CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

2.1. Nature Of Listening

This part the nature of listening that will explain in this sub chapter

contain with the definition of listening skill, definition of listening

comprehension, elements of listening, type of listening and listening difficulties,

as follows.

2.1.1. Definition of Listening Skill

Listening is being one of the most important language skills. Listening is

the part in communication, through listening we can share our thoughts with

others. Moreover, listening is the most frequently used language skill in daily

activities.

Listening skill has been defined many researchers. According to

Underwood in Gilakjani (2011) defined as listening is activity of paying attention

to speaker and trying to get meaning from we hear. According to Rost (2009)

listening helps us to understand the world around us and is one of the necessary

elements in inventing successful communication.

Rivers (1966) defined as listening is a creative skill. It means we

understand the sound falling on our ears, and take the raw material of words,

arrangements of words, and the rise and fall the voice, and from this material we

creative a meaning. Listeners should overcome the speaker's choice of vocabulary,

and structure.

7
 8

Listening is a complex problem solving skill and it is more than just

perception of the sounds (Oxford, 1993: 206). Listening includes comprehension

of basic language skills. It is an intermediary through which children, young

people and adults get a large portion of their information, their understanding of

the world and of human affairs, sense of values, their goals, and their

appreciation.

The importance of listening skill is recognized by Brown (2001: 247) who

stated students always do more listening than speaking when they in classroom.It

means that, listening is the important thing in our daily life, through listening we

can explain the meaning.

Based on explanation above, the researcher conclude that listening is the

ability to identify and comprehend what others are saying. It is also a complex

activity, and students can understand what they hear by activating their previous

knowledge. Listening is the active process because listening is not just matter of

hearing, listening include many process. Listening is determining the meaning and

the message of the sound.

2.1.2. Definition of Listening Comprehension

The definition of “listening comprehension” has been defined by different

authors. According to Medelshon (Hamouda, 2013: 114) listening comprehension

is a process where listeners are able to elaborate the speakers' intention, process

linguistics from like the fast rate of speech and fillers, overcome listening in an

interaction, understand of message of the text without comprehending every

single word, and realize different genres. Listening comprehension is assumed as

 9

a complex, interactive process in which listeners are involved in a dynamic

construction of meaning. Listeners comprehend the oral input from sound

distinction, previous knowledge of vocabulary, grammatical structures, stress and

intonation, as well as other use linguistic, paralinguistic, or even non-linguistic

hints in contextual utterance (Rost, 2002: 25).

In addition, Listening comprehension as a separate and important

component oflanguage learning only came into focus after significant debate

about its validity (Vandergrift, 1999).The purpose of listening comprehension is

to comprehend the native conversation at normal level in a spontaneous situation

by Chastain (Bingol, 2014). Without understanding the listening skill, learners

never learn to communicate or speak effectively.

In summary, listening comprehension is a complex process where listeners

should focus in order to gain the message of the conversation. Knowledge of

English Prosody, vocabulary and structure is required.

2.1.3. Elements of Listening

There are two elements of listening,they are macro and micro skills cannot

be separated. Macro skills are easier to comprehend since it simply means

comprehending of what being said. However, micro skills are little more

complicated to understand, as it not only about understanding as a whole, but we

should consider things like choice of vocabulary, intonation, attitude, deeper

meanings and a whole lot more. These are the description of macro and micro

skills that are involved in a general conversation and academic speech by

Richards (Jansen, 1998).

 10

Moreover, Brown(2004: 158) argues the micro-skills involved in

understanding what someone says to us. The listener should retain chunks of

language in a short-term memory, distinguish among the distinctive sounds in the

new language, recognize stress and rhythm patterns, tone patterns, intonational

contours, recognize reduced forms of words, discriminate word boundaries,

recognize typical word-order patterns, recognize vocabulary, find key words, such

as those identifying topics and ideas, guess meaning from context, and detect

sentence constituents such as subject, verb, object, prepositions, and the like.

Meanwhile, according to Tyagi (Ulum, 2015) elements of listening are

discriminating between sounds, recognizing words and understanding their

meaning, identifying grammatical groupings of words, identifying expressions

and sets of utterances that act to create meaning,connecting linguistic cues to non-

linguistic and paralinguistic cues,using background knowledge to predict and to

confirm meaning and recalling important words and ideas.

2.1.4. Type of Listening

Listening skill has some of types, Kline (1996 :29-43) mentioned that

there are five types of listening, as follows : informative listening, relationship

listening, appreciative listening, critical listening, and discriminative listening.

1) Invformative listening

Informative listening is the name we give to the condition where the

listener’s primary focus is to understand the message. Listeners are successful

insofar as the meaning they assign to messages is as close as possible to that

which the sender meant.

 11

Informative listening, or listening to understand, is found in all areas of

our daily life. Much of our learning comes from informative listening. For

instance, we listen to lectures or instructions from teachers and what we learn

depends on how well we listen it. In the workplace, we listen to understand

new practices or procedures and how well we perform depends on how well

we listen. We listen to instructions, briefings, reports, and speeches; if we

listen poorly, we aren’t equipped with the information we need.

2) Relationship listening

The purpose of relationship listening is either to assist an individual or

to increase the relationship between people. Therapeutic listening is a special

type of relationship listening. Therapeutic listening brings to mind conditions

where counselors, medical personnel, or other professionals allow a troubled

person to talk through a problem. But it can also be used when you listen to

friends or acquaintances and allow them to “get things off their chests.”

Although relationship listening needs you to listen for information, the

emphasis is on understanding the other person. Three behaviors are key to

effective relationship listening: attending, supporting, and empathizing.

3) Appreciative listening

Appreciative listening such as listening to music for enjoyment, to

speakers because you like their style, to your choices in theater, television,

radio, or film. It is the reaction of the listener, not the source of the message,

that defines appreciative listening. That which provides appreciative listening

for one person may provide something else for another. For example, hard
 12

rock music is not a source of appreciative listening for me. I would rather

listen to gospel, country, jazz, or the “golden oldies.” The quality of

appreciative listening depends in large part on three factors: presentation,

perception, and previous experience.

4) Critical listening

The ability to listen critically is necessary in a democracy. On the job,

in the community, at service clubs, in places of worship, in the family there is

practically no place you can go where critical listening is unimportant.

Politicians, the media, salesmen, advocates of policies and procedures,

and our own financial, emotional, intellectual, physical, and spiritual needs

require us to place a premium on critical listening and the thinking that

accompanies it. The subject of critical listening deserves much more attention

than we can afford it here. But there are three things to keep in mind. These

three things were outlined by Aristotle, the classical Greek rhetorician, more

than 2,000 years ago in his treatise, The Rhetoric. They are as follows: ethos,

or speaker credibility; logos, or logical arguments; and pathos, or

psychological appeals.

5) Discriminative listening

The last type of listening is discriminative listening. It may be the most

important type of listening, for it is basic to the other four. By being sensitive

to changes in the speaker’s level, volume, strength, pitch, and emphasis, the

informative listener can find even nuances of difference in meaning. By

sensing the effect of certain responses, such as “uh huh,” or “I see,”

 13

relationship listening can be strengthened. Detection of distinction between

sounds made by certain instruments in the orchestra, or parts sung by the a

cappella vocal group, enhances appreciative listening. Finally, sensitivity to

pauses, and other vocal and nonverbal cues, allows critical listeners to more

accurately judge not only the speaker’s message, but his intentions as well.

2.1.5. Listening Difficulties

Growing need of English knowledge has been made it important to learn

English by people around the world. People from different nations have their own

mother language and learning English as a foreign language which is not very

easy for people of any country. Language learning involves a number of skills, for

instance - reading, writing, speaking and listening. Among these skills, listening is

considered to be most difficult to teach as it relates with lots of sounds and

expressions that may be totally new for the particular listener.

Listening is feel difficult for most students, because listening need to

process. Students should comprehend what they listen and can determine the

meaning of the talk. Listening difficulties have been defined by many authors.

According to Goh (1999) listening difficulties are the internal and external

characteristics that might interrupt text comprehending and daily life processing

problems directly related to cognitive procedures that take place at various levels

of listening comprehension. She stated that internal includes Interest and purpose,

Prior knowledge and experience, Physical and psychological, Knowledge of

context and etc. While, external characteristics involving phonological

 14

modifications, vocabulary, speech rate, accent, accuracy of pronunciation,

physical conditions and etc.

Besides, Brown (2004) offers a simplified list of micro-skills and macro-

skills in listening. The macro skills isolate the skills that relate to the discourse

level of organization, while those that remain at sentence level continue to be

called micro-skills. In micro skills, the listener has to interpret intonation pattern

(e.g. recognize stress and rhythm). While, Hamouda (2013: 124) mentioned that

there are three aspects difficulties that faced by listener in listening, such as

problems related to the listening materials, basic linguistic problems perceived by

learners, and last aspect is listening problems related to psychological

characteristics.

In addition, to overcome listening difficulties some experts revealed about

listening strategy, as follows, Richards & Schmidt(2010: 44) said that listening

strategy is a conscious plan that decides how to deal with certain incoming speech

and elicit desired information from it through tackling listening obstacle such as

speed of delivery, accent, distracting noise and so on. Listening strategies are

techniques or steps that hand out directly to the comprehension and recall of

listening input (Rost, 2002: 57).

Moreover, Oxford(1990) argues, listening strategies are one of the ways

which effective in listening comprehension. Listening strategies refer to skills or

methods for listeners to directly or indirectly achieve the purpose of listening

comprehension of the spoken input by speaker (Ho, 2006: 25). According to

Gonen(2009: 45) listening strategy use is very importance because the online
 15

processing that takes place during listening. It is, learners should decode the

message, understand and interpret it in the course of listening.

Based on the theories above, researcher concluded that listening strategy is

a tool for active and self-directed involvement, which it is for learning language to

develop their communicative competence especially in listening comprehension.

Furthermore, listening strategies are needed to solve the problems that might

prevent to students achievement in listening.

2.2. Learning Listening Strategies

This part the learning listening strategies explains in this sub chapter

contain with the definition of learning strategy and type of learning strategy, as

follow.

2.2.1. The Definiton of Learning Strategies

The term of “Learning strategies” has been defined by many researchers.

Scarcella & Oxford (1992: 63) state that learning strategies are steps or techniques

used by students to increase their learning. Learning strategies assists the students

in control of their own learning by developing language skills, enhancing their

confidence and motivation in learning process.

Learning strategy as a spesific step that is taken by the learner to make

their studying easier, faster, more enjoyable, more self-directed, more effective

and more transferable to conditions (Oxford, 1990: 8). Allwright (1990; Little,

1991) added that Learning strategy can also enable learners to become more

independent learners.
 16

2.2.2. Types of Learning Strategies

Related to the effort of identifying students’ learning strategies, there are

four major classification successfully constructed by many experts. According to

Rubin (Griffiths, 2004) and oxford (1990: 16) focuses on two processes which

contribute directly and indirectly to learning. Meanwhile, O’Malley, Chamot, and

Walker(1987) argue only focuses the three types of learning strategies. They are

cognitive, metacognitive, and social/affective strategies. Furthermore,

Oxford(1990:16) classified the strategies into direct and indirect strategies. Direct

strategies are the strategies involving mental process and directly influencing the

target language and indirect strategies are those supporting and managing

language but not directly concerning the target language.

Besides, the direct strategies cover memory, cognitive, and compensation

while the indirect one points on metacognitive, affective and social strategies.

Normally, Oxford’s classification covers all learning strategies developed by the

previous theories. Moreover, the figure 1 shows that the six strategies are

connected each other and contribute the learning both directly and indirectly. As a

result, Oxford classification and her theory about learning strategies are widely

accepted to be used in most researches.

 17

Figure 2.1. Learning strategy: direct strategies and indirect strategies (Oxford, 1990: 15)

These are direct strategies include memory strategies, cognitive strategies and

compensation strategies describe by Oxford (1990:37-55):

1) Memory strategies

This strategies are helping the language learners to cope the difficulties in

learning language. Memorization assists learners to keep in memory important

information gathered from their learning process. Some research reveals that

language learner rarely report using memory strategy. However, memory

strategies can be powerful contributors to language learning especially in listening

comprehension. Use new vocabulary to remember the vocabulary and using

media to remember and absorb new sentence system or vocabulary, such as

reading English book, listening to English music and watching English movie,

thats are indicator of memory strategies.

 18

2) Cognitive strategies

In learning a new language cognitive strategies are essential. Cognitive

strategies are used to help the students to manipulate or transformation the target

language by using all student's process. it means these strategies are a varied lot,

such as from repeating to analyzing expressions to summarizing.

3) Compensation startegies

Compensation strategies used to assist learners to use the new language for

comprehension or production despite limitations in knowledge. In addition, the

purpose of compensation strategies are to making up for inadequate reportoire of

grammar and vocabulary. Compensation strategies help learners to retain using

the language, thus gaining more practice.

Oxford(1990:135)also defines indirect strategies include metacognitive strategies,

affective strategies and social strategies:

1) Metacognitive strategies

Metacognitive strategies allow learners to control their cognitive in order to

coordinate the learning process. Metacognitive strategies are essential for

succesful language learning. In addition, this strategies also help students to

arrange and plan language learning efficient and effective.

2) Affective strategies

The point of affective startegies are emotions, attitudes, motivation, and

values. By affective strategies language learners can obtain control over some

factors. She also said that, good language learners are often those those who

know how to control their emotions and attidtudes through learning. In other
 19

hand, positive emotions and attitudes can make language learning far more

enjoyable and effective.

3) Social strategies

Social strategy eases language learning through interaction with others or

communication occurs among people. For example, asking question,

cooperating with other, and empathizing with others. This strategies help the

students develop their ability and to increasing cultural understanding.

Based on the explanation above, the researcher agree that types of learning

strategies can develop learners to attention essential for learning a language,

moreover, direct strategies and indirect strategies support each other.

 20

Figure 2.2 diagram of the strategy system showing two classes,six groups, and 19

sets (Oxford, 1990: 17)

According to Oxford (1990: 38-147), type of learning strategy shows strategy

system and consist two classes, six groups and 19 sets, as follows:
 21

a. Direct Strategy

In this part consist three type of learning strategies, such as, memory

strategies, cognitive strategies and compensation strategies. As for the

strategy system, as follows (Oxford, 1990: 38-51):

a. Memory strategies

This strategies show four sets, they are: creating mental linkages, applying

images and sounds, reviewing well, and employing action.

(1) In creating mental linking set consist three strategies that form the

cornerstone for the rest of the memory strategies: grouping,

associating/elaborating, and using context.

(2) In applying images and sounds consist four strategies: using imagery, using

keyword, semantic mapping, and representing sounds in memory. These all

concern remembering by means of visual images or sounds.

(3) Meanwhile, reviewing well only have one strategy, namely structured

reviewing. Looking at new target language information once is not enough; it

should be reviewed in order to be remembered.

(4) The last set is employing action, in this set have two strategies: using physical

response or sensation and using mechanical tricks, both involve some kind of

meaningful action. These strategies will attract to learners who enjoy the

kinesthetic or tactile modes of learning.

 22

b. Cognitive strategies

Cognitive strategies also have four sets, they are: practicing, receiving and

sending messages, analyzing and reasoning, creating structure for input and

output.

(1) Practicing set consist five strategies, they are: repeating, formally practicing

with sounds and writing system, recognizing and using formulas and patterns,

recombining, practicing naturalistically.

(2) Receiving and sending messages devided two strategies: getting idea quickly,

and using resources for receiving and sending messages. The former uses two

specific methods for extracting ideas, while the latter involves using a variety

of sources for understanding or creating meaning.

(3) Analyzing and reasoning set have five strategies involve logical analysis and

reasoning as aplied to various target language skills. Such as, reasoning

deductively, analyzing expressions, analyzing contrastively, translating, and

transferring. Mostly, learners be able to use these strategies to comperhend

the meaning of a new expression or to create a new expression.

(4) Creating structure for input and output fall into three strategies: taking notes,

summarizing, and highlighting. These strategies are ways to creat structure,

which in necessary for both comprehension and creation in the new language.

c. Compensation strategies

This strategies are divided into two sets: guessing intelligently and

overcoming limitations in speaking and writing.

 23

(1) Guessing intelligently

The two strategies which contribute to guessing intelligently refer to two

different kinds of clues: using linguistic clues and using other clues

(nonlinguistic).

(2) Overcoming limitations in speaking and writing

For overcoming limitation in speaking and writing set are using eight

strategies: switching to the mother tongue, getting help, using mime or

gesture, avoiding communication partially or totally, selecting the topic,

adjusting or approximating the message, coining words, and using a

circumlocution or synonym. Some of strategies are dedicated solely to

speaking, but some can be used for writing, as well.

b. Indirect strategies

Indirect strategies also divided into three types of learning strategies, they are:

metacognitive strategies, affective strategies, and social strategies. as for the

strategy system, as follows (Oxford, 1990: 135-147):

a. Metacognitive strategies

In this strategies consist three sets: centering your learning, arranging and

planning your learning, and evaluating your learning.

(1) Centering your learning

This set divided into three strategies: overviewing and linking with alreadt

known material, paying attention, and delaying speech production to focus on

listening. These strategies assist learners to converge their attention and

energies on certain language tasks, activities, skills, or materials.

 24

(2) Arranging and planning your learning

Arranging and planning your learning have six strategies: finding out about

language learning, organizing, setting goals and objectives, identifying the

purpose of a language task, planning for a language task, and seeking practice

opportunities. All of them help learners to arrange and plan so as to get the

most out of language learning.

(3) Evaluating your learning

This set consists two strategies: self-monitoring and self evaluating, both of

them aiding learning in checking their language performance. One strategy

involves noticing and learning from errors, while the other concerns

evaluating overall progress.

b. Affective strategies

This strategies also divided into three sets: lowering your anxiety,

encouraging yourself, and taking your emotional temperature.

(1) Lowering your anxiety

Three anxiety reducing strategies are: using progressive relaxation, deep

breathing, or meditation, using music, and using laughter. All of strategies

have physical component and mental component.

(2) Encouraging yourself

In this set also has three strategies that often forgotten by language learners,

they are: making positive statements, taking risk wisely, and rewarding

yourself.

(3) Taking your emotional temperature

 25

This set consists four strategies that help learners to assess their feelings,

motivations, and attitudes and, in many case, to relate them to language tasks,

they are: listening to your body, using a chscklist, writing a language learning

diary, and discussing your feelings with someone else.

c. Social strategies

In this strategies divided into three sets: asking questions, cooperating with

others, and empathizing with other.

(1) Asking question

This set has two strategies that involves asking someone, possibly a teacher

or native speaker or even a more proficient fellow learners. The strategies are:

asking for clarification or verification and asking for correction.

(2) Cooperating with others

The set consists two strategies that involves interacting with one or more

people to develop language skills. The strategies are: cooperating peers and

cooperating with proficient users of the new language.

(3) Empathizing with others

Empathizing set also has two strategies : developing cultural understanding

and becoming aware of others’ thoughts feeling. This set can be developed

more easly when language learners use those strategies.

Based on the theories above, the researcher concluded that types of

learning strategies that fits what they are learning, and which makes it easier for

them to understand the material. Furthermore, every learners have their own

strategies in procces learning.