Listening Skill of Comprhension for English Students

Introduction

Listening is one of the most vital skills in learning English. Many learners consider that listening skills is a measure to evaluate knowledgeable about English language. Ahmadi and Gilakjani (2011) emphasized that listening is an essential position in the communication process. If students lack listening ability, students can not join or maintain a conversation, according to Chris (2014). Therefore, communication and language achievement heavily rely on listening skills. However, learners cope with a lot of problems when they listen to English language, which may affect to losing motivation in learning other skills. Many research have been conducted in order that point to obstacles that students often encounter in listening English. Ahmed (2015) who is a teacher in Bangladesh stated that there are many factors impact on understanding a second language. The listener’s own strategies, the teacher and even the circumstances can cause challenges for English language learners. Thus, this paper, with the aim to help learners improve in their listening skills will present concept and significance of listening skills, discuss the difficulties students have in learning English listening skills.

Discussions of Findings

The concept of listening skills has been defined by many researchers. Listening skills are defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “The ability to pay attention to and effectively interpret what other people are saying.” In other words, listening skills is an active action of acquiring and responding what the speaker says, Nordquist (2017). According to Onno (2015), listening is not understood in a simple way and it is not same as hearing. He indicated that hearing is just the sounds that person hear, while listening skills require than that: it requires pay attention to other people who are conveying. Moreover, according to Nordquist’s study, English listening skills is not merely concentration on what others are speaking. It consists of four process: sensing, understanding and explaining, keeping in mind, and responding. The significance of listening skills. Listening has a vital role in daily life as it is very important for people to achieve the effective communication. Rachel Naomi Remen who is the author of wonderful book’ Kitchen Table Wisdom’ (1994) emphasized that just listen, listeners able to connect to another person. When learners focus our attention on the conversation which others are saying, they can understand what others are trying to express. If learners good at English listening skills, they will be more active to control the conversation. Therefore, listening skills which are bridges can connect learners’ mind together. In addition, this is the skill is used most in English, according to Nick. Emphasizing the importance of listening skills, Meldenson (1994) indicates that listening accounts for 45 percent of the time that people spend on communicating. Meanwhile, speaking makes up about 30 percentage, writing (10 percent), reading (15 percent).

Listening has important position not only in communication in daily life but also in academic situations. Many learners believe that they can write and speak English when they have abundant words, grammar; however, if students are limited in listening skills, they will not communicate effectively. Listening provides input for learners to comprehend so it contributes to learner’s success in the language classroom, Rost (1994). According to Chazal (2014), learners need good listening skills because when they learn a second language, discussing, exchanging, applying critical thinking and presenting require learners have listening ability. In fact, listening brings many benefits for learners both in daily life and in academic situations. Being aware of listening is of great opportunities in communication. Thanks to listening, students receive information and achieve exhaustive sight (Stariha & Walberg, 2004). The difficulties in learning English listening skills.

There are many issues that a learner may cope with in understanding a lecture, conversation in English. However, the most major difficulties result from listener’s ability. One impediment that listeners deal with problems in English listening is the consequences of their inadequacy of vocabulary. Students concentrate too much on unknown words when they listen. As a consequence, they will miss the next information and will lost control of the whole conversation, speech. Listeners will encounter in a text, their comprehension information is likely to be affected if they are lacking in new word, according to John (2004). The adequate vocabulary is one of the most important factors for achieving great success in English listening. Most learners try to learn by heart words, they even require their teachers explain and give them the structure, synonym, grammar for unknown words. Listeners may have numerous lexical resources but if they learn passively, they have tendency to figure out the meaning of the words rather than understand them from the context (Hasan, 2000), they will suffer from inadequate understanding.

Another problem leading to difficulties in listening is that listeners have no control over the speed of speakers. It is quite hard to bring out exactly the factor contribute to this problem because each learner is governed by different factors. Case (2013) indicates that there are many issues impact on the control over whole talk. He points out that learners focus their attention on function words instead of content words, they do not know what the important information is. Therefore, they do not understand completely or misunderstand the content which foreign speakers are expressing. In addition, guessing what the speakers discuss about is the drawback which limit listening ability. According Hasan (2000), the issue result of listening each word and then string word together. They do not pay attention on any specific sign that aid them predict what is going to be discussed about. Besides, his studies mentions that the insufficient background on topic which is discussed can make listening more difficult. Learners are confused to follow the topic that they are limited knowledge because they are completely strange to listeners.

Problems From the Quality of Record

The low quality of record is someway hurdle to learners in listening. In some situation, teachers use some tape which is poor quality, which can influence on comprehending of students’ listening, according to Celik & Tugrul Mart, 2014. Furthermore, the speakers’ speed is asserted to be a barrier to listeners. If the speakers talk too fast and long, the listeners will not catch up with. As a result, miss words makes learners become embarrassed, even frustrate. Listeners will be under pressure when they listen for a long time. In addition, if the record is too long, the listeners need the ability of note-taking, yet the note- taking is a challenging skill for learners. As Berman (2011) stated that successful note-taking requires that listeners write down information quickly, try to take note in concise sentences. Besides, difference of accents is one of the most important elements which impact on listening process (Goh, 1999). If learners listen to French speak English, learners will feel difficult to understand them when they speak English in a French accent. This will break off the listening process and put learners in a difficult position. The effective measures to improve listening skills.

According Barr, listening is hard skill for listeners to improve and need more time in order to make much progress in listeners’ studies. The first and most chief are to enrich listeners’ vocabulary. When learners extend their vocabulary, they able to communicate more obviously and concisely and achieve good results in communication process, according Hansen. He emphasizes that learners should read more to improve their vocabulary. The more they read, especially novels, newspapers, magazines, the more words they will gain. In addition, participating in conversation can help listeners to discover new words; however, what should listeners do to achieve good results in the conversation? According to Barr, communicating with a native in a one-on-one circumstance is one of the most useful measures because it requires the listeners focus and be actively take part in the discussion. Especially, they should spend much more time on practicing with their friends or their teachers. The listening material may possibly consist of a diversity of fields in daily life and society. It is likely a business, political problem that puzzle the listener. Another way to eradicate the problem of lacking background on topic would be for students to practice as much as they able to on different materials. Thus, they can listen to the difference of topics without any difficulties.

The advance of listening ability mainly depend on students’ strategies; however, there is no denying the fact that teachers contribute to the students’ achievement in improving listening skills. Teachers should provide students with films, lectures, radio, music, interviews, and games to build up vocabulary and encourage students to interest in learning English, according Holmes. Besides, he states that teachers should focus our attention on providing background knowledge to their students when students listen to new topics. According to Yagang, it seems highly possible that diversity of accents is the reason for difficulties to students, they can face challenge in understanding other accents. Therefore, it is necessary for teachers to help their students to be aware of the accents of dissimilar native speakers.

Conclusion

Listening is important not only in study but also in daily communication. However, students seems to have obstacles in English listening skills. Purposes of this research are to highlight the importance of listening skills as well as discover the popular problems which the listeners have to encounter in listening comprehension. The problems result from the inadequacy of vocabulary, lack of background, prediction what speaker discuss about and the quality of recording. To advance in learning listening skills, students themselves should enrich vocabulary, spend more time to communicate with others and build up background. Besides, teachers play a crucial role in teaching their students how to improve their listening ability. It is hoped that based on these findings, teachers and students can improve in teaching and learning listening comprehension.