CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

This chapter is showing some theories related with the study as the

references and basic of the research. This chapter covers about definition of

listening, difficulties in listening skill, principles of listening skill, listening

materials, types of listening activities, definition of song, the use of song as

listening material, the criteria of song selection, the benefit of song as a material,

definition of lyric, song lyric as media to teach listening, the application of song

lyric in teaching listening and previous study.

A. Listening

1. Definition of Listening skill

In Indonesia, English as a foreign language has been learned at school,

from elementary school until senior high school. It has four skills that have to be

mastered by students. These skills are reading, listening, writing, and speaking.

From these skills, listening is a skill that felt difficult to be mastered, because it

needs more attention and concentration to comprehend the sounds (listening

material). In the learning process, one of theimportant parts in creating and

understanding the language is liteningmastery. People can not express their

opinion and ideas in English without listening.

Listening skill is activity to identify and understand what others are saying.

Brown (2001:247) mention that the importance of listening in language learning

9
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can hardly be overestimated. Through reception, we internalize linguistic

information without which we could not produce language. In classroom, students

always do more listening than speaking.

Listening skill can be meant as ability to pay attention or to hear

something. However listening is not same as hearing. Hearing is essentially an

automatic, passive activity. It is possible to hear sounds without consciously

engaging in the process. While, in listening the brain doesn’t automatically

translate the words into the message they are conveying. That is essentially what

listening is determining the meaning and the message of the sounds or words. It is

active process that involves much more than assigning labels to sounds or words.

So, we can say that listening is the ability to identify and understand what

others are saying. It is also a complex activity, and we can help students

comprehend what they hear by activating their prior knowledge. Furthermore, it

will consider another way teachers can help ease the difficulty of listening by

training students in different types of listening.

Students must be able to use a lot of their listening ability, if they want to

be successful in learning. Listening is an important element in language besides

pronunciation and grammar. We can’t not express ideas in English without it.

Listening is always assumed as a passive skill like reading. Which means

that students receive all the information they gain from listening materials without

further activity of producing something either in written or spoken form. Buck

(2001:31) stated that” listening comprehension is an active process of constructing

meaning, and that this done by applying knowledge to the incoming sound”. He
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also stated that “listening comprehension is a process that is very complex

process, and if we want measure it, we must first understand how that process

works”. Listening is important in the language classroom because it provides

input for the learner, because of listening is fundamental of speaking skill.

Based on the statement above, it can be said that listening comprehension

is one of the language skills that are frequently used in everyday life. We spend

our time mostly for listening for our teacher, friends, family, lectures, radio,

music, movie, television and others. In order to communicate effectively we have

to be able to hear what the other person is speaking.

2. The purpose of Listening

The purpose of listening can be categorized into some types:

a. To gain information

b. To distinguish between fact and opinion

c. To identify main ideas

d. To summarize ideas

e. To make inferences

f. To follow direction

g. To gratify the listener’s sense

h. To sense emotion and moods through words use the manner of delivery

i. The form sensory images, and to discriminate between the sound.

Beside the classifications above, there are the other main purposes for

listening. They are listening for gaining information’s and listening for pleasure.
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Listening for gain information for example, listening news in radio, television,

listening for the teacher explanation. While the example of listening for the

pleasure is listens to the music.

3. Teaching listening

One of very important idea for teaching listening is that listening courses

must make use of the student’s prior knowledge in order to improve listening

comprehension. Usually most off activities in the class rarely practicing are

listening.Here the researcher will explain about related points to the teaching of

listening, there is:

a. The technique of teaching listening

There are three points in technique of teaching listening. Pre-listening,

while-listening and post-listening. While listening and post-listening develop

listening activities, the teacher should consider pre-listening phase in which the

teacher does some warm up activities to prepare the students for as passage.

While-listening is which includes extensive listening that is followed by general

question and intensive that is followed by detailed comprehension question. The

last is post-listening which requires the student to follow up or respond to what

they have listened to.

1. Pre-listening

Pre-listening is some activities that is done before listening may serve as

preparation or warm up listening in several ways. These function as reference and

framework by giving prior of knowledge of listening activities.

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2. While-listening

While-listening is activities in these stages must follow the learner’s

specific needs. In instruction goal, listening purpose and learner’s proficiency

level, while listening activities directly related to the text and listeners are asked to

do this during or immediately after listening.

3. Post-listening

This stage frequently requires the student to do some short of follow up

work based on something arising from the listening tasks. Post-listening can be

used to check comprehension, to evaluate listening skill, the use of listening

strategies and the use of knowledge gained to other contexts.

4. Difficulties in Listening skill

Listening is usually a hard skill to master by the students. The first reason

is that the students do not have the text in front of them to look at if they do not

understand the information. A second reason is the accent and intonation of the

native English speaker. In addition, each country has dialects and regional accents

which can confuse the listener. All of these make listening learning a major

challenge and it is no surprise that the students can find it difficult.

There are some students difficulties in learning listening: trouble with

sounds, have to understand every word, can’t understand fast and natural native

speech, need to hear things more than once, find it difficult to keep up, and get

tired.
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The other problem in learning listening is the students have no control over

the speed of what they are hearing and they cannot go back or rewind to listen

again. Although, in class the listening materials are recorded and can be played

again or students to listen again, it is usually under the control.

As mention by Brown and Yule (1983) in Nunan (1999: 208) suggest that

there are four principal sets of factors affecting the difficulty of listening.

a. Speaker factors: how many speaker are there? How quickly do they speak?

What types of accents do they have?

b. Listener factors: what a listener’s role-eavesdropper or participants? What level

of response is required? How interested is the listener in the subject?

c. The content: how complex is the grammar, vocabulary, and information

structure? What background knowledge is assumed?

d. Support: how much support is provided in terms of picture, diagrams, or other

visual aids?

5. Principles of Listening Skill

When teaching listening skill, the teachers have to know the principles.

There are some principles of teaching listening skill, they are:

a. Listening should receive primary attention.

b. Maximize the use of material that is relevant to students’ real life

c. Maximize the use of authentic language

d. Vary the materials in terms of speakers’ gender, age, dialect, accent, topic,

speed, noise, level, and genre.

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e. Always ask students to listen with a purpose and allow them to show their

comprehension in a task.

f. Language material intended to be used for training listening comprehension

should never be presented visually first.

Furthermore, the teachers have to take attention the principles in teaching

listening skill. As mentioned above, one of the principles in teaching listening is

the teachers always ask students to listen with the purpose of listening. So, we can

help students listen more effectively if we spend some time teaching them about

purposes for listening. One way to do that is to use a simple dialogue in order to

show how they might listen differently depending on their goals.

6. Listening Materials

The material is very important for the students to improve their listening

skill. A suitable material can make the students want to learn. The material which

suitable with the students have to interesting, in the right level of students’

difficulty, and presented in various activities.

The interesting materials that are familiar meaningful and various should

be provided for the students. It can help them to understand more easily. Beside of

that, the material should be as natural as possible in order that students can

practice and imitate the original voice from the speakers.

In concluding, the teachers are better to know the students’ interest in

learning listening with kind activities. If not, students will get bored and do not

want to learn anymore. The use of songs also can motivate the students to attend
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lesson and pay attention in class, because songs can be used for a wide variety of

learning and teaching activities.

7. Types of Listening Activities

We always have a purpose for listening. We may listen to radio in the

morning to know the up to date reports. We may listen to a song for pleasure. We

listen in different ways based on our purpose. Having a purpose helps us listen

more effectively.

a. Listen to English pop songs includes write a summary, sing along with the

melody, do a cloze exercise, and dictate lyrics.

b. Listen to TV news reports, includes predications keep a diary, and record the

news.

c. Listen to film, includes read film reviews, make a gap-filling exercise, cover

the subtitles, and read the novel of the film.

d. Listen to TV programs or videos, includes follow instructions without looking

at the screen, cover the subtitles, and watch the first language version in

advance.

e. Listen to radio, includes listen to fast speech, approach other resources in

advance, listen to colloquial expressions, and write a summary.

From the types of listening above, it is regarded that songs activity can be

used in learning listening process, and it will be hoped can motivate students in

improving their listening skill.

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8. Testing Listening

According to Hughes (1989) in Isnawati (2012: 36-37), the testing of

listening involves listening macro-skills and micro-skills. The macro-skills of

listening include listening for specific information, obtaining gist of what is being

said, following directions, and following instructions. The micro-skills of listening

include interpretationof intonation patterns and recognition of function of

structures.

There are some techniques that are possibly used in testing listening they

are:

a. Multiple choice

The technique has some advantages and disadvantages as discussed

previously. For listening test, the problem is greater because the test-takers should

listen to a passage while reading the alternative/options. Therefore, the options

must be short and simple.

b. Information transfer

This technique is useful in testing listening since it makes minimal

demands on productive skills. It can involve such activities as the labeling of

diagram or pictures, completing forms, or showing routes on a map.

c. Note taking

Where the ability to take notes while listening to a lecture is in question,

this activity can be quite realistically replicated in the testing situation. Test-takers

take notes during the talk, and only after the talk is finished do they see the items

to which they have to respond.

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d. Practical dictation

Although partial dictation may not be an authentic listening activity, it may

be possible to administer it when no other test of listening is practical.

e. Recording and live presentation

The great advantages of using recordings when administering a listening

test is that there is uniformity in what is presented to the test-takers. This is fine if

the recording is to be listened in a well-maintained language laboratory or in a

room with good acoustic qualities and with suitable equipment. If these conditions

cannot be obtained, then a live presentation is preferred.

According to Richard et al (1992) in Isnawati (2012: 35), there is a kind of

dictation can be used in testing listening, that is called as partial dictation. In this,

part of what is dictated is already printed on the answer sheet and some of the

words or sentences from the part of what is dictated are omitted. Therefore, the

students have to fill in the gaps. In songs, it is called missing lyrics.

9. Tasks designed for listening texts

There are various kinds of listening tasks. According to Ur (1984), possible

and applicable listening tasks should be:

a. Dictation exercise

This is common listening exercise which is usually practices in the earlier

years of school education. It requires students an integrative knowledge of the

phonological, syntactic and semantic systems of a language. To do this task,

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teacher gives students handout, omitting some sentences of the text, then plays the

tape and asks students to listen to the text and write the missing sentences down.

b. Ticking off items: Learners tick beside the items: Learners tick beside the

items that they hear in the listening

c. True/False: Identify whether the statement is true or false based on the

listening.

d. Detecting mistakes: Some fact is mentioned with intentional mistakes for

students to point out.

e. Gap-filling

Students are given a passage with several gaps in it, they have to listen and

fill in the missing words in the gaps. In this research, the researcher using this

kind of task to measure the students listening ability in the tenth grade students of

MA Unggulan Bandung. The researcher using missing lyric, so in the research

give a gap in some lyric of the song.

f. Pictures

One picture or a series of pictures may be used. Sts are then asked to

identify pictures or components as they are referred to, either naming or ordering

them in the order in which they are mentioned

g. Answering questions: based on the content of the listening, students are

required to give longer and full answer to the questions

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B. Song

1. Definition of Song

In music, a song is a composition for voice or voices, performed by

singing or by musical instruments. Jeremy harmer said that, song is very useful

because if we choose them well, they can be very engaging. Students can fill in

blanks in song lyrics, rearrange lines or verses, or listen to songs and say what

mood or message they convey (2007:143).Song is an interesting media that offers

the high imagination.The language song usually easy to be understood. It gives

motivationand makes the relation between the teacher and students closer.

Almost everyone loves songs. It is a part of our language and life from

before birth onwards. As a baby, we often hear our mother and father sing a song

to deliver us sleep in the bedroom. When young children, we play, sing, and dance

to a rhymes. As adolescents, we are consumes by the beat of popular songs artist

in the world. As adults, we often hear song on television, movies, theater, and

even nightly news. When we work, when we play, song is there to reinforce or

every mood and emotion.

According to Ur(1984:64), Song are taught for a variety of purposes : for

the sake of the vocabulary or structures they contain, to get students to produce

oral English by singing them, as an aspect of English-language culture and the last

is for fun.

From explanation above, we are suggested to include songs in language

learning as well. Songs had heard by the people in the world since they are born
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until died. So, listening to the songs has been a habitual and liked by everybody.

Beside of that, by songs we can provide a relaxed lesson on a hot boring day.

2. The Use of Song asListening Material

The use of song as a material is an important factor to take into

consideration when designing listening skill materials. By using such listening

materials, the learner is given the chance to develop the skills needed to

comprehend and to use language that is commonly found in real

situations.Therefore, it is important to take the opportunity wherever possible to

expose students to example of real language usage to help them become more

communicatively competent.

The following features characterize real life listening activity:

a. We listen for a purpose and with certain expecting.

b. We make an immediately response to what we hear.

c. We see the person we are listening to.

d. There are some visual or environment clues as to the meaning of what is heard.

e. Stretches of hand discourse is spontaneous and therefore differs from formal

spoken prose in the amount of redundancy, noise and colloquialism, and it is

auditory character.

From the features above, song is one of the authentic listening materials.

As we know wherever we are, songs always follow us at home, at school, at

office, at cars, and so on. So, we can directly listen to the song and also interest to

learn the value of language in it.

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When designing lessons and teaching materials to further develop listening

comprehension skills, students need to be motivated and stay motivated. This is

best accomplished by determining the suitable of the listening material such as the

use of song as authentic material. The use of song stimulates and motivates

students to comprehend the content of materials.

3. The Criteria of Song Selection

The important thing about choosing a song to do with a class is to make

sure that the lyrics are clear. It can be very frustrating for the students not to

understand a word. The recording should also be a good one. A studio album is

probably going to be better than a live version. There are three principals of song

selection criteria, they are:

a. Use songs that are popular with the students whenever possible.

b. Songs must have clear and understandable lyrics. Nothing is worse than a song

almost nobody can understand. If you have trouble understanding the lyrics by

listening, then another song needs to be selected.

c. Songs should have an appropriate theme. There’s enough bad news, negativity

and violence in the world already.

It is realized when teaching the students, we should choose the songs that

suitable level of difficulty. The suitable of the song is a particularly important

issue. It should be known whether the students are going to like the song or not.
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4. Benefit of Using Song as a Material

By using songs in the classroom, students can practice their listening skills

and increase their cultural knowledge. Almost any song can be used in the ESL

classroom. The pronunciation and rhythm lessons are the same as for the

children's songs and the lessons may help students become more interested in

different types of songs. It can makes the students become more familiar with

popular songs and make them more confident in their ability to listen and

understand the world around them because of they are always practicing lyric

reading, studying the vocabulary, and listening to various songs.

The other benefits of using songs in the classroom are songs can be used:

a. To present a topic, a language point, lexis, etc.

b. To practice a language point, lexis, etc.

c. To focus on common learner errors in a more direct way

d. To encourage extensive and intensive listening

e. To stimulate discussion of attitudes and feelings

f. To encourage creativity and use of imagination

g. To provide a relaxed classroom atmosphere

h. To bring variety and fun to learning

The other source as a teaching media, song prevents students’ boredom

inlanguageclassroom.ChrisBrewer stated that the use of song in teaching learning

process hasgood implication, those are:

a. Create a welcoming atmosphere. It is the function of songas a warmer, students

are expected to be enthusiastic in thelearning process.

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b. Facilitate a positive learning mood and motivate students tolearning. Music

helps students to focus on the material discussedand raise their concentration in

the learning activities.

c. Connect students to content topics. Students are expected tounderstand the

topic that they studied through song lyrics.

d. Reduce learning stress levels. As a filler, when students areboring teacher can

stimulate them by playing music to make theyactive again.

e. Deepen understanding and reinforce memory throughemotional association

because songs are familiar with students live.So, students are easy to

understand the material.

f. Stimulate imagination and creativity. Music is goodstimulus to imagine and it

can explore students’ creativity.

g. Reinforce grammatical structures. Students are easy tounderstand the

grammatical structure of a song by analyze thetenses from the lyrics of a song.

h. Embed new vocabulary. Students can enrich theirvocabulary after listen to a

song.

i. Teach pronunciation efficiently. It is possible to us toimitate the native speaker

pronunciation by listening English song.

j. Make learning English fun for learners. They create arelaxed atmosphere and

get learners motivated with enthusiasm forlearning.

In other hand, the use of song in teaching learning process

hasdisadvantages. Those are:

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a. Music disturbs concentrations when applying to people whohate a genre of

music.

b. Music can hurt eardrums if it is set up so loud.

According the advantages and the disadvantages above, the

researcher concluded that the use of song in teaching learning processhas good

effect than bad effect. It gives good effects to activateunderstanding and make

studentseasy to memorize the material. It’s considered that songs have much

benefit. Some of them are songs can motivate the students and make them more

confidence in their ability to listen the materials.

C. Lyric

1. Definition of Lyric

Lyric can be studied from an academic perspective. Lyric can also be

analyzed withrespect to sense of unity it has with its supporting music.

Lyric is simple word of song. The lyric or song texts do notonly as a

complement of the song, but also as an important part of themusic elements which

determine the theme, character and mission ofthe song. It can also make sense be

stable. To know the sense of thesong, we can feel the rhythm and melody,

harmony and voice of thesinger by the singing of the song.

A music composition is not always a sequence of melody witha lyric. The

composition without a lyric on its melody called aninstrumental music. On the

contrary, the one with lyric is called asong.

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From the explanation about lyric above, so the meaning of missing lyric is

the lyric, but some or any word of the lyric itself is disappear. So the student

should listen carefully what the speaker say to fill the gap.

The lyric in a song is actually non musical aspect. However,besides giving

new unique dimension, its presence in music is not onlyas an embedded element

but also as a part of the music. Many songsare created from text or beautiful

poem. Basically a lyric of song is the same as lyric of a poem. Thedifference is

that a lyric of a song is written and combined with music. We usually meet apoem

as word on page and a song generally hear assounds in the air. However wecan

say that a song lyric are same. Asong lyric describes and show felling,experience,

imagination and etcand a poem lyric does too.

In this research, the researcher used four songs, entitled "Everytime" by

Britney Spears,“I lay my love on you” by Westlife , “I wish you were here” by

Avril Lavigne and “Just the Way You are” by Bruno Mars. The researcher

chooses these songs because the songs are very easy listening, not too fast and

slow. It is hoped that students will enjoy with all songs.

2. Song lyrics as media to teach listening

Teaching media is important in teaching learning process not only

determined by teacher and students’ competence but also with inappropriate

media. Song is very effective especially when one needs to memorize something.

Often, when music is used learning a certain concept or lesson is more easily to be

understood by the students.

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In Indonesia, most of English students have difficulties in learning

English; they are less motivation in studying English because they believe that

English is hard subject. In that case, an English teacher needs to be responsive to

the students’ condition, the teacher should make students enthusiastic in learning

English. Teacher also should consider some factors in teaching and learning

process, Brown (2005:07) states that teaching is helping someone to learn how to

do something, giving instruction, guiding in study of something, providing with

knowledge, and causing to know or understand. So, teacher as facilitator in

learning process should keep looking for way to make learning vocabulary easier

and more pleasant.

English is foreign language, so English learning for Indonesian students is

not easy. The teacher is asked to use suitable media to teach effectively because

an affective teaching is basic factor for the success learning process that is

including in learning vocabulary. There are many kinds of teaching media to teach

English, one of them is song. Song could be used to teach vocabulary because of

its lyrics, teacher could choose song which has appropriate vocabulary that would

be taught.

According to Sanaky (2009:3) state that Media is tool of format used to

convey information. Asnawir and Usman (2002:11) state that media are things

which can be manipulated, seen, heard, read, or spoken together their instrument

that can be used well in teaching learning activity and can affect the effectiveness

of instructional program. Media in teaching learning process very importance to

help students become effective and interesting in learning process.

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Machmudah and Wahab (2008:10) said that there are many teaching

mediacan be divided into various forms, they can be classified in three kinds, and

they are:

a. Visual aids, it is media that can be seen such as picture, realia,

Google earth, flashcard, newspaper,etc.

b. Audio aids, it is teaching media that can be heard such as radio,music or song,

tape, MP3 player, etc. 3) Audio visual aid, it is teaching media that can be seen

and can beheard such as video clips, film, TV news etc.

From the explanation above, the researcher uses song lyrics. Itcan be

classified as audio visual aids because it can be seen and can be heard. In

Arsyad’s Sudjana and Rifai (2006:06) said that they have benefits init.They are:

a) The teaching process will be more interesting so that the students are motivated

to learn the material given by the teacher.By using media, the teacher can

attract the students’ attention tothe material given by him/ her. From

explanations above, it isexpected that by using media in teaching learning

process, students will bemotivated in the learning the material given by the

teacher by heart. If they learnby heart automatically they will get maximum

result.

b) The material will be clear if the students can understand the material easily.

Media make students easy in catching the material given by the teacher. Here,

media acts as the means used by the teacher to make the teaching material

easily. If the students can catch the material easily so, automatically they can

understand too.
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c) The teaching and learning process will be variatif. It makes students enjoying

the teaching learning process. Students will bored if the teacher only uses the

explanation when present the material during teaching and learning process.

Students will not feel bored if the teacher uses media in teaching learning

process.

From references definition above, the researcher concluded that teaching

media are needed in teaching learning process because students are motivated to

study. Students easily to catch the material from the material clearly. The teaching

learning process will be more varieties so that the students enjoy it. Students also

will be more active in giving responses to the material given by the teacher.

3. The application of song lyrics in teaching listening

In this case the researcher will apply song lyrics in teaching listening by

using procedures as follow: first, teacher explains about listening, and then

teacher gives paper of song lyric, and then plays the song and asks the students to

write on the students work sheet. If the answer is wrong, the teacher will explain

correctly.

D. Previous Study

The previous research that used by the researcher are by Dewi, English

Education of IKIP PGRI Semarang 2009. The title is Improving Students’

Vocabulary Mastery Through Listening English Song of the Eighth Year Students

of SMPN 25 Semarang 2009/ 2010. She was using listening English song to
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improve students’ vocabulary mastery. For the experimental class, she used

listening English song for students and other class she use game. And the result

was significant. Thereis significance difference in score of Vocabulary test

achieved by the students after they have been taught using Listening English

Song. Song could give contribution in teaching vocabulary. Song that used in this

study can motivate the students to learn more about vocabulary.

The differences between this research and my research will be in

specification of the listening ability, she did the research to know the vocabulary

mastery of students and to find out whether listening to English song can improve

their vocabulary mastery whereas the writer will do the research to know whether

or not song lyrics is effective to improve students’ Vocabulary of verb. Besides

that, this research was conducted with eighth grade of SMPN 25 Semarang 2009/

2010 and my research does the research with tenth grade of MA Unggulan

Bandung in the academic year of 2013/2014.

Then the next previous study is by Kuswoyo, Higher School of Foreign

Language Teknokrat, Lampung, Indonesia. In this research, the writer can

conclude that in this study, song can be used as an effective way to develop

listening comprehension skill in Paper-Based TOEFL. It can be seen when the

learners joined listening activities in the class willingly and showed very

enthusiasm.

The objectives of his studies are to find out that this technique motivates

the learners to learn new vocabulary, to reduce their level of boredom in the class,

to help the learners to pronounce English words correctly, to raise student

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confidence and comfort, easily to link the listening TOEFL strategies or skills to

the song lyric and to build positive environment. To gain all of the benefits above,

choosing the appropriate song was required. In addition, it should consider the

level of learners, ages etc. Not only it, but also should be followed by the proper

activity that engage the learners to involve in it.

The differences between this research and my research will be in

specification of the purposes. In this research, he use song technique in teaching

Paper Based TOEFL (PBT)’S Listening Comprehension Section, but in my

research the purpose is to know the effectiveness of using song especially missing

lyric in teaching listening, to know as much as the students listening ability. In

this research, he applies the technique in fifth grade of SDN Surodadi Kedung

Jepara and my research applies in tenth grade of MA Unggulan Bandung.