THE SECOND YEAR STUDENTS’ LISTENING ABILITY TO COMPREHEND SHORT DIALOGUE AT ENGLISH DEPARTMENT OF BUNG HATTA UNIVERSITY

Abstrak

INTRODUCTION Listening is one of language skills used by people in communication, including English communication. In listening activities, someone needs to understand utterances heard in order that he can respond it well. If the utterances heard cannot understood well, a communication will not happen. In listening activities, we listen for a purpose. We make an immediate response to what we hear. There are some visual or environmental clues as to the meaning of what is heard. The most important element and fundamental for the interaction is the ability to understand what the speaker has said. Active listening is also an interpretive process. To master in listening, they are many materials used to improve listening skills. They are listening to dialogue, listening to monologue, listening to conversation and listening to movie. Short dialogue is interesting to improve listening skill. Short dialogue is a kind of listening subject that has short conversation. A dialogue as a means demonstrates communication between two people requiring the intention of understanding each other. In dialogue, the parties involved share information, data, facts, thoughts, ideas, and opinions, and try to consider, understand, and accept each other. From the dialogue, it is hoped that mutual understanding will be broader and deeper about the things that are the subject of the dialogue. In addition, the dialogue can be a short conversation that is usually carried out by two people. The study about listening comprehension on dialogue has been conducted by Yanti, Ikhsanudin, Husin (2013). They investigated the effectiveness of dialogue comprehension technique by using information transfer. Their finding was that the effect size of treatment was categorized high. [1] This study was conducted at English Department of Bung Hatta University because no researcher had conducted research about ability students to comprehend short dialogue. Next, the second year students’ at English Department has practiced listening to dialogue in listening subject. It is identified through the syllabus of listening subject. Based on the description above the researcher was interested to do the research about the second year students listening ability to comprehend short dialogue at English Department of Bung Hatta University. METHODS In this research, the researcher used descriptive research. It describes the listening ability of student in comprehending the short dialogue. According to Refnita (2018) descriptive research involves collecting data in order to test hypotheses or to answer questions concerning the current status of the subject from the study[2]. The number of population members of this study are 37 students.The researcher used total sampling technique in selecting the sample. The instrument used to collect the data was listening testconsisting of 20 itemstaken from the toefl preparation book.Then the test was valid in terms of content because it had covered all materials that students had learnt.The reliability index of the test was 0.90 which means that the test was reliable[3]. On the situation of Covid-19, the students answered by google classroom as the media to answer the test items in 45 minutes and the data were analyzed by calculating the raw of students’ scores. Next, the researcher classified the students’ ability the criteria of Bung Hatta University. Next the researcher calculated the precentage of students who have very high, high, moderate, and low ability. Finally, the researcher discussed the percentage of the students in each level. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS The results of the research showed that generally the students had low ability. It was proved by the result of data analysis that 14 students (37.84%) had low ability in comprehendingshort dialogue and only 6 students (16,22%) had very high ability in comprehending short dialogue. Besides, 12 students (32.43%) had high ability in comprehending short dialogue. Meanwhile, 5 students (13.51%) had moderate ability in comprehending short dialogue. Table 1. The Percentage of the Second Year Students’ Listening Ability in Comprehend Short Dialogue. Ability Number of Students The Percentage of Students Very High 6 16.22% High 12 32.43% Moderate 5 13.51% Low 14 37.84% The Total of Students 37 100% The researcher found that the second year students at English Department of Bung Hatta University had low ability in comprehending short dialogue. It is proved by the fact that 14 students (37.84%) had low ability in comprehending short dialogue. It means that more than half of them did not understand short dialogue. The students might not have a good listening skill and they didn’t have self-confidence. According to Kurita (2012), learners may find listening comprehension skill difficult to learn and this requires teacher to change their listening exercise into more effective ones[4]. CONCLUSSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS Based on the findings, in general, it can be concluded that the second year students’ listening ability to comprehend short dialogue was low. Reffering to the conclusion, the researcher would like to propose several suggestion for the lecturer, students and the next researchers. For the lecturers, they are suggested to give more exercise to students on recognizing suggestion by using audio to improve their students’ listening ability. For students, they are suggested to improve their ability in listening to comprehending short dialogue especially in recognizing suggestion, since the findings showed that the students ability was low. It can be done by doing more practice to listening to short dialogue. For the further researchers, the researcher hopes that they can conduct a study to investigate how students can have low ability in recognizing suggestion of short dialogue.