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ANALYSIS ON LISTENING EXERCISES IN LOOK AHEAD 2(ENGLISH COURSE BOOK FOR SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS YEAR XI)

Muhammad Iqbal

Program Studi Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris Fakultas Keguruan dan Ilmu PendidikanUniversitas JabalGhafur

ABSTRACT

The title of this research is “Analysis on Listening Exercises in Look Ahead 2 (English Course Book forSenior High School Students Year XI)”. The problem of this research can be stated as follow: Are thelistening exercises relevance to KTSP curriculum? How the listening exercises in the text book lookahead 2 present items questions?. Its purpose was to find out whether the listening exercise in LookAhead 2 an English Course for Senior High School Year XI published by Erlangga is relevance with theKTSP curriculum and there are twelve (12) listening exercises which is included in discrete test, 3listening exercises which is included in communicative test and 1 listening exercises which is included incombination between both. In collecting the data, the writer used in this research is library research,which is a type of study that makes the data library as the theory to study and examine the hypothesesand concepts to obtain to get result that objective. The sample of this research was listening exercise inthe text book look ahead 2. Based on the result of this research, the writer found that listening exercisebased KTSP curriculum of Senior High School Grade Year XI suitable of competency standard (SK) 2,and basic competency (KD) 2.1 and 2.2. The listening exercise in Look Ahead 2, an English Course forSenior High School Grade Year XI published by Erlangga, show that the higest number of test is discretetest, so it is proper enough in improving of student’s ability in listening through kind of this test.

The Background of StudyEnglish is a language which applied as a

foreign language in Indonesia. It must be taughtas a compulsory subject at schools anduniversities level. English mastery at educationallevel is aimed to develop students’ ability inincreasing students’ knowledge in various fieldssuch as science, technology, and culturaldevelopment. To master English, students shouldlearn and practice four skills frequently namelylistening, speaking, reading, and writing.

Listening is one of the most importantskills in learning English. It is a skill whichconsidered more difficult to be mastered, becauseit needs more attention and concentration tocomprehend the sounds (listening material). Itcan be said that listening is not a passive skill; theprocess of listening is a complex process inwhich many things happen simultaneously insidethe mind.

Jeanne states that listening skill is the firstlanguage art skilllearned, and it develops before achild speaks. Many children develop the abilityto listen carefully to the speech of others duringinfancy and early childhood; others do not.Because language growth has described as areceiving process followed by a sending process,a child’s listening ability is important to speaking

and future reading and writing success. Hearingand listening are quite different. Hearing is aprocess involving nerves and muscles that reachadult efficiency by age 4 to 5. Listening islearned behavior, a mental process that isconcerned with hearing, attending,discriminating, understanding, and remembering.It can be improve d with practice. Listening skillcan be described as passive and receptive, but itinvolves active thinking and interpretation.

From the statements above, the writerconcluded that listening skill was used sincesomeone was a child, even more before he couldspeak. Listening skill involves active thinkingand interpretation and it is very important part forhearing, attending, discriminating, understanding,and remembering some things. The teaching andlearning English process includes four skills.Those skills should be taught and mastered bystudents.

The teaching and learning of those skills isnot as easy as it is to say, because English hasmany differences form our native language.Relating to this matter, listening, as one of thelanguage skills stated in the curriculum, isconsidered as the most difficult and complex skillto learn by students. Based on the writer’sexperiences in teaching practice from August

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16th, 2014 to December 12th, 2014 at SMAMuhammadiah, there are many students finddifficulties in listening in the second languagerather than in their first language. It is caused bysome factors such as lack of vocabulary, listeninginterest, the students’ background knowledge ofEnglish, language facility, social and emotionaldevelopment, physical development, and otherfactors that may influence one’s success inlistening. Those factors cannot be ignored inlearning listening skill in English.

From the situation above, the teacher needsto implementation of KTSP curriculum so thatthe teacher is not only responsible for teaching inthe classroom but also able to manage the classadministration. The teacher is supposed todevelop the annual program, the semesterprogram, the daily program, the remedialprogram, etc. Kusnandar states that theimplementation of KTSP is a process of applyingthe idea, concept, and policy of the curriculum inthe learning activity so the students can mastersome competencies.

As we know course book has a great rolein teaching and learning process, it is like a guidefor teacher in teaching and it can be a referencefor student in studying. The term course book ortextbook has several meaning, according toOxford dictionary, a textbook means a bookgiving instruction in a branch of learning. Itmeans that a textbook is a kind of book used insome studies at school. Meanwhile, in relatedto English language teaching, textbook areused in different ways in language program.For example, a reading textbook contains themain material of listening skill; some listeningexercise and several questions related to it isincluded for measuring student’s achievementin this skill.

In this research, the writer will analyzelistening exercises in Look Ahead 2, an EnglishCourse for Senior High School Students grade XIPublished by Erlangga. These book consist of 6unit and 17 listening exercises. From 17 listeningexercises there are seven (7) listening exerciseswhich is included in discrete test, 5 listeningexercises which is included in communicativetest and 5 listening exercises which is included incombination between both. So, the writer makesresearch with title “Analysis on ListeningExercises in Look Ahead 2 (English Course Bookfor Senior High School Students Year XI).”

The Problem of Study

Based on the background of the study, thewriter states the research question as follow:

1. Are the listening exercises relevance toKTSP curriculum?

2. How the listening exercises in the text booklook ahead 2 present items questions?

The Aims of StudyBased on the problem above, the purposes

of this research is:1. To evaluate listening exercises in Look

Ahead 2 in term of the relevance.2. To Evaluate listening exercises in Look

Ahead 2 in present iterms of questions.

The Significance of StudyThis research is significan to scrutinize the

books’ form. It is essential in how it contribute tothe field of TEFL (Teaching English as a foreignlanguage), especially concerning the teachingmaterials. Thus, this thesis is hoped to help theteachers to select suitable English course book interm of listening exercise in the teaching process.For students, hopefully this research can helpthem in choosing a listening exercise fromEnglish course book to improve their listeningskill.

The Scope of StudyThe scope of the study is necessary in

order to enable the writer studies more deeply.Since there are many books used in senior highschools, so the study is limited on one book,which is Look Ahead 2 (English Course Book forSenior High School Students Year XI) publishedby Erlangga. The study only focuses on thelistening exercises in the course book in terms ofits relevance with the criteria of listeningexercise. The criteria are: KTSP curriculum andpresence of example in materials in Look Ahead2.

The Terminology1. Analysis

Analysis is the study by examining its part.It means that analysis comes from Greeklanguage that means “a breaking up” is theprocess of breaking a complex topic orsubstance into smaller parts to gain betterunderstanding of it. It means that analysis onlistening exercise in Look Ahead 2 (Englishcourse book for senior high school students yearXI) published by erlangga is the process of

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breaking the substance of the listening exercise inthe course book.

2. Listening ExerciseListening means produce something in

written form so that people can read, perform oruse it. Listening is the psychomotor process ofreceiving sound waves through the eartransmitting nerve impulses to the brain. WhileNicholas defines listening as an active process inwhich the listener plays a very active part inconstructing the overall message that iseventually exchange between listener andspeaker. It means that listening is one way tocommunicate with other people besides speaking,reading, and listening. The word “listening”seems to be very easy to understand. However, itcannot be ignored when students write aparagraph, they should not write not onlysemantically correct, but also in correct grammar.While exercise is activity intended for training.Another opinion says that exercise is an activityto occupy the attention and effort of; to task andto exert for the sake of training improvement,to practice in order to develop and also toimprove by practice. From the definition above,listening exercise is a task or activity to improvelistening skill.

Research Methods1. Content Analysis

Most of all research method needs aresource of a book (library) to combine theirresearch. There is a little difficult to distinguishbetween library research and field research, bothof them need a literature. The main differencesare based on the purposes, functions and theposition of the each research. In the fieldresearch, literature is needed as a basic theory toprepare the research design. While in the Libraryresearch, literature not only used as the preparingof research design but also it more than that , itused to get data collection of the research. Thepurpose of this research is to analyze thelistening exercise in Look Ahead 2, an Englishtextbook for senior high school grade XI years.

There are some steps in analyzing the data.However, in this study the writer only take foursteps those are; selecting, categorizing,analyzing, and making inference.

a. SelectingThe writer reads in Look Ahead 2 and

then selects which exercise could beconsidered as the listening exercises in everyunit of the course book.

b. CategorizingAfter selecting the listening exercises,

it will be categorized into some aspects ofwriting exercise which is will be used toanalyze the data. Some aspects which are willbe used to analyzing data are: The listeningexercises relevance or not with the KTSPcurriculum and presence of example inmaterials.c. Analyzing

After categorizing the listeningexercises in in Look Ahead 2, the writeranalyzes them by using those two aspects ofevaluation that is relevance to KTSPcurriculum and present of example inmaterials.d. Inferencing

Based on the findings of analysis, thelistening exercises in Look Ahead 2 will beinferred.

2. Procedure of Data CollectionIn collecting data, the writer uses

documentation study or document analysis. Itwas one of the types of descriptive qualitativeresearch. It focused on analyzing documents,which were English textbooks. It sought tounderstand the strengths and weaknesses ofEnglish textbooks by focusing on the totallistening exercises design. The aim of thisdescriptive qualitative research was to gain aholistic picture and depth of understanding of thestrengths and weaknesses of one Englishtextbooks. The technique in collecting data inthis analysis involves several activities:

a. ReadingThe first step of data collection

procedure was reading the Look Ahead 2, anEnglish Course for Senior High SchoolStudents Year XI. The writer read all textand exercises in the text book to find whichexercises which are considered as the data.The data are the only the writing exercises inthe textbook.b. Identifying

After the complete reading was done, thenext step was identification. I identified thenumber of listening exercises in every unitsof Look Ahead 2.c. Listening

After identified the number of listeningexercises in every unit, the writer listen torecorded listening exercises of in LookAhead 2.d. Classifying

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The next step was classification. Thedata that had been identified was thenclassified based on the competency and skillwhich are emphasized in the exercises.

The ResultAfter the writer analyzes in each exercise

of listening exercise in Look Ahead 2 an EnglishCourse for Senior High School Grade Year XI,the table of content consisted of the informationof page numbers of preface, what’s so specialabout look ahead, Unit 1: Tell Me About It, Unit2: Telling Stories (I), Unit 3: Figuring OutConclusion, Unit 4: Telling Stories (II), Unit 5:Telling Funny Stories, and Unit 6: It Should BeLike This.

In this study, the writer analyzed theexercises which contained in the book of LookAhead 2 an English Course for Senior HighSchool Grade Year XI as a research tool. Thisresearch conducted to answer the researchquestions. The first research question “Are thelistening exercises relevance to KTSPcurriculum?”.

In the first research question of relevancywith KTSP curriculum, the writer can concludethat listening exercise in Look Ahead 2 anEnglish Course for Senior High School Year XIpublished by Erlangga is relevance with theKTSP curriculum because all of 16 listeningexercise from 6 units (which is broken down intosome subthemes of listening exercises: giving areport, listening a report, arranging paragraphs,retelling a story, making a fictional story,continuing a story, listening a horror, grammarin action, identifying language features and textstructure, gathering information to support one’sopinion, listening an analytical exposition,retelling funny story, telling funny experience,continuing a story, listening a spoof, makingarguments, listening a thesis and arecommendation, listening a hortatoryexposition) is demanded in listening based KTSPcurriculum of Senior High School Grade YearXI, suitable of competency standard (SK) 2.Understanding the meaning on short functionaland simple monolog text with narrative,descriptive, and news item form in daily lifecontact and basic competency (KD) 2.1.Understanding the meaning on oral shortfunctional of formal text and non formalaccurately, fluently in daily life contact. 2.2.Understanding the meaning on monolog text whousing a variety of oral language accurately,

fluently and in daily life contact of item form:report, narrative, and analytical exposition.

The second research question is, “How thelistening exercises in the text book look ahead 2present items questions?”. The writer concludethat from16 listening exercises there are twelve(12) listening exercises which is included indiscrete test, that is exercise of task C (enjoy this)page 36–37, exercise of task C (secondchallenge) page 49, exercise of task G (sixthchallenge) page 53, exercise of task B (activelistening) page 77, exercise of task G (sixthchallenge) page 86, exercise of task B (activelistening) page 119, exercise of task C (enjoythis) page 120-121, exercise of task B (activelistening) page 157, exercise of task C (activelistening) page 160, exercise of task B (firstchallenge) page 161, exercise of task B (activelistening) page 181, exercise of task C (secondchallenge) page 186, 1 listening exercises whichis included in communicative test, that is exerciseof task A (think about it) page 48, and 3 listeningexercises which is included in combinationbetween both, that is exercise of task D (third)page 50, exercise of task C (second challenge)page 128 and exercise of task C (enjoy this) page184. From this result, the listening exercise inLook Ahead 2, an English Course for SeniorHigh School Grade Year XI published byErlangga, show that the higest number of test isdiscrete test, so it is proper enough in improvingof student’s ability in listening through kind ofthis test. Since discrete test is a kind of point testwhich is more emphasized in accuracy.

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