IMPROVING CLASS VIII H STUDENTS’ LISTENING COMPREHENSION ACHIEVEMENT AND ACTIVE PARTICIPATION BY USING CARTOON VIDEOS AT SMPN 3 BALUNG IN THE 2011/2012 ACADEMIC YEAR

Abstract

This Classroom Action Research was intended to improve class VIII H students’ listening comprehension achievement by using cartoon videos at SMPN 3 Balung in the 2011/2012 academic year. This research was begun by conducting an interview with the English teacher of the eighth grade students of SMPN 3 Balung-Jember on September, 5 th 2011. Based on the preliminary study, it was found that the students of class VIII H had difficulty in comprehending spoken materials. Besides, the students were also lack of participation in the classroom during the teaching and learning process. Based on the preliminary study, it was revealed that the students of eight year of that school, especially class VIII H still had problems in comprehending the spoken materials. It was found that the students’ scores of listening comprehension from teacher’s tests were still low. This was proven by the listening scores which showed that there were 5 out of 31 students (16%) who could achieve the minimum score requirement for the English subject, 71. The English teacher further explained that the students were less excited when attending listening activities. The researchers tried to overcome the problem by applying a different type of material that was cartoon videos in the form of Shock Wave Flash file. The data collection methods used were listening comprehension test and the observation in the form of checklist to get the primary data. The data were analyzed statistically and non-statistically. The action was implemented in two cycles in order to achieve the objectives of this classroom action research. The first cycle was done in three meetings included the test. The result of the listening comprehension test in the first cycle had not achieved the criteria of success of the research that was 50% of the students got 71 or higher in the listening comprehension test. The percentage of the students who got score ≥ 71 was only 10 students or 35.71% out of 31 students. In addition, the results of the classroom observation showed that 50% of students were active in meeting 1 and 64.51% of students were active in meeting 2. It showed that there was an improvement of the students’ participation from meeting 1 to meeting 2, but it had not achieved the objective of the research that was 75% of the students were active in listening teaching learning process. Based on the results of the first cycle, the second cycle was necessary to be conducted. Some revision had been made to solve the problems found in the first cycle. The listening comprehension test and classroom observation in the second cycle showed an improvement. In the listening comprehension test, students who scored ≥ 71 were 16 students, or 53.33% out of 30 students. Furthermore, in the classroom observation, the students’ active participation reached 80% students were active during teaching and learning process in meeting 2, the result of the observation in meeting 1 and meeting 2 had met the objective of the research. Based on those results, it can be concluded that the actions in the second cycle were successful because the results of listening comprehension test and classroom observation achieved the objectives of the research. Finally, it can be concluded that the use of cartoon videos could improve class VIII H students’ listening comprehension achievement and active participation in listening teaching learning process at SMP Negeri 3 Balung.