listening

Definition of Listening

Listening is the process of understanding speech in a first or second language. It means that listening is one of major skill that every English student must had. Practically, there are still many people who have lack of listening skill than other skill, especially it is the common problem the mostly ESL student had. For example when student could speak English fluently but she could not identify what the native speaker said. It could be influenced by neither the speed of speech that is too fast nor the low responses skill of what they heard.

According to Ronald carter the term listening is used in language teaching to refer to complex process that allow us to understand spoken language. This theory explains that listening is not only recognizing the sound but also student must get the meaning of word. Recognizing the function of the sentences when in an interaction and student must listen carefully. If one sentence can not be heard clearly, it is difficult to understand the another word or sentences. Therefore, there is so much attention in listening process. In the same way, David Nunan define the listening as a matter of decoding the individual sound to derive the meaning of word and change utterance.

From the explanation above, we can conclude that listening is a matter of ear and mind. Whereas hearing is not only recognizing the sound but focus on the person communicating and must respond to the question and directions. Then in a listening process the good pronunciation of the speaker determine the success of listening too.

Gary Buck divided the type of listening into two types:

1. Bottom-up, it seem like listening to directions from friend on how to get to his/her house. This kind of listening comprehension is achieved by dividing and decoding the sounds - bit by bit. The ability to separate the stream of speech into individual words becomes more important here, if we recognize, for example, the name of a street or instructions on how to take a particular bus.
2. Top-down listening, listening to a friend tell a story about a terrible vacation in Thailand during rainy season with a mutual friend. This kind of listening requires the use of background knowledge in understanding the meaning of the message. Background knowledge consists of context.

H. Douglass Brown divided the type of listening into four types; intensive, responsive, selective, and extensive.

a.       Intensive is listening for perception of the component (phonemes, words, intonation, discourse markers, etc) of a larger stretch of the language.

b.      Responsive is listening to a relatively short stretch of language ( a greeting, question, command, comprehension check, etc ) in order to make an equality short response.

c.       Selective is listening to the short monologs for several minutes in order to scan certain information (e.g. classroom direction for a teacher, TV, or radio news item, or story)

d.      Extensive is listening to develop a top-down, global understanding of long speech or conversation and it has comprehensive purposes. e. g. listening to get the main idea, making inference from all of part of listening.

Some types of listening above explain us that listening has the complex purposes which the form listening influenced the value for listener. However, it is the evidence that listening skill is much useful for many people. By listening people can enjoy the song or it may even inspire human mind. At the heart of the matter, everyone listening for any purpose, it can be for fun or anything that would help them.

The Important of Listening

Hearing is the common sense of human being which its function is accepting information in voice form. In other hand we compare it with a human who can hear normally but he can not understand that the information that he heard. It means that what he or she has heard doesn’t mean anything. It is out of the listening purpose that is to get the information from the sound streaming into the sense of hearing.

Therefore in learning foreign language listening skill is so important, it supported by H Douglass Brown who said “every teacher of language knows that one’s oral production ability is only as good as one’s listening comprehension ability”. And on his other book Douglass Brown compared between listening and other competence “the important of listening in language learning is hardly be overestimated. In classroom, students always do more listening than speaking. Listening competence is always universally larger than speaking competence. In the real fact mostly found that there is no many foreign language learners master overall listening skill.

Definitely, Listening is an important skill. Successful communication depends on not only receiving messages but also decoding them correctly. No communication process is complete without listening. Most of students take much time to improve their listening skill, they should through this placidly. They do not only learn to listen what their teacher taught but also they should learn by their self by watching TV or listening radio.

Effective listening is extremely important for students as they spend most of their time listening to lectures. For professionals, the higher of the position, the greater of the listening responsibility. In some companies, it is important to listen carefully to the instructions of one’s superiors at the workplace. We can also measure the morale and enthusiasm of coworkers and subordinates by listening closely to them. On a personal level, a person who listens and pays attention is rated as highly popular and socially compatible.

As a result, listening has an important role for human life. It is one of the basic skills that everyone is required to master it as well as possible. Unconsciously, many activities related to the listening which many students always do. For example; listening to radio, song, or watching English movie. However listening help people to enjoy their life.

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