Judul Skripsi Bahasa Inggris
IMPROVING THE STUDENTS’ LISTENING COMPREHENSION THROUGH AURAL-ORAL LANGUAGE APPROACH (PTK)
Language is a tool to convey ideas, thoughts, and feelings. In learning language, there are some basic skills that the students have to master. One of these basic skills is listening. Listening is the foundation of all human communication.
According to Bowen (1985:74) listening is attending to and interpreting oral language. It means that communication will not be running well without listening comprehension. Considering the importance of listening skill in daily communication, English learners should work hard to develop their listening ability.
Heaton (1984:64) states that an effective way of developing the listening skill is through provision of carefully selected practice material. The materials for teaching listening comprehension should be suitable to what is the students’ need and want. The students will be interested to study if the teaching materials are interesting for them and it is what they want to know, but also the teacher should be considering the students’ need.
The auditory skills are closely linked to the oral skills in normal speech situations. Sometimes although they are closely linked but it is useful to separate the two skills for teaching and testing, since it possible to develop listening ability much beyond the range of speaking and writing ability if the practice material is not dependent on spoken responses and writing exercises.
Heaton (1984:64) explains the significant of the features for testing purposes. Those are; firstly, the ability to distinguish between phonemes, however important, does not in itself imply an ability to understand verbal messages. Secondly, impromptu speech is usually easier to understand than carefully prepared (written) material when latter is read aloud. Consequently it is essential to make provision for restating important points, rewriting and rephrasing them when writing material for aural test. It is also helpful if the speaker can be seen by the listeners, because however excellent the quality of tape recorder, a disembodied voice is much more difficult for the foreign learner to follow and also helpful for the learner if they can see the speakers’ mouth.
Based on the information from an English teacher of SMU ITTIHAD Makassar through observation to the teaching learning process in the classroom, especially at the eleventh grade, the students' achievement in Listening comprehension is low. As a value observation in the classroom the students’ score is about 5, in the last semester the students score between 50 – 65 while the KKM is 70. This score is as a category poor. It is because the students seldom practice listening in teaching-learning process. They tend to focus on writing and grammar. Therefore, the researcher wants to overcome this problem until the students get a good achievement by using an approach that related to the student’s problem has been talked.
As long some approaches had been applied to improve the students’ listening comprehension at the school, but those approaches still weak, in the other words those approaches are not significant to improve the students’ achievement in listening comprehension. In this case the writer would like to introduce an approach that is assumed to be success to improve the students’ listening comprehension. It is called Aural-Oral Language Approach.
According to Ezinma in Fitri (2009:17) Aural-Oral Language Approach is a method to the teaching language that emphazise on mechanical drills and repetition. It focuses on mechanical repetition through the use of oral drills lead also to complete neglience of creative use of language and cognition.
Gaddes (2003:3) states during World War II the American military need a quick and effective way to teach foreign language skills in order to understand the oral commutation of the enemy. Then they arrange the programs of second language teaching field back to focusing on teaching listening and speaking skills.
The programs developed by the American structural linguistics of the 1940’s then relied heavily on oral drills and substitution practice in order to form these speaking habits among language students. The result was Aural-Oral Approach that became known as the Audio-Lingual Method Gaddes (2003:3).
Drilling is a key feature of Audio-Lingual Method as the result of Aural-Oral language approach to language teaching which placed emphasis on repeating structural patterns through oral practice. There are some good points that teachers may find when they use Aural-Oral Method in their teaching, namely: (1) the classroom activity, which is the teacher’s centered so that it makes the teacher easier to manage the students (2) the usage of the target language in the classroom, which is meant to make the students have the same abilities that the native speakers have (3) the classroom activity, which focuses on pattern drills so that the teacher only gives brief explanation, and focus on oral skills leading to good pronunciation and speech Larsen (2002:46).
B. Problem Statement
The problems are formulated in the questions as below:
1. Is the use of Aural-Oral Language Approach effective to improve the students’ listening comprheshension?
2. How is the students’ activeness toward teaching learning process through Aural-Oral Language Approach?