Enhancing the Students’ Listening Comprehension Through Authentic Materials at SMAN 1 Pakusari Jember

Abstract

The aim of this research was to enhance the students’ listening comprehension through authentic materials. Based on the researcher’s personal observation, there are still many teachers at SMA who implement the conventional materials for teaching and learning process. The researcher found out that conventional materials success was low. Then, to enhance the success of teaching and learning process, especially on Listening Skill, the researcher tried to use real context that students can relate in their lives, that is, through autentic materials. According to O‘Malley, et al (1989 as cited in Gilakjani & Ahmadi, 2011) listening comprehension is an active process in which the listener constructs meaning by using cues from contextual information and from existing knowledge. In addition, Howatt and Dakin in Saricoban (2006) state that listening skill refers to someone’s capability to recognize and to master what other people are saying or said. Based on the experts’ ideas, it can be concluded that listening skill refers to an activity in listening to oral symbols done intentionally, with concentration and comprehension, appreciation, and interpretation to get certain message, information, and understanding the communication delivered, and being able to give responses containing in the oral symbols being heard. Listening consists of auditory discrimination, aural grammar, choosing necessary information, remembering it, and connecting it to the process between sound and form of meaning (Morley, 1972 as cited in Pourhosein Gilakjani & Sabouri, 2016). There are some slightly different definitions of authentic materials found in literature. Rogers and Medledy (1998) have defined authentic materials as exposure to real language in its own community. Authentic materials can reinforce the direct relationship between the language classroom and the outside world for students; for example, when lessons are centered on comprehending a menu or a TV weather report, students tend to focus more on content and meaning rather than on the language itself. The design of this research was a classroom action research (CAR) because this research was intended to enhance the XI grade students’ listening Comprehension participation and achievement through authentic materials at SMAN 1 Pakusari Jember in 2020/2021 Academic Year. There were four stages of activities that were done in the procedure of this classroom actin research. They were: a) planning the action, b) implementing the action, c) observing and evaluating, and d) analyzing data and reflecting the action (Elliot, 1993). Frankel and Wallen (2012:10) state that purposive method is intended to choose a research site based on a certain purpose or reason. Therefore, this classroom action research was conducted at SMAN1 Pakusari, Jember which is located at Jalan PB Sudirman no 120 Pakusari. The school has 814 students and 46 teachers. The total number of the XI grade students is 264 with 25 teachers teaching the XI grade students. SMAN 1 Pakusari, Jember has implemented the 2013 Curriculum for English and the other subjects since 2016. The participant of this study was the XI grade students of SMAN1 Pakusari, Jember in 2020/2021. There were 8 classes for the XI grade, consisting of XI IPA 1, XI IPA 2, XI IPA 3, XI IPA 4, XI IPA 5 and XI IPS 1, XI IPS 2, XI IPS 3. Among the existing classes, the researcher determined one class purposively by selecting the one which had the lowest mean score for Listening Comprehension. Based on the results of implementation of Cycle 1, it could be concluded that teaching listening by using podcast audio taken from TED Talk as the authentic materials at XI Science 4 students of SMAN 1 Pakusari enhanced the students’ active participation and their listening comprehension achievement. The result of the improvement in Cycle 1 showed the students’ active participation was 5% and 81% of 33 students got ≥70 on listening comprehension test. The criterion of success of this research was that at least 75% of the students got score ≥70. It means that the action in Cycle1 was successful and students’ active participation in Cycle 1 achieved the criteria of success because there was any improvement in percentage of the students’ active participation Based on the result of the data analysis and discussion, it can be concluded that: 1) The use of authentic materials taken from TED Talk could enhance the eleventh Science 4 students’ participation at SMAN 1 Pakusari. The result of the observation showed that the students’ participation improved 5% from 45% in meeting 1 to 55% in meeting. 2) TED Talk as the authentic material could enhance the students’ listening comprehension achievement at SMAN 1 Pakusari. The result of the listening comprehension achievement showed that the mean score of students’ listening comprehension test was 77,72. There were 27 (81%) out of 33 students who got score ≥70. It means that the action in cycle 1 achieved the target criteria as it was expected in this research that at least 75% of the students could get the score at least 70.