IMPROVING THE EIGHTH GRADE STUDENTS’ LISTENING COMPREHENSION ACHIEVEMENT BY USING DICTATION TECHNIQUES AT SMPN I LEDOKOMBO IN THE 2009-2010 ACADEMIC YEAR

Abstract

Dictation is an ancient technique in teaching language. It is one of interesting ways to improve the students’ listening comprehension achievement. Based on the observation done in SMPN I Ledokombo, it was found that the students were interested in studying English, but they found difficulties in listening. The eighth grade students’ listening score was low, the students made mistakes in answering the questions from the teacher, like inappropriate vocabulary, wrong spelling, could not catch the content of the text, and they also could not distinguish the pronunciation well. Further, the dictation technique was once applied by the teacher but not optimally. In this school, there are four classes and each class has about 40 students. However, there was only one class that was chosen purposively, that was class VIIIB, which consists of 40 students. The researcher selected this class based on the observation during the listening activity that was conducted by the researcher as the English teacher at this school. It was found that less than 75% students did not achieve the minimal score that is 64 based on SKM (Standard of minimum passing– grade or requirement). Considering the problem above, this research was undertaken to solve the students’ problem by using dictation techniques as a technique in teaching listening. The procedures of teaching listening using dictation according to Davis and Rinvolucri (1988: 8-10), are: choosing the Text, and applying dictation. In this classroom action research, the technique was divided into note taking and partial dictation/cloze dictation. Those two techniques were used in each cycle. There were