II, and advanced listening. In listening I, it is expected to students have ability to listen and differentiate sounds and pronounciation. In listening II, it is expected that students are able to comprehend the conversation, stories, and descriptions. Furthermore, the students can receive some information that they get from the speaker. In Advanced listening, it is expected that students are able and understand to receive information and convey the message in the writing from the speaker.
Moreover, the researcher found several phenomenon of learning listening faced by the students of English Department of STKIP PGRI Sumatera Barat. During the observation, researcher found that students seemed not understand the listening materials because most of the students could not answer questions from lectures, and even many of students ask for the explanation from their lectures because their confused with the conversation they had heard and also the students are not able to describe the essence of the conversation with well. The students seemed confuse because the speaker’s sound is fastly and makes students difficult to answer the question.
Listening plays an important role in learning foreign language. If students cannot hear it well students will find it hard to
communicate or perhaps they cannot pass their listening examination for instance. Thus, in order to help students get improved with their listening skill, it is needed finding out their listening problems which cause difficulties to them in learning listening.
RESEARCH METHOD
In this study, the research design applies descriptive qualitative research. Regarding Gay and Airasian (2000:275), descriptive research is determines and describes the way thing are.
It means that descriptive research just determines and describes the phenomena without giving treatment or manipulation and then it useful in described student’s difficulties in learning listening. Moreover, Arikunto (2009:244) states that the final conclusion of descriptive study should be in words or sentences, not in a number. In describing student’s difficulties in learning listening.
Researcher gained descriptive research in which the researcher collects the data, analyses them and make conclusion.
Next, the respondents in this research are the students of English Department of STKIP PGRI West Sumatera in academic year 2015/2016 as many as 26 students. The researcher used simple random sampling as sampling technique.. According to Gerrish and Lacey (2010:149), a simple random sampling is a sampling of how members of the population by using random without regard to strata or levels in members of the population. Thus, researcher will choose 28 students of English Department of STKIP PGRI west Sumatera in 2015/2016 academic year as respondent.
Then, instrumentation is a tool to help researcher in collecting the data of the research.
In this research, the researcher uses questionnaire as instrument for collecting the data. The questionnaire in this research tried to investigate the students’ difficulties in learning listening. Then to validate the questionnaire, the researcher asked one of lecturers in English department of STKIP PGRI West Sumatera to validate the appropriateness of each indicator of the difficulties in learning listening.
After that, the researcher distributes the questionnaire sheets to the respondents and explains the instruction to answer the questionnaire. Moreover, researcher asks to the respondents to answer the questionnaire which consist 18 items of statement about students
3 difficulties in learning listening. After that, the
researcher collects the questionnaire and gets the data. And then, the researcher analyzes about the dominant difficulties that faced by the students in learning listening.
After colleting the data, the researcher analyzed the data gathered from questionnaire.
the researcher collected the data of students difficulties in learning listening. According to Gay and Airasian (2000: 239) the steps for analyzing data intended to data managing, reading or memoing, describing, classifying, and interpreting.
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
This research is done by the researcher due to find the answers of research questions which is developed by the researcher in the previous chapter. There research question is: What are the dominant difficulties in learning listening faced by the students of English Department of STKIP PGRI West Sumatera in 2015/2016 academic year? Thus, the finding of this research can be found in the following explanation: the dominant difficulties faced in learning listening by the students of English Department of STKIP PGRI West Sumatera in 2015/2016 academic year is have to understand every word. To make it clear and easy understood, the researcher would like percentage this strategy in diagram below:
Figure 4.1: Percentage Classification of students difficulties in learning listening at English Department of STKIP PGRI West Sumatera in academic year 2015/2016
Based on diagram above, it can be seen that the dominant difficulties faced in learning listening by the students of English Department of STKIP PGRI West Sumatera in 2015/2016 academic year is “have to understand every word” with total percentages 33.3%. This difficulties is mostly faced by the students in learning listening because in learning listening
students have to understand to what speaker said, and that make students have to understand every words they said so that they know the meaning or the information that been said by the speaker.
Meanwhile, Trouble with sound with the total percentage 32.1%. Furthermore, Cannot understand fast, natural native speech with the total percentage 30.8%, Need to hear things more than once is 30,7%, Find it difficult to keep is 28.2%, and Get tired with total percentage 23.1%. These difficulties faced by the students in learning listening at English Department of STKIP PGRI West Sumatera in academic year 2015/2016.
Research finding supported by research conducted by Yilmaz (2015:2050) where he said that among fourth grades students in İstanbul, the biggest deficiency in listening as a difficulties in learning is the sounds which are similar to each other, and it makes students have to understand every words uttered by the speaker. While research conducted by Hamouda (2013:151) states that Students at Qassim University encounter various kinds of listening difficulties in learning comprehension such as unfamiliar words, the length of the spoken text, speed rate, a variety of accents, lack of concentration and pronunciation.
Learning languages is highly dependent on the activity of listening. Listening provides spoken input that serves as the basis for language acquisition and allows the learners to interact in spoken communication. that is why listening play a vital role in language learning because it provides input for the learner.
Without understanding the inputs, students can’t learn anything. As Vandergrift and Goh (2012:4) said that listening is an important skill: it enables language learners to receive and interact with language input and facilitates the emergence of other language skills compared with writing and reading, or even speaking.
Of the research findings and some supporting theory can be said that listening is one of the skills in learning English that must be mastered by students. To master the skill of listening is not easy, and students often find it difficult to learn listening. As Yagang (2011:2) said that understanding the spoken text is more difficult than writing a text to understand, because the spoken text is received in a short time, so that the contents of the message received or interpreted differently by the
32.1% 33.3%
30.8%
28.2% 29.5%
23.1%
0,00%
10,00%
20,00%
30,00%
40,00%
50,00%
60,00% Trouble with sound
Have to understand every word Cannot understand fast, natural native speech Need to hear things more than once Find it difficult to keep up
Get tired
4 listener, and then disappear from the hearing
while the written text can be read over and over again. It can be said that learning listening is not as simple learning written text. Therefore students to the difficulties that faced by the student in learning listening, students must strive to eliminate or to minimize the difficulties that their faced in learning listening.
as on the findings of research in which the difficulties often faced by students in learning listening is have to understand every word, therefore students need to minimize or eliminate the difficulties they faced.
Based on the data analysis above, the researcher could made interpretation about students’ difficulties in learning listening. It is revealed that the difficulties faced by the students are trouble with sound, have to understand every word, cannot understand fast natural native speech, need to hear things more than once, find it difficult to keep up and get tired. The researcher interpreted mostly students used answer have to understand every word because listening is the ability to identify and understand what the other person is saying and therefore in learning listening students should understand the words spoken by the speaker so they can able to know the message or the information. in learning listening, students cannot predict what will be said by the speaker and therefore students should have a many vocabulary so that students could understand what was said by the speaker, and because students have a lack vocabulary and therefore students' find it difficult in learning listening in type of difficulties have to understand every words that spoken by the speaker.
Meanwhile indicator trouble with sound, have to understand every word, cannot understand fast natural native speech, need to hear things more than once, find it difficult to keep up and get tired not the main difficulties faced by the students in learning listening.
CONCLUSION
Listening is one of English skills beside speaking, reading, and writing. But learning listening were different with other skills. In learning listening students have to listen to what speaker say, and to listen to what speaker say students find it difficult in learning listening. There are six aspect of difficulties in learning listening such as trouble with sound,
have to understand every word, cannot understand fast natural native speech, need to hear things more than once, find it difficult to keep up and get tired. In this research, the researcher want to find the dominant difficulties faced in learning listening by the students of English Department of STKIP PGRI West Sumatera in 2015/2016 academic year.
Besides that, the researcher used simple random sampling in selecting sample.
The total of participant was 26. In getting the data the researcher used questioner. From the data, the researcher concluded that the difficulties faced by the students are trouble with sound, have to understand every word, cannot understand fast natural native speech, need to hear things more than once, find it difficult to keep up and get tired. The dominant in answering the difficulties faced by the students in learning listening is have to understand every word
.
SUGGESTION
This research is a kind of descriptive quantitative research which had the purpose to find out the difficulties faced by the students in learning listening. Based on the result of this research, dominant answering difficulties in learning listening is have to understand every word. By knowing it, the researcher hopes that the result of this research can give contribution for the students and lecturer in teaching listening. As one of the skills should be mastered by the students, students should try to reduce the difficulties by keep practice their listening ability by listening song or watch movies. By keep practice students can improve their listening ability. And for lecturers who teach in listening class, researcher hopes that the result of this research can give contribution for the lecturers to apply a good strategy in teaching listening so that the difficulties that faced by the students in learning listening can reduced.
This study aimed to know students' difficulties in learning listening. However, for future studies, it is recommended to investigate students difficulties in learning English to another skill like speaking and writing. The information will be useful to understand the difficulties faced by the students in learning English.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
5 Praised to Allah SWT the almighty who
has given me the strength, health and bless to complete this thesis entitles “Students’
Difficulties in Learning Listening ( A Study at English Department of STKIP PGRI West Sumatera in 2015/2016 Academic Year )”. This thesis is aimed to fulfill one of requirements to get S1 at English Department of STKIP PGRI West Sumatera.
Then, the researcher also delivers a great thank and appreciation to the advisors. Suharni, M.Pd and Edwar kemal, SS, Hum who have given much advice, guidance, and suggestion in accomplishing this journal who gave their valuable time, guidance, suggestion, support and comment during the process of finishing this journal.
REFERENCES
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Prentice-Hall Company.
Gerrish, Kate and Anne Lacey. 2010. The Research Process in Nursing. England:
Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Hamouda, Arafat. 2013. An Investigation of Listening Comprehension Problems Encountered by Saudi Students in the EL Listening Classroom. International Journal of Academic Research in Progressive Education and Development, 2(2).
Vandergrift, L., & Goh, C. 2012. Teaching and Learning Second Language Listening.
New York: Routledge
Yagang, F. 2011. Listening: Problem and Solutions. Washington, DC: English Language Program Divisions, USA.
Yilmaz, Hande. 2015. The Problems Young Learners Encounter During Listening
Skills. 7th World Conference on Educational Sciences, (WCES-2015), 05- 07 February 2015, Novotel Athens Convention Center, Athens, Greece.
