ELTIN JOURNAL: p-ISSN 2339-1561

Journal of English Language Teaching in Indonesia e–ISSN 2580-7684

THE USE OF PODCAST TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ LISTENING

COMPREHENSION

Hania Fadhilatun Nisa*1, Lidyatul Izzah2, Muhamad Sofian Hadi3

1
[email protected], 2 [email protected], 3
[email protected]

1,2,3UNIVERSITAS MUHAMADIYAH JAKARTA

ABSTRACT
This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of podcast in improving students’ listening
skill. The method used in this research is quantitative method with pre-experimental as a
research design. Both the pre-test and post-test were used as instruments in collecting data.
The writer used one class in the seventh grade of SMP Muhammadiyah 35 Jakarta as the
sample. The data were analyzed statistically using t-test. The results of the analysis show
that the mean score of students is 89.4, statistical calculations show the result to (t-
observation) > t (t-table) obtained are 17.986 while the Tt value is 1.721 with a significant
level of 5% (0.05), because To is higher than Tt, then the alternative hypothesis (Ha) was
accepted while the null hypothesis was rejected. From the result of this analysis this study
concludes that using Podcast was an effective media to improve students’ listening skills.

Keywords: Comprehension, Podcast, Teaching Listening

A. INTRODUCTION
English is an international language spoken worldwide. More that one billion people
worldwide speak English and use it as a second or foreign language. They speak English in
order to communicate and understand what information that is being delivered between two
or more foreign speakers. This process needs at least one speaker and one listener to
communicate and to get the information as well. This process requires English skills and one
of them is listening. Listening is defined as the act of listening attentively. Hamouda ( 2012)
stated that listening as active listening, which is essential for effective communication.
Listening can also be defined as, more that just listening and understanding and interpreting
the meaning of a conversation. Thus, the first skill that English learners must be owned is
listening.

Listening is an important language skill used to develop English students in learning a

second language. Listening is the ability to recognize and understanding it’s meaning. It
builds learners’ compatibility in their understanding of the language. In other words, the
power of listening leads us to catch the pure meaning of the information. It can be concluded
that listening skill is important for the learners to be mastered. However, although important,
listening is considered the most difficult language skills to learn. The importance of listening
in language learning should not be overstated. Through acceptance, we internalize linguistic
information without which we cannot produce language. Because the role of listening
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comprehension in language teaching has been emphasized over and over again, many
English students do not play enough attention to its importance in their classrooms.

In general, there are several factors that influence students’ hearing comprehension. First,
students face many difficulties in mastering vocabulary. Second, students have limited time to
learn English, the problem also stems from the quality of the cassette or diskette. The tape may
be recorded when there is sound, so the quality is outdated. Inadequate equipment is somehow
an obstacle for students in listening. So, this is the place for students to listening in the lab room.
This willgive better results as outside noise cannot enter the laboratory room. The good cassette
recorder or CD player may provide it better than the old one. Listening is tought by the teacher
only once a month. Third, students feel bored and not motivated to learn. They tend not to pay
attention when the teacher explains the material.

In this modern era, practicing English listening skill can be done anytime, anywhere and anyhow.
One of the reasons is the existence of Spotify, digital music, podcast, and video streaming songs
and other content from artist around the world. English while practicing their listening skill.
They can choose one English learning podcast and listen to it while developing their knowladge.
However, not all the learners will understand the content the same as other learners. One can
understand whole content for one time playing the podcast, one can understand half of the
contant, or not at all. The problem that is discussed by the researcher in this thesis is the
“Effectiveness of Using Podcast in Teaching Listenig Comprehension”

Based on the background above, researchers limit the study about “The Effectiveness of Using
Podcast in teaching listening comprehension”. Thus, this research focused to analyze about the
effectiveness of the Podcast on Spotify apply in teaching learnning activity to build up students’
listening comprehension.

1. Listening
In Indonesia, classes are taught in English as a foreign language from elementary school to
university. Students are expected to have basic skill in reading, speaking, and listening in
English. Listening is the hardest one of all. Thus, Listening is an important aspect of
communicating with others. Vasiljevic (2010) stated that listening is used by more than
45%in communication, which clearly demonstrates the importance of these skills in overall
language skill. In recent years, when listening is not only related to comprehension but also
to language learning, listening has been considered from another perspective. Listening
teaching requires more teachers than students. What of the main principles of listening
teaching is that language materials must be used to practice listening comprehension, and
they must not be presented visually first. Therefore, listening to audio is a good tool to
achieve this goal.

Therefore, listening comprehension convers the various processes involved in understanding

and understanding spoken English. This includes recognizing speech, understanding the
meaning of individual words, and / or understanding the grammar of the sentences that
convey them. Listening comprehension may also involve prosody with verbal expression
(for example, the expected meaning of the statement can be turned into a question), and draw
relevant conclusions based on the speaker's background, real-world knowledge, and specific
attributes (for example, the speaker can obtain what information and what he or she may
discuss. For long-term language or discourse, listening comprehension also involves a large
amount of memory requirements to detect the causality expressed in the discourse.

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ELTIN Journal: Journal of English Language Teaching in Indonesia, Volume 10/No 1, April 2022

In addition, Antony et al., (2012) stated that whether asleep or waking up, humans continue
to process sound; i.e. vibrations pass through our ears and are processed in our brain
continuously. According to Hamouda (2013), listening skills are an important element in
obtaining understandable input. Learning will not happen if there is no input. Jafari &
Hashim (2015) emphasize that listening is a channel for understandable input and more than
50 percent of the time spent by students to learn a foreign language is devoted to listening.

According to Gilakjani & Ahmadi (2011), listening plays an important role in the
communication process. Ferris (1998), Murphy (1991), Vogely (1998) and Hamouda, (2013)
revealed that listening is the most commonly sed skill in the language classroom. Therefore,
it is clear that listening is very important to students’ lives because listening is used as a
learning tool at all teaching levels. Although interested in foreign language learning, the
teaching of listening comprehension is ignored in many EFL classrooms. Pourhossein (cited
in Gilakjani & Ahmadi, 2011) that listening includes listening to thoughts, feelings and
intentions and this requires active involvement, effort and training. Listening comprehension
is useful for student speech. This means that as students are more exposed to spoken English,
they can better understand and understand tone, intonation, stress, redundancy, and group.

Furthermore, from what mentioned above, the researcher concluded listening skills are very
important in foreign language learning because the key to language learning is to accept
language input. Thus, the process of listening comprehension provides useful intuition in
listening instruction. It helps student understand the context of school material in a form of
audio and even better to other skill such as reading and speaking. Because the development
of listening comprehension can help students succeed in language learning, thereby
enhancing understandable input.

2. Components of Listening
The term ‘hearing’ is mostly confused with ‘hearing’, although hearing may or may not be
conscious of hearing in general. The listening process begins with conscious listening and is
an important step in the listening process. Thus, because hearing is complicated then it needs
various components that will lead to understanding. According to Goh (2000) Identify this
component as follows:
a. Distinguish sounds.
b. Criticize the word.
c. Identify grammatical word groups.
d. Identify the "pragmatic unit".
e. Associate linguistic signals with paralinguistic signals (intonation and stress) and
non-linguistic signals (signals and objects relevant to the situation) to construct
meaning.
f. Use knowledge of background and context to predict and confirm meaning
g. Remember important words and ideas.

In addition, according to Hermawan (2012), the influencing factors can be divided into two,
namely internal factors and external factors:
a. Internal factors effects the listening process are: hearing problems and physical
condition. If someone has a hearing impairment or a damaged hearing device, a
cairtain amount of waves can be prevented from entering, and the hearing process will
be interrupted.

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b. External factors includes environmental factors, material factors, speakers, style and
oral skills. The subjects will affect the listening process. Listeners will be more
interested in new material than in known or experienced materials. The speaker factor
can also disturb the audience’s attention. For example, an experience and calm
speakers will be more persuasive than a nervous speaker. In addition, the presentation,
appearance, and technology the material may also be one of the factors that affect the
listening process such the visualization and technology used.

Constantine (2007) mentions that a podcast is the name of a digital recording of a radio
broadcast or similar program. Podcast are published on the internet as mp3 and mp4 files.
The advent of podcast on the internet has provided language teachers with a gold mine for
teaching listening skills. Podcast can be two to three minutes and an hour long. English
teachers can subscribe to podcasts by subscription when there is a new episode available, it
will be downloaded to the computer automatically. Moreover, it is not charged to the
customer. Because podcast content is free, teachers now have a way to build a large listening
library for their students based on contemporary and relevant topics. English teachers can
also encourage students to download their own podcasts so they have more listening input.
In addition, Kavaliauskienė (2008) claims that there is an opportunity to increase language
awareness by using podcasting that allows students to do homework, and assignments, at
their own pace and in non-threatening conditions.

B. METHOD
This study is categorized as a quantitative method using a pre-experimental study.
Quantitative research methods are methods in which numbers are used to explain findings
(Kowalczyk, 2016). The pre-experimental design is chosen because this design aims to
understand the effect of the effectiveness of using podcast in teaching listening
comprehension. In this study, quantitative research was conducted in a pre-test and post-test
design group. This study selected the grade-7th in junior high school at SMP 35
Muhammadiyah Jakarta as the sample of this research. According to Creswell (2012),
samples are target population groups that researchers have chosen to collect target
population data. The population of this study is 75 students at first junior high school students
in Jakarta, Indonesia. The data sample consists of one class, namely 25 students of class VII
SMP Muhammdiyah 35 Jakarta in the school year 2020/2021.

In collecting data, the researcher used the students’ listening test as an instrument of the
study. Students were given a pre-test in the first meeting. They listened to a learning material
podcast and given some test. Then, the result were noted as the development of their listening
skill until the end of the test. Data were collected from the instrument in the form of 30
multiple choice items for pre-test. Then, in analyzing the data, statistical data formulas are
required in relation to the methods used. In analyzing the data, the t-test was used to test the
significance.

C. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

This section reports the findings of the research. These findings are based on the data which
were analysed in this research was the result of the test. The participants of this research,
those are the eleven grades in SMP Muhammadiyah 35 Jakarta in academic year 2020/2021
were answered the test completely. The data shown in this section is collected from students’
scores before and after the listening test. The analysis results are as follows:

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ELTIN Journal: Journal of English Language Teaching in Indonesia, Volume 10/No 1, April 2022

1. The result of students’ pre-test score

Pre-test scores data for students of listening comprehension is shown in table 1.

Table 1. The Score of Students’ Pre-Test

Students Score
AN 50
ADH 50
AO 65
AZ 70
AN 65
ADP 60
AZS 75
AA 75
BHR 50
BZ 55
DPP 70
DHA 65
DRG 60
DKG 55
DAG 45
FKS 80
FSP 60
FEP 75
GR 70
JE 45
KNP 55
MDAF 75
ML 75
MNI 70
MSEP 50
N=25 TOTAL: 1565
MEAN: 62.6

From the table 1, it can be shown that 2 students get 45 for their listening score, 4 students
get 50 for their listening score, 3 students get 55 for their listening score, 3 students get
60 for their listening score, 3 students get 65 for their listening score, 4 students get 70
for their listening score, 5 students get 75 for their listening score, 1 students get 80 for
their listening score. The mean of student’s pre-test result was 93.18 the highest score in
pre-test is 80 and the lowest score in pre-test is 45.

Table 2. Criteria of Students’ Pre-Test Score

Criteria Score
Excellent 5 (90-100)
Good 4 (76-89)
Enough 3 (66-75)
Poor 2 (40-65)
Very Poor 1 (00-39)

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Based on the criteria written in table 2, the data can be categorized as follows:
Table 3. Criteria of Students’ Pre-Test Result
Criteria of Students Total Number of Total Number of Students in
Students Percentage
Excellent 0 0%
Good 1 4%
Enough 9 36%
Poor 15 60%
Very Poor 0 0%
TOTAL 25 100%

The table 3 reveals that 1 student (4%) was good, 9 students (36%) were enough, 15
students(60%) were poor and no one student were excellent and very poor .

2. The result of students’ post-test score

The data of students’ post-test Scores of listening which is obtained into tables as follow:

Table 4. The Score of Students’ Post-Test

Students Score
AN 90
ADH 90
AO 85
AZ 95
AN 90
ADP 80
AZS 100
AA 95
BHR 80
BZ 80
DPP 100
DHA 80
DRG 85
DKG 95
DAG 80
FKS 100
FSP 85
FEP 95
GR 95
JE 80
KNP 85
MDAF 90
ML 95
MNI 95
MSEP 90
N=25 TOTAL: 2235
MEAN: 89.4

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ELTIN Journal: Journal of English Language Teaching in Indonesia, Volume 10/No 1, April 2022

From the table 4, it can be shown that 6 students get 80 for their listening score, 4 students
get 85 for their listening score, 5 students get 90 for listening score, 7 students get 95 for
their listening score, 3 students get 100 for their listening score, the mean of student’s
post-test result was 93.18 the highest score in post-test is 100 and the lowest score in post-
test is 80.

Table 5. Criteria of Student Post-Test Result

Criteria of Students Total Number of Total Number of Students in
Students Percentage
Excellent 15 60%
Good 10 40%
Enough 0 0%
Poor 0 0%
Very Poor 0 0%
TOTAL 25 100%

The table 5 shows that 15 students (60% ) were excellent 10 students (40% ) were good,
and no one student were enough, poor, and very poor.

3. The analysis of the data

The data was analyzed by using t-test to determine whether there was a significant
between student writing skills in pre and post-test. The pre-test was given before the
treatment begins and the post-test is given after the treatment finish. Table 6 presents the
student’s listening comprehension in the experimental class before the researcher does
her experiment (pre-test). In addition, also present the students’ listening comprehension
after the researcher does her experiment (post-test) in the experimental class.

Table 6. Statistical Table of Students’ Pre-Test and Post-Test

No. Students Pre- Post- (Xj- ̅

𝑫 ((Xj-
Test Test Xi) ((𝑿𝒋 Xi)-
Xi Xj − 𝑿𝒊 ̅ )2
𝑫
− 𝑫 ̅)
1 AN 50 90 40 26.8 13.2 174.24
2 ADH 50 90 40 26.8 13.2 174.24
3 AO 65 85 20 26.8 -6.8 46.24
4 AZ 70 95 25 26.8 -1.8 3.24
5 AN 65 90 25 26.8 -1.8 3.24
6 ADP 60 80 20 26.8 -6.8 46.24
7 AZS 75 100 25 26.8 -1.8 3.24
8 AA 75 95 20 26.8 -6.8 46.24
9 BHR 50 80 30 26.8 3.2 10.24
10 BZ 55 80 25 26.8 -1.8 3.24
11 DPP 70 100 30 26.8 3.2 10.24
12 DHA 65 80 15 26.8 -11.8 139.24
13 DRG 60 85 25 26.8 -1.8 3.24
14 DKG 55 95 40 26.8 13.2 174.24
15 DAG 45 80 35 26.8 8.2 67.24

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Students Pre- Post- (Xj- ̅

𝑫 ((Xj-
Test Test Xi) ((𝑿𝒋 Xi)-
Xi Xj − 𝑿𝒊 ̅ )2
𝑫
− 𝑫 ̅)
16 FKS 80 100 20 26.8 -6.8 46.24
17 FSP 60 85 25 26.8 -1.8 3.24
18 FEP 75 95 20 26.8 -6.8 46.24
19 GR 70 95 25 26.8 -1.8 3.24
20 JE 45 80 35 26.8 8.2 67.24
21 KNP 55 85 30 26.8 3.2 10.24
22 MDAF 75 90 15 26.8 -11.8 139.24
23 ML 75 95 20 26.8 -6.8 46.24
24 MNI 70 95 25 26.8 -1.8 3.24
25 MSEP 50 90 40 26.8 13.2 174.24
Total 1565 2235 670 0 1444
Mean 62.5 89.4 26.8

Based on the table above, it can be seen that the mean score of pre-test is 62.5 and the
mean score of post-test is 83.46 from 26.8. Based on the result, it can be concluded that
the use of podcast gave greater contribution in teaching listening comprehension. After
the results of the above-mentioned students’ pre-test and post-test, the author analyzed
the results to determine the effectiveness of using podcast for listening comprehension on
spotify. The author made the following calculations according to the steps of the t-test
formula:

̅
𝐷
t-test one group = 𝑡 = 𝑆𝐷
√𝑛

𝑆𝐷 = √𝑉𝑎𝑟
𝑛
1
𝑉𝑎𝑟 (𝑆 2 ) = ∑ (𝑥1 − 𝑥̅ )2
𝑛−1
𝑖=1

Based on the calculation above, the T calculation 17.986 and t table with degree of freedom (df)
24 obtained obtained 1.721. the significance value of less than 0.05 and T calculation > T table
and the significance of using podcast as an effective in teaching listening comprehension.
Since to was higher than tt score obtained from the result of the calculation, the positive
hypothesis (H1) can be accepted while the negative hypothesis (H0) was rejected. It can be
seen from the students’ post test scores (89.4) which is higher than their pretest (62.5). The
significance score of students’ listening test result, which was higher than 0,05 showed that
Using Podcast gives significant effect to influence students’ listening of 7th grade students’
of SMP Muhammadiyah 35 Jakata in academic year of 2020/2021.

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D. CONCLUSION
After analyzing the data, several conclusions can be inferred. First, the result shows that the
avarage of Pre-Test was 62.5 and Post-Test was 89.4. It can be seen from the students’
progress between Pre-Test and Post-Test.The value of Tcalculation (17.986) was higher than the
value of Ttable (1.721) at the significance level of 5%. It can be concluded that null hypothesis
(H0) was rejected and alternative hypothesis (H1) was accepted. It means the use of podcast
gives a significant effect on students’ listening skill of seventh grade students in SMP
Muhammadiyah 35 Jakarta. Therefore, it is recommended that the teachers use podcast in
teaching listening in the classroom.

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