Name: Marisye Fitri K

NIM: 14432013

CHAPTER I (REVISE)
IMPROVING STUDENTS’ LISTENING COMPREHENSION USING ANIMATION
CLIPS IN FIRST GRADE OF MTs. NURUL ISLAM PONGANGAN GRESIK
Background of the study
Listening is the basic language skill in language learning. However, students always
think it is difficult to listen well. To foster the students’ listening comprehension skills and
prepare them as active listeners in language learning is a big challenge. Scholars and
researchers have done a lot of research to help students to acquire the skills. However, we
cannot rely on some methodologies completely. We might see that apart from the
methodologies, we also need to know that we face individual student differences: their
learning styles, their backgrounds, and their cultures in teaching. In different classrooms,
teachers have to adopt different teaching methods to be with their own students. Action
research offers an opportunity for classroom teachers to do the research by themselves,
improve their teaching, and make adjustments when necessary. This paper intends to propose
an action research plan and attempts to inquire into the educational situation, understand the
students’ skills and their situation better and act to improve both. (Kanu, Stansky & Carson,
1993).
Listening comprehension is the process of one individual perceiving another via
sense, (specifically aural) organs, assigning a meaning to the message and comprehending it.
It is the fundamental and indispensible prerequisite of individual communication in the social
life. DeVito (1995) defines listening as “the efficient process of perception, comprehension,
recognition, evaluation and reaction in communication”.
No one can deny the importance of listening skills in foreign language learning
because the key to acquire a language is to receive language input. Krashen, Terrell, Ehrman,
& Herzog (1984) claim that acquisition takes place only when students absorb enough
comprehensible input. The same claim was supported by Rost (1994) who confirmed that
listening is vital in language classrooms because it provides input for learners. As an input
skill, listening plays a crucial role in students’ language development. People acquire
language by understanding the linguistic information they hear. Thus language acquisition is
achieved mainly through receiving understandable input and listening ability is the critical
component in achieving understandable language input. Without understanding inputs at the
right level, any kind of learning simply cannot occur. Thus listening is a fundamental
language skill, and as such it merits a critical priority among the four skill areas for language
students.
Listening comprehension provides the right conditions for language acquisition and
development of other language skills. Listening, therefore, is essential not only as a receptive
skill but also to the development of spoken language proficiency. Rost (2002) also indicates
that developing proficiency in listening is the key to achieving proficiency in speaking.
Listening plays an important role in communication as it is said that, of the total time spent
on communicating, listening takes up 40-50%; speaking, 25-30%; reading, 11-16%; and
writing, about 9% (Gilakjani and Ahmadi, 2011). According to Devine (1982), listening is
the primary means by which incoming ideas and information are taken in. Gilbert (1988), on
the other hand, noted that students from kindergarten through high school were expected to
listen 65-90 percent of the time. Wolvin and Coakley (1988) concluded that, both in and out
of the classroom, listening consumes more of daily communication time than other forms of
verbal communication. Listening is central to the lives of students throughout all levels of
educational development (Coakley & Wolvin, 1997). Listening is the most frequently used
language skill in the classroom. Both instructors and students acknowledge the importance of
listening comprehension for success in academic settings. Numerous studies indicated that
efficient listening skills were more important than reading skills as a factor contributing to
academic success. Nevertheless, it is evident that listening is more important for the lives of
students since listening is used as a primary medium of learning at all stages of education.
In spite of its importance in foreign language learning, the teaching of listening
comprehension has long been ―somewhat neglected and poorly taught aspect of English in
many EFL programs.
EFL learners have serious problems in English listening comprehension due to the
fact that universities pay more attention to English grammar, reading and vocabulary.
Listening and speaking skills are not important parts of many course books or curricula and
teachers do not seem to pay attention to these skills while designing their lessons. Most
teachers take it for granted and believe that it will develop naturally within the process of
language learning. Persulessy (1988:50) states that one of the reasons for the opinion that
listening is a skill that tends to be neglected is the feeling among language teachers that this
skill is automatically acquired by the learner as he learns to speak the language. Most
teachers also assume listening is synonymous to breathing— automatic. Another reason why
this skill is not given serious attention is the fact that incompetence in it is easy to hide
through nodding and shaking of the head, which may give the impression of understanding,
even there is none. Still another reason is that audio-lingual courses give the impression that
they are teaching listening when in fact they are teaching other skills. In addition to this,
listening has not drawn much attention of both teachers and learners, they are generally less
aware of its importance. In classrooms, teachers seem to test, not to teach listening.
Meanwhile, students seem to learn listening, not listening comprehension. As a result, it
remains the most neglected and the least understood aspect of language teaching. In fact,
listening is a complex mental process that involves perception, attention, cognition, and
memory. Comprehending speech in a foreign language is a quite difficult task for language
learners. When listening to a foreign language, many language learners face difficulties. In
order to help students improve their listening ability, language teachers have to understand
students’ listening difficulties in comprehending spoken texts, and instruct effective listening
strategies to help students solve their listening difficulties.
The problems that occur in mostly classroom are the students are unable to
comprehend natural spoken English delivered at normal speed because they do not
understand the spoken content of the lessons. Frequently such students lose all confidence as
foreign language practitioners. They have difficulty in concentration and maintaining
concentration for a long time. This problem was noticed even by other instructors who were
offering the same course to different groups. The same problem has also been observed in
many countries (Buck, 2001 and Hayati, 2010). The results of these studies have proved that
difficulties in listening in a foreign language are typical to listeners from different language
background. For example, Underwood (1989) and Flowerdew and Miller (1992) stated that
inability to concentrate "is a major problem because even the shortest break in attention can
seriously impair comprehension." Goh (2000) reported learners' difficulty in perception:
students faced problems on recognition of familiar words. They stated that although they
were familiar with some words, they were unable to remember their meaning immediately.
They also expressed difficulty in understanding the intended message though they were
familiar with literal meaning of words.
This classroom action research will be implemented at MTs. Nurul Islam Pongangan
Gresik. The participants are the students of first grade that consist of 25 students. The
researcher choose this class because the average of students’ listening score in this class is
under standart. The standart is about 7.00 but mostly the students cannot get the standart. So
the researches wants to increase the students’ listening comprehension score with animation
clips techniques. This technique is expected to overcome the problem of this study.
The selection of the strategy
Media is one of the main factors that can influence the effectiveness of teaching and
learning activities of listening. Chapelle (2003 in Priajana, 2011) review some theories and
studies about the use of technology on instructed second language learning. He stated that
technology has implications and might most effectively be used in language teaching.
Generally, the use of the technology as a teaching aid is mainly aimed at increasing teaching
process to be more motivating and appealing for students. It is relevant to Bhavard (2009)
who says that technology might offer a lot of options which can be used not only to make
teaching interesting but also to make teaching more effective and productive in terms of
students’ improvement. In line with the statement, the teacher can use media such as
cassettes, tape recorder, MP3 player, etc that can be categorized as audio media to teach
listening activity and television, animation clips, videos, films, etc. which can be categorized
as audio-visual media.
Audio-visual media is media that can be seen and listened. The researcher is trying to
use this kind of alternative media in listening activity by using cartoon animation clips to help
the students improve their ability in listening skill.
Animation clip is a film in which the pictures seem to be really moving. Animation
clip is like movies, but the duration of the moving pictures is no more than 10 minutes.
Chapelle (2003:67, in Priajana 2011:45) stated that the use of technology has implications
and might most effectively be used in language teaching. Technology could be applied in
English teaching and learning process, for example animation clips. Animation clips are
chosen because they provide moving pictures and sound. They will be more interesting than
audio media which provide sound only.

Statement of problem
The purpose of the study was how can animation clips improve the students’ listening
comprehension ability? Because the main objective of this research is, therefore, to improve
the listening ability of the students by using animation cartoon clips and to describe ways to
make an improvement using animation clips.

Purpose of the study

The purpose of the study was as follows to improve the listening comprehension of the
students in the first grade at MTs. Nurul Islam Pongangan Gresik through animation clips.
Significant of the study
The result of this research is expected to give significant theoretical and practical
contribution to English teaching and learning process. Theoretically, the result of this
research is expected to contribute to the theories of using audiovisual material as an aid to
improve English learning. This research is also expected to be useful for English teachers to
provide an alternative solution to the problems in teaching listening comprehension in a form
of media and teaching learning strategies. Next, this study is expected to be able to give
significance to the other researchers as a reference for further studies on a similar topic.
Finally, since the listening activity using animation clips can also be done by students
independently, this study is expected to help the students develop a new strategy to improve
their listening ability.

Hypothesis
Based on the results of this research, it was concluded that the employment of the
animation clips could improve students’ listening comprehension ability of the students of
first grade in MTs. Nurul Islam Pongangan Gresik.

Definition of key terms

In this classroom action research, the students who will get the strategy is the students
of junior high school in first grade.
And listening comprehension here is about listener comprehend and understanding
some audio or video that given to the students, and it regarded as an interactive process in
which listeners are involved in a dynamic construction of meaning.