The Effect of Using Slow Beat English Songs on the Eight Year Students’ Listening Comprehension Achievement at SMPN 3 Jember in The 2011/2012 Academic Year

Abstract

Listening is one of the language skills that should be mastered by the students in Junior High School. Unfortunately, EFL students still have difficulties in listening comprehension. Further, it makes difficult for them to gain better score for other language skills and components. When a teacher gives listening test to the students, they still make some mistakes mostly in catching what the speaker says. It is caused by unfamiliar English words they have. One solution to solve this problem is using interesting media appropriate for students named slow beat English songs. Supporting this solution, Davies (2000) suggests that we can use songs to capture students’ interest or to reinforce content. Besides through music, children can keep information permanently because normally, children’s mind is good in catching information through songs. Further, an experimental research on listening skill by using songs had been done by Saputri (2003) at SMU PGRI 1 Lumajang in the 2002/2003 academic year. Based on the calculation, the result showed that the value of t-test of the post test was 4,148 while the critical value of t-test with the significant level of 5% and the degree of freedom 88 was 1,980. Since 4.148 was higher than 1.980, therefore the major hypothesis of the research was accepted. Based on the interview with the English teacher at SMPN 3 Jember it was known that she rarely gave listening practice to the students. Although the school had already had good facilities as it is an RSBI school, but still she rarely used it. It was because she thought that bring them to multimedia room was wasting time. However, when she teaches listening, she speaks orally to the students. So the English teacher had never used slow beat English songs in teaching listening. xv contrast, the alternative hypothesis (Ha) that there was a significant effect of slow beat English songs on the eight year students’ listening comprehension achievement at SMPN 3 Jember in the 2011/2012 academic year was accepted. Besides, the degree of effectiveness was 7.72%. It meant that the degree of relative effectiveness of using slow beat English songs in teaching listening comprehension applied to the experimental was 7.72% more effective than teaching listening without using slow beat English songs applied to the control group.