The Effect of Using ESP Listening Material on Eleventh Year Students’ Listening Comprehension Achievement at SMK Negeri Tlogosari Bondowoso

Abstract

English for Specific Purpose (ESP) is usually designed for students who have future reasons in learning English. In Indonesia, ESP is applied at vocational school or formally called SMK (Sekolah Menengah Kejuruan) since its aim is specifically preparing the graduates to acquire supporting skill of any profession and ability of self-improvements. In the teaching of English, Listening is one of the skills which have to be achieved by students because it plays a lifelong role in the process of communication. Moreover, through listening, ESP students can get some new information and/or knowledge related to their academic purposes. For this reasons, the use of authentic material is very important in designing listening material based on ESP. It maintains the student’s motivation in learning English based on the functions that they will need to perform in their fields of specialty or job and getting closer to real language. This experimental research was intended to investigate whether or not there was a significant effect of using ESP listening material on the eleventh year students’ listening comprehension achievement at SMK Negeri Tlogosari Bondowoso in the 2010/2011 academic year. The respondents of this research were the grade XI ATP (Agribisnis Tanaman Pangan) students of SMK Negeri Tlogosari Bondowoso in the 2010/2011 academic year. The research respondents were determined by cluster random sampling through a lottery. The total number of the respondents was 53 students, divided into experimental and control group. The experimental group consisted of 27 students of grade XI ATP 1 who were taught listening by using ESP listening material taken from the authentic material which are from VOA special English Agriculture reports. The control group consisted of 26 students of grade XI ATP 2 who were taught listening by using recorded material of recount text or conventional material. The primary data of this research were collected from the students’ scores of listening comprehension test, while the supporting data were gained through documentation. The primary data were collected from the post test to make comparison between the two groups after the treatment and were analyzed by using ttest formula. Based on the calculation, the result indicated that the mean score of the experimental group was higher than that of the mean score of the control group (69.37> 64.89). The result of data analysis using t-test showed that t-test value was higher than that of t-table at 5% significant level (2.06>2.04). It means that the null hypothesis was rejected, thus the alternative hypothesis stating that there was an effect of using ESP listening material on the eleventh year students’ listening comprehension achievement at SMK Negeri Tlogosari Bondowoso in the 2010/2011 academic year was accepted. It indicated that there was a significant mean difference between the experimental group and the control group. Based on the research results above, it can be concluded that using ESP listening material gave an effect to grade XI students’ listening comprehension achievement at SMK Negeri Tlogosari Bondowoso in the 2010/2011 academic year. Therefore, it is recommended for the English teacher to use ESP listening material taken from authentic material which is from VOA special English Agriculture reports as an alternative material in teaching English based on students’ content subject. Furthermore, for the future researchers, it is suggested to conduct further research dealing with those problems to improve the quality of students’ listening comprehension achievement, particularly concerning with the students’ motivation to focus on the learning objective in the teaching of listening based on ESP.