IMPROVING STUDENTS LISTENING COMPREHENSION THROUGH CLUSTERS GAME. Oleh : Nurhasanah 1, Tetty Yukesti 2, Hanip Pujiati 3 ABSTRACT

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1 IMPROVING STUDENTS LISTENING COMPREHENSION THROUGH CLUSTERS GAME Oleh : Nurhasanah 1, Tetty Yukesti 2, Hanip Pujiati 3 ABSTRACT Listening is one of the basic skill which is very important to support the other English skills. Most of the students are not interested in listening. It is because the teacher do not use intersting activity in teaching listening. So the students are difficult to comprehend what they listen. Teaching listening through Clusters game is one of the way that can be used. Clusters game helps the students to comprehend what they listen and it encourages the students to pay attention more to the material given, especially in finding informations from the text. The aim of the research is to improve students listening comprehension through clusters game. The participants of the research is the first grade students of SMP N 10 Bogor. The method of the research is classroom action research which had been done in two cycles. The goal of the research is 90% of the students get the score 70 as a standard score. After the treatment, the result shows that in the first cycle post-test, there are six students got good criteria (15%), eight students got fair criteria (20%), 26 students got poor criteria (65%). It can be concluded that the cycle should be continued to the next cycle. In the second cycle, the result shows that there are five students (12.5%) got excellent criteria, nine students (22.5%) got very good criteria, 22 students (55%) got good criteria and four students (10%) got poor criteria. It means that the goal of this research had been reached because 90% or 36 students got score 70. The result indicates that teaching listening through clusters game is effective to improve students listening comprehension. Keywords : Clusters game, Listening, Study result 1 Mahasiswa Program Studi Bahasa Inggris FKIP Pakuan 2 Staf Pengajar Program Studi Bahasa dan Sastra Inggris Fakultas Sastra Pakuan 3 Staf Pengajar Program Studi Bahasa Inggris FKIP Pakuan 1

2 ABSTRAK Menyimak adalah salah satu kemampuan dasar yang sangat penting dalam mendukung kemampuan Bahasa Inggris yang lain. Sebagian besar siswa tidak tertarik pada kegiatan menyimak. Hal tersebut, salah satunya disebabkan karena guru tidak menggunakan kegiatan yang menarik dalam kegiatan belajar menyimak. Hasilnya, siswa-siswi merasa kesulitan dalam memahami apa yang mereka simak. Pembelajaran menyimak melalui Clusters game adalah salah satu cara yang dapat digunakan. Clusters game dapat membantu siswa dalam memahami apa yang mereka simak dan membantu siswa untuk memperhatikan materi yang diberikan, terutama dalam menemukan informasi dari sebuah teks. Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk meningkatkan pemahaman menyimak siswa melalui Clusters game. Subyek penelitian ini adalah siswa kelas VII I Sekolah Menengah Pertama Negeri 10 Bogor yang terdiri dari 40 siswa. Metode yang digunakan pada penelitian ini adalah Penelitian Tindakan Kelas, yang dilaksanakan dalam dua siklus. Hasil penelitian pada siklus I menunjukan bahwa (15%) siswa mendapatkan kriteria baik, (20%) siswa dengan kriteria kurang baik, dan (65%) siswa dengan kriteria buruk. Sedangkan hasil pada siklus II menunjukan bahwa (12.5%) siswa dengan kriteria luar biasa, (22.5%) siswa dengan kriteria sangat baik, (55%) siswa dengan kriteria baik dan (10%) siswa dengan kriteria buruk. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukan bahwa 90% siswa mencapai nilai KKM yang ditetapkan yaitu 70, dan dapat disimpulkan bahwa pembelajaran menyimak melalui Clusters game efektif untuk meningkatkan kemampuan pemahaman menyimak siswa. Kata Kunci : Clusters game, menyimak, hasil belajar. INTRODUCTION Listening is one of the four basic language skills has a big role in acquiring language. So the way in teaching listening should be interesting for the students. Unfortunatelly, students are not interested in doing listening so their score of listening are still low. The standard score of listening is 70. Based on pre-test result showed that the students listening comprehension is poor because there were 29 students (72.5%) got score under 70. It means that there were 11 students got standard score. Students in SMP Negeri Bogor, especially class VII-I often have some problems in learning listening. It caused by many things; one of them is the teacher uses innappropriate technique when teaching listening. In others cases, the students are rarely to practice listening in their spare time; they are always practicing listening at school So by doing this research, the writer wants to improve students listening comprehension through clusters game. Based on reason above, it can be concluded the problem of this research: How does clusters game improve students listening comprehension? Teachers can use some activities in teaching listening, for example by using game. Game, as an activity for teaching has a lot of benefits. First, by playing games the students are able to pay more attention in learning process. Second, game can motivate and stimulate students. Third, game makes learning fun so the students will be interested in participating to do activities. The important thing in teaching listening by using game is the students comprehend what they have listened. It means that besides the interest of learning process, students should have a good quality of comprehension too, and then they will understand the information explained by the speaker. Listening is the basic skill in learning language. In communication, people spend their time to listen then do another communication. As Herawati (2010:10) states, Listening is improtant because the teachers cannot develop students speaking skill unless they also develop their listening skill. It means that listening has a big relation and influence others skills; speaking, reading and writing. Students learn language first through listening, so the teacher should make a good preparation in preparing the equipement and also the class situation, especially students condition before 2

3 teaching listening. Harmer (1996:99) states, Teachers need to ensure that students are well prepared for listening and that they are clearly able to hear what they listen to. Meanwhile Georgiou and Pavlou (2003:34) say, Listening is what helps them to understand your instructions and your explanations of classroom rules and learning procedures. It also fundamental to accessing new language and finding out how language works. Based on theories above, it can be concluded that the preparations will influence to the result of students listening, when there is a mistake both the equipement and the speaker, the informations that they get will be different too. Listening is different than hearing. Hearing is a matter of eras but listening is an activity both matter of ears and mind. Nunan (1998) on Farmi (2011) stated that listening involves an active process of deciphearing and constructing meaning from both verbal and non-verbal messages. It has meaning taht in listening activity, listener needs to pay attention and understand about the information delivered by the speaker. Understanding the message is the role of comprehension. Listening is not simple to do because it is not only hearing. There are so many aspects that make listening difficult. When the students listen to the material, they commonly find some problems which causes, such as lack of control over speed of the speaker, the variety of accents, etc. Brown (2004: ) taken from (Richards 1983; Ur, 1984; Dunkel, 1991): mentions the following lists of what makes listening difficult. They are: Clustering, Attending to appropriate chunkes of language-phrase, clauses, contituents. Redudancy, recognizing the kinds of repetation reprhasing, elaborations, and insertions that unrehearsed spoken language often contains, and benefiting from recognition. Reduced forms, understanding the reduces forms that may not have been a part of an English learner past learning experiences in classes where only formal textbook language has been presented. It can be found in phonological, syntactic, or pragmatic. Performance Variables, being able to weed out hasitations, false starts, pauses, and corrections in natural speech. Colloquial Language, comprehending idioms, slang, reduced forms, shared cultural knowledge. Rate of Delivery, keeping up with the speed of delivery, processing automatically as the speaker continues. Stress, Rhythm, and Intonation, correctly understanding prosodic elements of spoken language, which is almost always much more difficult than understanding the smaller phonological bits and pieces. Interaction, managing the intearctive flow of language from listening to speaking to listening, etc. Listening as a communicative process can be included in many kinds of activity. One of them is by using games. Eventhough some activities require the class to speak or write, this production is limited and the focus is always on listening. One of games that can be used in teaching listening is clusters game. Clusters game is one of activities that relate to students movement in learning process of listening. In clusters game activity, a number of persons grouped together to do some commands of the teacher. Basically, clusters game is one of Total Physical Response method that can build both of speech and action. Bowen says that a typical of Total Physical Response activity might contain instructions such as walk to the door, open the door, and sit down. The students are required to carry out the instructions by physically performing the activities. It means that in TPR activity the students need to pay attention more to do instruction exactly. So, the students should be concentrate to what they listen. Klippel (1984:5) sates, Learning is more effective if the learners are actively involved in the process. It can be concluded that in learning process, the interesting activity should be provided by the teacher, and it can be showed by using game, because it can deliver information to the students interestingly and it will help them understand the material easily. Herawati (2010:26) states that you can easily control the class by switching to calming games when you need to calm everyone down or throw in an exciting game when you want to pick up the pace. Variety is the key and with over one hundred games you are spoiled for choice. It has meaning that game has a big a big effect for the students to learn something. By doing game 3

4 in learning listening, the students are going to be easy to understand what kind of information that the teacher wants to be delivered. Klippel (1984:19) mentions the advantages of teaching listening by using clusters game. There are: the students are able to understand instructions easily and intererstingly, learn co-operatively, learning to control speed of reaction, and make the students feel relaxation while they are learning. Besides, Klippel (1984:19) mentions the procedures or steps of clusters game, but the first thing to do before teaching by using clusters game is make a good preparation such as providing a list of commands for the teacher; radio or tape recorder for background music, and make sure that the classroom should be cleared of tables and chairs. These are the steps of clusters game. Step 1: The students walk around the room while the music is playing. As soon as the music switched off, the teacher gives a command, e.g stand together in a group of five. When the students have sorted them selves into groups, the music continues and everybody again walks around alone until the next command. Step 2: After about five to eight commands, the game can be finished by calling out numbers, e.g seven. That means the separate groups of seven students have to be formed. Anyone who is not in a group of seven is out. As we know that the students like movement and they learn through play, so learning listening through clusters game will help them to understand and comprehend the information delivered by the teacher while they are playing. Cross (1991:153) says: through game, learners practise and internalise vocabulary, grammar and structures. Motivation is enhanced too, by the play and the competition. An added benefit is that the learners attention is on the message, not on the language. They acquire language unconsciously, with their whole attention angaged by the activity. It means that learning listening through game can be highly effective and the students will be interesting to participate in doing activity or movement. Besides, they learn to focus and pay the attention more to get the information of the speaker. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY The aim of the research is to improve students listening comprehension through clusters game. This classroom action research was conducted at SMP Negeri 10 Bogor, started from 3 rd of March to 11 th of April The population of the research was the first grade of SMP Negeri 10 Bogor. There are nine classes on the first grade and each class consists of 40 students. The writer chose class VII-I as participant. The person conducting the research was the researcher herself that dirrectly involved during the research. Classroom Action Research (CAR) method is applied for this study. The steps of action research are planning, acting, observing, and reflecting. It is shown in the following figure: Planning Acting/observing Reflecting Acting/observing Reflecting Cycle 1 Cycle 2 RESEARCH FINDING The research were taken from two cycles. The researcher gave a pre-test before goin on to the first cycle and the second cycle. Table 1 The result of students pre-test score No Criteria Number Percentage of students 1 Complete % 2 Uncomplete % Total % Based on the data above, there are 11 students (27.5%) standard score 70, and 4

5 there are 29 students (72.5%) got score less then 70. Table 2 The result of the first cycle post-test No Criteria Number Percent of the students 1 Complete 6 15% 2 Uncomplete 34 85% Total % Based on the first post-test result, there are 6 students (15%) reached the standard score and there are 34 students (85%) have not reached the standard score. Table 3 The result of the second cycle post-test No Criteria Number Percentage of students 1 Complete 36 90% 2 Uncomplete 4 10% Total % According to the result, there are 36 students (90%) got maximum score, and there are 4 students (10%) had been reached standard score. a. Fist cycle post-test The result of the first cycle post-test shows that the result of the post-test did not reach the target of this research. There are six students (15%) got good criteria, eight students (20%) got fair criteria, 26 students (65%) got poor criteria. When the researcher and the teacher tried to disccuse about the students problem in learning listening. There are some problems that the students faced, one of them is the students did not understand what the speaker say, because the speaker in the recording spoke faster so they did not get the information about the text completely. b. Second cycle post-test In the second cycle post-test, it shows that there were good improvement than the result of the first cycle post-test. There are 5 students (12.5%) got excellent criteria, 9 students (22.5%) got very good criteria, 22 students (55%) got good criteria and 4 students (10%) got poor criteria. The graphic above implies that there is a positive improvement from the first score of first cycle post-test to second cycle post-test. It can be assumed that the students could improve their listening comprehension in finding information from the text. DISCUSSION The result of the research is described in every cycle. It can be seen in the figure % 60.00% 40.00% 20.00% 0.00% 57.87% Pre-Test 51.75% First Cycle Post-Test 75.00% Second Cycle Post-Test Figure1. The change average score from the pre-test, 1 st cycle post-test and 2 nd cycle post-test. CONCLUSION Based on the result of the data description, it can be concluded that teaching listening through clusters game is effectiveto improve students listening comprehension. Thus it can be concluded that clusters game can be applied in teaching listening to improve students listening comprehension. BIBLIOGRAPHY Arikunto, Suharsimi Prosedur Penelitian: Suatu Pendekatan Praktik. Jakarta: PT Rineka Cipta. Argina Farmi, Muhammad Improving Students Listening Comprehension through Audio Visual Media. A Paper for Sarjana Pendidikan Examination. Unpublished. Based on the figure above, it can be described: 5

6 Bowen, Tim. Teaching Approaches: Total Physical Respon. Available [on-line] at hodology/teaching-approaches/teachingapproaches-total-physicalresponse/ article Brown, H Douglas Language Assessment Principles and Classroom Practices. San Francisco State University: Longman. Cross, David A Practical Handbook of Language Teaching. London: Cassell Villiers House. Georgiou, Sophie and Pavlou Pavlous Assessing Young Learners. New York. Oxford University Press. Harmer, Jeremy The Practice of English Language Teaching 4 th Edition. London: Pearson Education Limited. Wilson, JJ. (2008). How to Teach Listening. England: Pearson Education Limited. Available at Adobe Reader. BIOGRAPHY Nurhasanah, was born on 6 th of April, 1989, in Cibeber, Banten, Moeslem, the third child of the couple Usa and Sukmanah. Lives in Kp. Guradog Barat 02/01, Citorek Timur, Lebak, Banten. She started her education in elementary school (SDN 3) Citorek, Banten in , and continued to junior high school (SMP Negeri 3) Cibeber, Banten in , senior high school (SMK Negeri 1) Rangkasbitung, Banten in , and then continued to S1 of English Education Study Program faculty of Teacher Training and Educational Sciences of Bogor Pakuan University. Harmer, Jeremy How to Teach English: An Introduction to the Practice of English Language Teaching. England. Cambridge University: Longman Herawati, Atti English for Children. Bogor: English Education Study Program Faculty of Teacher Training and Educational Sciences, Pakuan University (unpublished). Herawati, Atti Learning to conduct the research: A Handbook of Research on ELT. Bogor: Unpublished. Klippel, Friederike Keep Talking: Communicative Fluency Activities for Language Teaching. New York: Cambridge University. Richard, Jack C Teaching Listening and Speaking: From Theory to Practice. Singapore: Cambridge University Press. Richards and Lockhart Reflective Teaching in Second Language Classrooms. New York. Cambridge Language Education: Cambridge University Press 6