ProposalThe Use of Note-Taking in Teaching Dictation to

Improve Student Listening Skill: An Experimental

Study at SMAN 2 JONGGAT Academic Years 2014/2015

By:

ZAKARIA

E1D110126

VIII B

ENGLISH EDUCATION PROGRAM LANGUAGE AND ART DEPARTMENTFACULTY OF TEACHING TRAINING AND EDUCATION

MATARAM UNIVERSITY

2014

CHAPTER IINTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study Language is a means of communication. By using language

people can express their feelings, thoughts, and minds. Peopleuse language to communicate with other in fulfilling theirdaily needs. In fact, language has played important role inhuman life. As stated by Ramelan (1992: 10) language is anarbitrary system of speech sound which is used ininterpersonal communication by as aggregation of human beingand which is rather exhaustively catalogs things, processesand events in human environment. Because of this, people uselanguage functions as a means of international communicationamong the nations all over the world.

It is important for us to learn language especiallyEnglish since it is an international language which is used asa means of communication among nation in the world either inspoken or written interaction. In addition, the use of Englishis very important as a means of communication so that theinterest in learning English grow very rapidly.

Ramelan (1992: 2) said that English is the first foreignlanguage to be taught in Indonesia. It is taught fromelementary school up to university. As the first foreignlanguage, English is considered difficult to learn byindonesian students because learning English is something newfor them. It is different from learning their native language.They have been surrounded by their mother tongue and spoken in

their native language since their childhood. In teaching andlearning process students must demonstrate proficient skills:listening, speaking, reading and writing.

One of the important aspects in learning a foreignlanguage is listening. Listening plays an important role inthe language learning. It is a demanding process, not onlybecause of the complexity of the process itself but also dueto factors that characterize the listener, the speaker, thecontent of the message and any visual support that accompaniesthe message. It gives the learner information from which tobuild the knowledge necessary for using the language.Listening provides the necessary input for learners to acquirethe language needed for practicing a language.

Listening is the language modality that is used mostfrequently. One of the techniques for improving listeningcomprehension that is recommended in many books about teachingEFL in general and teaching listening comprehension inparticular is dictation with a variety of alternativetechniques such as partial dictation (Celce-Murcia, 1995;Gilbert, 1996; Ur, 1991). In this study, partial dictation wasused only as a teaching technique for improving the listeningcomprehension ability of intermediate EFL learners.

However, the above ideal condition is too far thereality. There is an extreme gap between what the institutionexpects and the real condition. One of the weaknesses whichthe students have in learning English based on theresearcher’s observation is listening competence. Most of themget difficulties in identifying main idea, predicting andguessing words. The condition is influenced by many factors.One of them is students did not have the courage to explain orto ask their difficulties to the lecturer.

Some English lecturers at the college where the

researcher carries out a research still used the teacher-cent

method and traditional method in teaching listening. Some of

them just focused on listening conversation and monologue

after that they ask to the students to choose the best option

based on the context. Besides that, they asked the students to

find the meaning of difficult words in the functional texts.

In fact, listening is the most frequently used language

skill in everyday life. Listening is a highly integrative

skill. It is assuming greater importance in foreign language

classroom. Unlike other language skills such as reading and

writing, which can be observed directly, listening is an

abstract, intricate “process of hearing, identifying,

understanding and interpreting spoken language” (Lewis,

2007). Many students have significant problems with listening.

The speed of utterances, the reduced forms of natural English,

the use of intonation for meaning, and unfamiliar accents, all

take their tools and it is essential to give learners at all

levels plenty of practice. Therefore the choice of appropriate

method is a great significance in developing listening skills

and improving student’s overall language learning.

Brown (2001) states that listening is an important skill

in language learning and it cannot be underestimated

especially in academic context. The labeling of listening,

along reading as receptive skill, is often known by people as

a passive process (Nunan, 2003; Brown, 2001; McErlain, 1999;

Brown, 2004; 2 Saville-Troike, 2006). As a matter of fact,

listening is an active process because it requires a person to

receive and understand information or input (Nunan, 2003).

B. Problem StatementThe research is formulated to reach the expected result

to help students listening ability.1. Can the technique of using dictation improve the studentslistening ability?2. What are the strengths and weaknesses using dictation inthe students’ listening ability?3. What happens to the class situation if dictation techniqueis used to improve students’ listening ability?C. The Objective of the Study

This research is aimed to improve the students’ listeningability. In details, this research has the objectives:1. To know whether technique of using cloze dictation canimprove the students’ listening ability2. To know whether dictation has the strengths and weaknessesof students’ listening ability.3. To find out what happens to the class situation ifdictation is used to improve students’ listening ability.D. The Benefits of the Study1. For the students a. The students’ English listening skill increasesb. The students are trained to understand dictation frequentlyc. The students’ vocabulary will increase automatically2. For the lecturer/ teachersa. It increases teachers’ high creativity, professionalism,and dedicated to reach series of academic achievementcontinuously in English.b. It will help the teacher to facilitate the teaching processand to solve the problem of listening difficulties.

3. For Schoolsa. The school can increase the quality of teaching process thelearning process runs smoothly.b. The school can get positive improvement by giving freedomto the teacher to design the teaching materials and theteaching learning interaction.c. The result of the research hopefully will show howimportant what they have done to the institution.

CHAPTER IIREVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURES

1. ListeningThis section contains the definitions of listening,

learning to listen, types of listening, listening problems,types of classroom listening performance, and assessment oflistening.

a.    Definition of ListeningMyers and Myers (1999: 143) state that listening is not

only hearing, but also including the added dimensions ofunderstanding, paying attention, analyzing, and evaluating thespoken messages, and possibly acting on the basis of what hasbeen heard. Similarly, Floyd as quoted by Myers defineslistening as receiver orientation to the communicationprocess, since communication involves both of source and areceiver. Rost (1994: 2) states that listening is a processtriggered by our attention. In psychological terms, attentionis an excitation of nerve pathways, the brain, to organizeincoming stimuli in an efficient way. Farlex (2007: 2) definesthat listening is the act of hearing attentively.

The other definition of listening from Underwood (1997:1) state that listening is the activity of paying attention toand trying to get meaning from something we hear. She explainsthat to listen successfully to spoken language, a listenerneeds to be able to work out what speakers mean when they useparticular words in particular ways on particular occasions,and not simply to understand the words themselves. Tounderstand the message from spoken language, it is not enoughto just understand the words themselves; instead the incomingsound needs to be processed involving any available cues like

background noises, the speakers, the setting, etc. toconstruct meaning.

There are many different types of listening which can beclassified according to number variables, including purposefor listening, the role of listener, and types of text beinglistened to. These variables are mixed in many differentconfigurations, each which will require a particular strategyon the part of the listener. To be successful in listening toforeign language, listeners are required to apply suchstrategy that best fit to comprehend message.2. Learning to Listen

Listening comprehension also has an important role indetermining the learner’s success in learning language,especially in communication. We cannot communicate with othersif we do not understand what the speaker intends. That is whythere is a lot of misunderstanding between the listener andthe speaker. Why misunderstanding always occurs incommunication, what the speaker said and intended, isdetermined by the listener’s ability in answering thespeaker’s question.

Learning to listen in our first language is by no meanseasy. It requires considerable cognitive development andconstant attention to social and linguistic input over ofperiod of several grades. However, learning to listen in asecond language seems to be even more difficult. While it maynot require more time to develop, second language listening isconfounded by a number of difficulties.

In responding to the students’ difficulties in learningto listen, first the teacher has to identify and to classifythe difficulties that are faced by the students. Second, heselects and designs appropriate materials in solving the

students’ difficulties, in order to make the students moreeffective listeners. Considering the difficulties or theproblems which are faced by the students, it will be better ifthe teacher understands how the process of listeningcomprehension is achieved by them.

According to Hellene and Brown, students learn to listenor read through two processes, they are bottom-up and top-downprocessing (1994: xii):a. Bottom-up processing

Bottom-up processing is trying to make sense of what wehear by focusing on different parts; the vocabulary, thegrammar, sounds, etc, however, it is difficult to get overallparts. And when you try to understand what the speaker say byonly looking at the grammar or vocabulary that you do notunderstand since you are learning a new language or foreignlanguage then you cannot focus on what you are listening to.

b. Top-down processingTop-down processing starts with background of knowledge

called schema. Schema is classified into two. First, contentschema that is general knowledge based on life experience andprevious learning. Second, textual schema that is theknowledge of language and content used in the particularsituation: the language you need at the office is differentthan what you need when socializing with friends.

Furthermore Brown (1997: 11) states that the activelistener will use all relevant background knowledge of thephysical context of the utterance (the immediate surroundings,the place, the time of day, etc), knowledge of the speaker(gender, age, known opinions), knowledge of the topic (and

what the speaker is likely to know about it, or feel aboutit), and so on.

In short, in the top-down processing, students do notneed to pay much attention to the language used. As in somesituations, the topic or the speaker is so familiar that theycan take for granted a great deal of what is said. It allowsanchoring their comprehension on what they think is relevantknowledge of the topic, the speaker, and so on.3. Types of Listening Activities       

An essential listener is exposing the listeners tovariety of listening activities. According to Hellenes andBrown (1994: xii) there are three types of listeningactivities, namely:a. Listening skill for understanding the general meaning.

It is listening skill for understanding the generalmeaning. The listener is usually quick to understand the ideaof the text. He/she can imagine for catch the general meaningof something he/ she hears.b. Listening for the specific information/ listening fordetail

It involves understanding the task and focusing to catchcertain information.c. Listening between the lines/ understanding inferences

Understanding inferences is the most difficult skill inthe listening activities. It is not just imagining meanings.It is thinking about meaning that is given, even though thespecific words are not the stirty. Here, in this listeningactivity, the hearer must be able to draw the inference of thestory.

4.    Listening Problems

The first step the learning problems that student inconstructing a successful listening is to identify thelearning problems that students are experiencing as a resultof listening to related issues. Ur (1996: 111-112) identifiesthe learner’s problems and the solution as follows:

a. Trouble with the sounds Most students rely mostly on context for comprehension;

they are often themselves unaware sound perception. b. Have understand very word

Some students feel worried and stressed when they misssome words of the text. Here, the teacher needs to give thestudents practice in selective ignoring of heardinformation/something they do naturally in their mothertongue. The teacher should explain this point to the students,and set them occasional tasks that ask them to scan arelatively long task for one two limited items of information.

c. Cannot understand fast, naturally native speakerThe students can only understand if the teacher talks

slowly and clearly. They cannot understand fast, naturalnative-sounding speech. To overcome this problem, the teacherhas to expose the students to as much spontaneous-informaltalk as possible, so they can understand the native speech.The teacher can also provide them with the sorts of discourseat the right level for them.

d. Need to hear thing. More than once In order to understand, students need more than once to

hear the text. In this problem, the teacher can try to usetexts that include “redundant” passage and within which theessential information is presented more than once and not toointensively and give the students the opportunity to requestclarification are repetition during the listening.

e. Find it difficult to keep up The students feel overloaded with incoming information.

The solution is not (so much) to slow down the discourse butrather to encourage them to relax, stop trying to understandeverything, learn to pick out what is essential and allow themto ignore the rest.

f. Get tired Sometimes, students feel tired and bored to listen, if

the discourse is too long. They also feel more difficult toconcentrate: The solution of this problem is similar with thethird problem.

Similar to Ur (1996: 113), Rost (1994: 119) has identifiedthe listener’s problems as follows: acuity of hearing,discrimination and auditory perception, attention andconcentration, comprehension including four aspects, namely:factual or literal comprehension, interpretation, criticallistening, and evolution listening.

a. Acuity of hearing Some pupils have physical problems which prevent them from

participating full or owing to environmental problem (such asnoise), are not hearing what is said.

b. Discrimination and auditory perception Some pupils have problem with auditory memory (recalling

what they have just heard) and sequential memory (recalling incorrect sequence of words or utterance they have just heard.

c. Attention and concentration Many pupils have difficulties following instructions owing

to apparent in attention and concentration. Such pupils maynot be adapting well to the numerous distraction in a typicalclassroom.

d. Comprehension

Numerous pupils have difficulties with different aspects oflistening comprehension. Some have trouble with factual orliteral comprehension (identifying what was said or what factswere stated); others have trouble with interpretation (such ascategorizing new information or seeing cause-effectrelationship between facts); other have trouble with criticallistening (applying what they have heard and problem-solving).Still others have problems with evolutional listening(appreciating or commenting critically on what they haveheard.5. Difficulties in Listening

According to many experts (Dunkel, 1991; Richards, 1983;and Ur, 1984), there are eight factors making listeningdifficult as follows:a. Clustering, in written language we are conditioned to attendthe sentence as the basic unit of organization. In spokenlanguage, due to the memory limitations and our predispositionfor “chunking” or clustering, we break down speech intosmaller group of world. b. Redundancy, spoken language unlike written language, has agood deal of redundancy. The next time we are in conversation,notice the rephrasing, repetitions, elaborations, and littleinsertion of “I mean” and “You know”, here and there. Suchredundancy helps the hearer to process meaning by offeringmore time and extra information.c. Reduced form, while spoken language does indeed contain agood deal of redundancy, it also has many reduced forms. Thereduction can be phonological, morphological, syntactic, andpragmatic. These reductions pose significant difficultiesespecially to classroom learners. 

d. Performance variables, in spoken language, except for plandiscourse, hesitations, false starts, pauses, and correctionare common. Learners have to train themselves to listen formeaning in the midst of all these distracting performancevariables. e. Colloquial language, learners who have been exposed tostandard written English and/or ‘textbook’ language sometimesfind it surprising and difficult to deal with colloquiallanguage. Idioms, slang, reduced forms, shared culturalknowledge, are all manifested at some point ofconversation.   f. Rate of delivery, virtually every language learner initiallythinks that native speaker speak too fast. Actually as Richard(1983) points out, the number of length pauses used by aspeaker is more crucial to comprehension than sheer speed.g. Stress, rhythm, and intonation, the prosodic features of theEnglish language are very important for comprehension. As astressed time language, English speech can be a terror forsome learners as mouthfuls of syllables come spilling outbetween stress points.h. Interaction, unless a language learners objectives isexclusively to master some specialized skill like monitoringradio broadcast or attending lectures, interaction will play alarge role in listening comprehension.6. Types of Classroom Performance

With literally hundreds of possible techniques available forteaching listening skill, it will be helpful to think in termsof several kinds of listening performance. (Rost 1994:119).The types of listening performance are as the following:

a. Reactive

This kind of listening performance requires littlemeaningful processing, it nevertheless may be a legitimate,even though a minor, aspect of an interactive communicativeclassroom. The role of the listeners is merely as a “taperecorder” because the listener is not generating meaning.

b. Intensive The purpose of the technique is to focus on components

(phonemes, words, intonation, discourse etc) of discourse. Itmay be considered to be intensive, as opposed to extensive, intheir requirement that students single out certain elements ofspoken language.

c. Responsive A significant proportion of classroom listening activity

consists of short stretches of teacher language designed toelicit immediate response. The students’ task in suchlistening is to process the teacher talk immediately.

Rost (1991: 3)  listen the necessary component skills inthe listening as: (a) discriminating between sounds; (b)recognizing words; (c) identifying grammatical grouping ofwords; (d) identifying pragmatic units’-expression and set ofutterances which function as a whole units to create meaning;(e) connecting linguistic cues (gesture and relevant objectsin the situation) in order to construct meaning; (f) usingbackground knowledge (what we has already know about thecontent and the form) and context (what we has already beensaid) to predict and then to confirm meaning; (g) recallingimportant words and ideas.

To be successful in listening, listeners involve anintegration of these component skills. That means listening isnot the individual skills themselves instead it is acoordination of the component skills. A person’s listening

ability is the integration of the perception skills, analyzingskills, and synthesis skills.

In listening comprehension, use effective listeningskills can help students capitalize on the language input theyare receiving. Axbey (1989: 4) states that successfullistening in the classroom depends partly on good preparation.The context of what he or she is going to listen should beintroduced to the students such as who is speaking, where,when, and to what purpose. This information enables them makepredictions of the content and language, for example, beforeand during listening.

To think that listening task, there are some aspect suchas discriminating (spelling sound discrimination), identifyingmain idea, and listening for detailed information which areused by the researcher to conduct teaching listening and usedin testing the students’ listening ability. The task for theresearcher in designing listening test is determining theactive or passive listening. Specifically, students need toknow the listening competence they most frequently encounterin their academic studies in order to successfully completetheir assignment. In order to rarely know how to listen well,students must:a. Discriminating

Some pupils have problem with auditory memory (recallingwhat they have just heard) and sequential memory (recalling incorrect sequence of words or utterance they have just heard.b. Recognizing Words

In order to recognize word, we have to perform threestimulitaneous processes: find the most probable ‘candidateword’ among several possibilities, estimate the best meaning

of the word in the context, and find the ‘refence’ for thespeaker’s words.c. Responding

A significant proportion of classroom listening activityconsists of short text of teacher language designed to elicitimmediate responses. The students’ tasks in such listening toprocess the teacher talk immediately.d. Comprehending

Some have trouble with factual or literal comprehension(identifying what was said or what facts were stated); othershave trouble with interpretation (such as categorizing newinformation or seeing cause-effect relationship betweenfacts); others have trouble with critical listening (applyingwhat they have heard and problem solving). They are some waysin which the students comprehend, they are:

1. Understanding for the specific information It involves understanding the task and focusing to catchcertain information.

2. Understanding for the inferential information Understanding inferences is the most difficult skill inthe listening activities. It is not just imaginingmeanings. It is thinking about meaning that is given,even though the specific words are not the stirty. Here,in this listening activity, the hearer must be able todraw the inference of the story.

3. Understanding for the main idea It is listening skill for understanding the generalmeanings. The listener is usually quick to understand theidea of the text. He/she can imagine to catch the generalmeaning of something he/she hear.

From the explanation above, it can be concluded thatlistening is an activity of paying attention to what has beenheard in order to understand the message. Listeners take inthe sounds uttered by a speaker and use them to construct aninterpretation of what they think the speaker intends toconvey. Listening skills consist of the aspect ofdiscriminating sounds, identifying main idea, and listeningfor detailed information.7. Definition of Teaching Listening Comprehension

Comprehension is often considered to be the first-ordergoal of listening, the highest priority of the listener andsometimes the sole purpose of listening. Although the termlistening comprehension is widely used to refer to all aspectsof listening, the term comprehension will be discussed morespecific here.

According to Rost (2002: 59) comprehension is the processof relating language to concepts in one’s memory and toreference in the real world. Comprehension is the sense ofunderstanding what the language used refers to in one’sexperiences or in the outside world. Complete comprehensionthen refers to the listener having clear concepts in memoryfor every referent used by the speaker.

The process of comprehending occurs in an ongoing cycleas the listener is attending to speech. A concrete startingpoint of discussing how comprehension takes places is thenotion of “given” and “new” information. The term “new” refersto the status that the information is undefined by thelistener. “Given” refers to the status that the information isalready known by the listeners. Most fundamental aspect ofcomprehension is the integration of the information conveyedby the text with information and concepts already known by the

listeners. In teaching listening there are main stages that weshould construct. It is the same as we teach listeningcomprehension. They are: 

a. Pre-listeningPre-listening is the warming up activity before the

students have the real listening tasks. Pre-listening is howwe can help learners achieve the balance between the top-downand bottom-up processing. In many warm-up activities, learnersdo task to activate their schemata. When learners use bothtop-down and bottom-up processing, this is called interactiveprocessing. Pre-listening activity is almost the same asbrainstorming in reading or writing.

In real life it is unusual for people to listen tosomething without having some idea of what they are going tohear. Rees in his article at teachingenglish.org.uk explainthat pre-listening task aim to deal with (1) Setting thecontext i.e. giving an idea about who is speaking, where andwhy. (2) Activating current knowledge i.e. asking questionsrelated to the context. (3) Acquiring knowledge i.e. providingknowledge input to the students. (4) Activating vocabulary orlanguage i.e. providing vocabulary that they may find in thecontext. (5) Checking or understanding the listening tasksi.e. give students plenty of time to understand the mainlistening comprehension.

b. Listening tasksThere are three types of listening activities for

beginners’ level. They are listening for specific information,listening and inferences.

c. Post-listeningThe range of post listening activities is at least as

wide as listening tasks themselves. At times, post listening

maybe as simple as checking the answers to comprehensionquestions, either by the teacher telling the learners what thecorrect answers are, by eliciting answers from the studentsthemselves, or by having students compare their answers inpairs or small groups (Helgesen and Brown, 2007: 17).8. Principles for Developing Listening Ability

To develop listening ability, learners need a great dealexposure to spoken language and sample practice in variouslistening situations. However, in addition to exposure andpractice, it is of vital importance for the listeners tobecome engage in the process of listening and develop desireto understand. Different type of listener will have differentapproach to their development of listening ability.a. Listening ability develop through face to face interaction

Face to face interaction provides stimulation fordevelopment of listening for meaning. Learners have the chancefor new language input and the chance to check their ownlistening ability by interacting in English.b. Listening develop through focusing on meaning and trying tolearn new and important content in the target language.

Learners can activate both their linguistic and non-linguistic abilities to understand by focusing on meaning andreal reasons for listening.c. Listening ability develops through work on comprehensionactivities.

       By focusing on specific goals for listening, learners canevaluate their efforts and abilities. By having well-definedcomprehension activities, learners have opportunities forassessment of what they achieved and for revision.d. Listening develops through attention to accuracy and ananalysis of form.

       Learners can make steady progress by learning to perceivesounds and words accurately as they work on meaning-orientedactivities and they gain confidence in listening for meaningby learning to hear sounds and words more accurately.9. Kinds of Listening Text

There are two kinds of listening texts; they aremonologue text and dialogue text. In monologue the listener isnot required to respond the massage. It is also called aninformational listening. This is where information iscommunicated to the listeners. Monologue can be planned, orunplanned. Monologues are the example of one waycommunication. There are some other kinds of one waycommunication, they are Radio and television programs, publicaddress announcements (airports, train/bus stations, stores)and Speeches and lectures

Dialogue requires listeners to respond to what is beingcommunicated. The goal of dialogue is to develop interactionbetween people. In dialogues, there are interpersonal andtransactional dialogues. The listener communicates somethingback to the speaker. For example, greeting between friends, ameeting business discussion   and giving or receivinginstructions at work.     

According to Brown (1996: 234) the importance oflistening in language learning can hardly be overestimated.Through perception, we internalize linguistic informationwithout which we could not produce language. In classroom,students always do more listening than speaking. Listeningcompetence is universally “larger” than speaking competence.Listening comprehension does not always draw the attention ofeducators that it now has. Perhaps human beings have a natural

tendency to look at speaking as the major index of languageproficiency. 10. Dictation Related Auditory Tasksa. Kind of Dictation Tasks

This part focuses attention on a family of auditorytesting procedures. The best researched of them is a varietyof dictation which we will refer to as standard dictation.This variety and others related to it are described in somedetail below, but is should be noted early that the fewtesting techniques which are discussed in this and infollowing parts are scarcely indicative of the range ofpossible pragmatic testing procedure. More particularly, thefew auditory tasks described in this part are far from acomplete accounting of possible tests. In fact, no completelisting can ever be obtained because their number is unboundedin principle. The techniques discussed are intended merely tointroduce some of the possibilities that are known to workwell. It is not to set the limits of the range of pragmaticauditory tasks that are possible.

Johansson (1973) suggests two methods for selectingmaterials, on way is to tape a portion of natural discourse- alecture, a radio program, a conversation, or some other verbalexchange. Another is to concoct a text or script to be taperecorded as if it were one of the foregoing, or merely to taperecord a script, say, a paragraph of prose. In the first caseit is necessary to transform the auditory version into awritten form, that is, write the script. In the second, onestarts with the script and then makes a recording of it. f. The Advantages and Disadvantages of Dictation1. The Advantages of Dictation

Contrary to essay writing which can be judged as too openended, a dictation is right or wrong, therefore it is an easyexercise for new instructors and it can give students a chanceto know where they stand compared to the rest of the class.Among the list of 21 advantages offered by Ruth Montalvan:(1)  Develops short term memory.(2)  It can be an excellent review exercise.(3) It is challenging.(4) Involves the whole class, no matter how large it is.(5) Corrections can be done by the students.(6) Can be prepared for any level.(7) Dictation can help develop all four language skills in anintegrative way.(8) Provides feedback for students as well as teachers.(9) Research has shown that learning to write down what youhear can encourage the development of literacy.

It is important that the candidates should be assessed in

situations as close as possible to those in which they will be

required to use the language. For dictation, this involves

them listening to dictated material which incorporates oral

messages typical of those they might encounter in the target

situation.

a. Given our concern with reliability as well as validity, it

is perhaps advisable to improve the overall reliability of a

listening battery by including a format which has a proven

track record in this respect. A dictation can provide this

reliability through the large number of items that can be

generated as well as being valid for specific situation where

dictation might feature as a target group activity.

b. There is a lot of evidence which shows dictation

correlating highly with a great variety of other tests,

particularly with other integrative tests such as cloze and it

is often employed as a useful measure of general proficiency.

There is some evidence that the use of a semantic scoring

scheme (see weir, 1983a) as against an exact word system serve

to enhance the correlations with other construct valid test of

listening.

c. Criticisms of dictation in the past stemmed from a

viewpoint heavily influenced by structural linguistics that

favoured testing the more discrete elements of language skills

and wished to avoid the possibility of muddied measurement.

Heaton (1975) commented” ‘as a testing device it measures too

many different language features to be effective in providing

a means of assessing any one particular skill’. The proponents

of dictation, however, consider its very ‘integrative’ nature

to be advantage since it reflects more faithfully how people

process language in real life contexts.

d. The new interest in dictation reflected the paradigm shift

in testing values and objectives referred to above. Whereas in

1967 Vallette had observed that foreign language specialists

were not in agreement on the effectiveness of dictation as an

examination for more advanced students, significantly ten

years later she was able to state that dictation was a precise

measure of overall proficiency and an excellent method of

grouping incoming students according to ability levels..

f. Oller (1979) claimed that a dynamic process of analysis by

synthesis was involved. Dictation draws on learner’s ability

to use all systems of the language in conjunction with

knowledge of the world, context, etc., to predict what will be

said (synthesis of message) and after the message has been

uttered to scrutinise this via the short term memory in order

to see if it fits with what had been predicted (analysis).

2) The Disadvantages of DictationTraditional dictation is not a great oral comprehension

exercise since it has little to do with authenticcommunication. Dictations are in fact written passages thatare read out loud so they do not help students to understandthe difference between the oral and the written language.Furthermore they are read at a slower pace than people speaknormally and are therefore of little value to help studentsunderstand the language spoken by natives.1. Memorizing, the short term memory can be “overwhelmed” ifthey is too much that the student does not understand.2. Writing respecting the relation between sounds and lettersis next to impossible if the student did not understand andguessing does not always work. There is a great deal ofemphasis put on spelling mistakes in a dictation yet there isvery little work done to help the students to perceive thebasic sound-spelling correspondences revealed by theirdictation errors.3. Syllabic but depends on a rhythmic group and which has nobreak between syllables.Besides the disadvantages above there are other disadvantagesas follows:(1) Alderson (1978a) concludes that the evidence concerningdictation is inconclusive and that it is useful only as part

of battery of listening tests rather than a single solution.He points out (1978a, p. 365) that:

The reason it correlates more with some sub-tests thanwith others does not appear to be date to the claimed factthat it is an integrative test, but because it is essentiallya test of low level linguistic skills. Hence the dictationcorrelates best with those cloze tests, texts and scoringmethods which themselves best allow the measurement of theseskills.(2) Dictation will be trivial unless the short term memory ofthe students is challenge and the length of the utterancesdictated will depend on the listeners’ ability up to the limitthat native speaker counterparts could handle.(3)  Marking may well be problematic if one wishes to takeinto account seriousness of error or if one wishes to adopt amore communicatively oriented marking scheme where a mark isgiven if the candidate has understood the substance of themessage and redundant features are ignored.(4) If the dictation is not recorded on tape, the test will beless reliable, as there will be differences in, for example,the speed of delivery of the text to different audiences.(5) The exercise can be unrealistic if the texts used havebeen previously created to be read rather than heard.

CHAPTER III

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY1. Data and Technique for Collecting Data

Data have a very important role in research, becausewithout data, it is impossible to get the result of theresearch. To obtain the data, the researcher used someinstruments in collecting data, namely: observation,interview, and test.

      1. ObservationThe observation is a technique of collecting data by

closely watching and noticing the events during the teachinglearning process in the classroom. In this research, theresearcher used the real time. According to Wallace (1998:106) the real observation and analysis as the teachinglearning actually happens by using any electronic means ofrecalling the data and it will be done by making checklist orsimply taking notes.

The researchers with the collaborator observe all of thestudents’ activities and situation during the teachinglearning process using cloze dictation technique. The functionof the collaborator here is to evaluate the researcher’steaching, to offer suggestion on the best way to teach and tohelp her to observe the students in teaching and learningprocess. In other words, the collaborator was the activeparticipant who gave a big contribution to every step of herresearch.2. Questionnaire

A questionnaire is a research instrument consisting of aseries of questions and prompts for the purpose of gathering

information from respondent. Questionnaire is easier and lesstime consuming to administer the interview and the responsesof a large number of information can be gathered. Related tothis statement questionnaire will be given by the researcherbefore and after treatment to the students to get informationfrom them about their activities, opinions, expectations, andattitudes and perceptions. The researcher asked the studentsto fill the questionnaire by reading the questionnaire and put√ to one of the responses.

3. TestAccording to Brown (2004: 3) a test is a method of

measuring a person’s ability; knowledge, or performance in agiven domain. The goal in giving the test was to measure thestudents’ achievement in listening comprehension. Tests werepre-test and post-test. Pre-test was given to the studentsbefore being taught using cloze dictation and post-test wasgiven to the students after being taught using clozedictation. It is aim to know whether the students’ listeningability improves or not, before and after taught using clozedictation.

To get the valid test, the internal validity andreliability is applied. There were pre-test and post-testwhich is used to collect the data. Each test contained 30items. They were 32 of the valid items from 40 items. The testconsisted of functional texts related to the texts that havebeen taught to the students.

2. Method of Data Analysis

To examine the level of student’s participation, this

study applied an observation method to collect the data.

Explaining the method to analyze speaking ability of the

students which the data that collected using pre-test then

giving some treatment and accomplish it in post test, the

study adopts the procedure in accumulating the data according

to the formula of single-group called t-test. The formula is:

SD=√ (∑D2 )–(1N ) (∑D )2

N−1

SD=SD√N

tobs=X1−X2SD

Tobs = √∑d2x+∑d2y(Nx+Ny)−2 ( 1Nx +

1Ny )

t obs = the degree of comparison

SD = standard deviation

SD = corrected standard deviation

N = total samples

This t-test formula is appropriate to be applied for

single-group because it is an exact formula to analyze the

data that collected. The advantage of using this t-test

formula is that it could focused in one class only so that it

will be easier to concentrate, to view and calculate the

effectiveness of use a role plays to increase the speaking

ability of the students.

References

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Saville-Troike, M. (2006). Introducing Second Language

Acquisition. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.

Nunan, David. (2003). Practical English Language Teaching.

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McErlain, Tricia. (1999). The Nature of Listening: The need

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June 15, 2011.

Brown, H. Douglas. (2001). Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach

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