Developing Listening Materials for the Tenth Graders

The needs survey shows that Englishlistening skill of the students in the tenth graders ofIndonesian Islamic High School or Madrasah Aliyah isnot well developed. Consequently, the listeninginstructional materials based on standard of content2006 used in the classes need to be advanced. Theresearcher used only one try out of the product,second revision in this study was the seventh step ofBorg and Gall model operational product revision.This was done based on the result of the try out, andthe final product (the production of the newmaterials). The development used in this studyconsists of needs survey, developing the materials,experts and teacher‟s validation, revision, try out,second revision and the final product. The product isfound acceptable for the tenth grade students.


INTRODUCTION
Indonesia government has set a national standard stated in Standard of content 2006, Standard of Graduate Competence, and its implementation (Regulation of national Education Minister No. 22, 23, 24, 2006) based on which English syllabus can be developed. The Standard of competence and its basic competence are set on the basis of various text types comprising interpersonal and transactional texts, dialog and monolog, and many different kinds of short functional texts each of which has its own specific generic structure and linguistics features.
The teaching of English in Senior High School is aimed at the mastery of the four language skills; listening, speaking, reading and writing. It is in line with Tompkins (1995), he states that listening has been called the neglected skill for some decades. Brown (2001) and Richards (1983) also agree upon one thing that for some decades listening has hardly got the attention of educators in teaching and learning English as second or foreign language. Listening skill has not been given proper attention of the teachers in teaching learning English as a second or foreign language in secondary schools in Indonesia (Suparmin, 1999: 221). It also happens in the school researched where the students do not get the chance to train their listening skills because of the unavailable listening material at school.
Apparently students are lack of practice and comprehensible input of the language in listening. It can be seen from the low frequency of listening schedule done by the teacher, the score of students that show their low ability and their respond toward WHDFKHU·V (QJOLVK WDON E\ saying ngomong opo? (what does she speak?). Harmer (in Yuana, 2008) promotes that just as with reading, the better students get at listening the more they do it; listening is a skill and any help which we can give to our students in performing that skill facilitates them to be better listener.
In this case, the students need to know the function of language at least they are aware of the use of functional skill H[SUHVVLRQ VXFK DV KRZ WR H[SUHVV WKHLU IHHOLQJ RU WR UHVSRQG RWKHUV· in English naturally not just English sound.
Another reason why the teaching listening in the classroom is still far away from sufficient is the inadequacy of listening materials in the school. It means there are some listening materials but they are already out of date and they are not well developed since they are not suitable with the 2006 standard content.
Another strong proof was the low score of students in pre-test done to measure their listening skill before the listening materials was developed. The intention of the pre-test was to know what the students had already mastered about the coming listening materials in the developed product. The materials of the try out was derived from the functional expressions for the tenth graders of Senior High School in the first semester stated in the 2006 Standard of Content and also from the Standard of Graduate Competence. The form of the test was multiple choice.The scores of the students are presented in the folowing table.  Yuana (2008), Zaenuri (2006), andMaarif (2009). Concerning the findings above, the four of them have the same opinion toward the essential of teaching materials. A good teaching material is a material WKDW FDWHUV WKH ODQJXDJH DQG FRQWHQW EDVHG RQ WKH VWXGHQWV· QHHGV level, and environment.
Yet, none of them have done research on listening materials for the tenth graders. Therefore, the researcher thinks it is necessary to develop the listening materials that can be done through research and development (R&D).

LITERATURE REVIEW The Teaching of Listening
$FFRUGLQJ WR %URZQ ´WKH LQWHJUDWLon of four skills is the only plausible approach within a communicative, interactive IUDPHZRUNµ The teacher cannot just train the students listen only without having communication before or after they listen. However, many English teachers in Indonesia just skip the listening skill activity for some reasons.
As what has been stated by Nunan (1999) that there are three important reasons for emphasizing listening to the development of spoken language proficiency: as a means of interaction, a challenge for a learner to attempt to understand language as native speakers XVXDOO\ XVH LW DQG WR GUDZ OHDUQHUV· DWWHQWLRQ WR QHZ IRUPV (vocabulary, grammar, new interaction pattern) in the language. Moreover Saricoban (1999) proposes two reasons for using integrating activities in language classroom; (1) to practice and extent the OHDUQHUV· XVH RI D FHUWDLQ ODQJXDJH VWUXFWXUH RU IXQFWLRQ DQG WR GHYHORS WKH OHDUQHUV· DELOLW\ LQ WKH XVH RI WZR RU PRUH RI WKH VNLOOV within real contexts and communication frame work. It means that by creating the teaching listening integratedly with other skills, the teacher helps the students to use the language in more natural and communicative way.

Micro Skill of Language
The seventeen micro skills proposed by Richards (in Omaggio, 1986;Brown, 2001) that can be used as foundation for the teacher are: (1) retain chunks of language of different lengths in short-term memory; (2) discriminate among the distinctive sounds of English; (3) recognize English stress patterns, words in stressed and unstressed positions, rhythmic structure, intonation contours, and their role in signaling information; (4) recognize reduced forms of words; (5) distinguish word boundaries, recognize a core of words, and interpret word order patterns and their significance; (6) process speech at different rates of delivery; (7) process speech containing pauses, errors, corrections, and other performance variables; (8) recognize grammatical word classes (nouns, verbs, etc.), systems (e.g. tense, agreement, pluralization), patterns, rules, and elliptical forms; (9) detect sentence constituents and distinguish between major and minor constituents; (10) recognize that a particular meaning may be expressed in a different grammatical forms; (11) recognize cohesive devices in spoken discourse; (12) recognize the communicative functions of utterances, according to situations, participants, goals; (13) infer situations, participants, goals using real-world knowledge; (14) from events, ideas, etc., described, predict outcomes, infer links and connections between events, deduce causes and effects, and detect such relations as main idea, supporting idea, new information, given information, generalization, and exemplification; (15) distinguish between literal and implied meanings; (16) use facial, kinesics, body language, and other nonverbal clues to decipher meanings; and (17) develop and use a battery of listening strategies, such as detecting key words, guessing the meaning of words from context, appeal for help, and signaling comprehension.
The product of this research is intentionally adapting the DERYH WKHRU\ WR WUDLQ VWXGHQWV· PLFUR VNLOOV OLVWHQLQJ ZKLFK DUH reflected in the activity of pronunciation, picture matching, answer short questions, multiple choice, completing tables or passage based on what they have listened.

Listening Comprehension
Listening comprehension of the students needs to be trained by the teacher gradually or step by step. What the researcher means here is the level of the difficulty is gradually raised when the students are ready for that. The basic principles of listening comprehension PXVW EH IXOOILOOHG LQFOXGLQJ WKH WHDFKHU·V SUHSDUDWLRQ IDFLOLWLHV DQG WKH VWXGHQWV·UHDGLQHVV $FFRUGLQJ WR +DUPHU WKHUH DUH VL[ principles to facilitate students in listening comprehension; the tape and tape recorder must be in a good condition, preparation of the WHDFKHU DQG WKH VWXGHQWV DUH YLWDO RQFH RI OLVWHQLQJ ZRQ·W EH HQRXJK students need encouraging, different listening stages need different listening task, and good teacher exploits listening class with full activities.
Listening Comprehension activities are more than just answering yes/no questions or multiple choice. It requires students more active participation. There are kinds of listening activities that can be applied by the teacher in the classroom suggested by Ur (1996) such as; 1) No overt response. At this phase the students are let to enjoy the listening without being asked anything. Stories and songs are usually given at this activity to motivate them to listen, 2) Short responses. There are six activities that can be done in this phase such as; obeying instruction, ticking off items, true or false, detecting mistakes, cloze procedure and guessing definitions, 3) Longer responses. It deals with five activities such as: answering questions, note-taking task, paraphrasing, summarizing and long gap-filling, 4) Extended responses. At this level the teacher can ask the students to do problem solving or giving interpretation. This developed listening materials design are hoped to cover all of suggested activities above and they EH DGMXVWHG ZLWK WKH OHYHO RI VWXGHQWV· FXUUHQW FRPSHWHQFH The researcher tries to cover those principles in the process of developing listening material for the tenth year students such as ensuring that the quality of the tape recorded material must be good, having the instruction of repetition in each activity of listening, publishing remarks words whenever students have accomplished the task successfully, providing varLRXV H[HUFLVHV WR DYRLG VWXGHQWV· boredom, suggesting some activities that can be done by the teacher LQ WKH WHDFKHU·V JXLGH ERRN

The Use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for Developing Listening Materials
The remarkable technology advance has brought benefits for everybody and any kinds of jobs. Teachers also can take the progress of Information and Communication Technology to modify their WHDFKLQJ WR HQKDQFH VWXGHQWV· FRPSHWHQFLHs through internet. Many materials of teaching can be downloaded from it. English teachers should not be left behind of mastering the advance of ICT because it can be a good facility to let our students get exposure of English.
Podcast, You-tube, YM, facebook are internet features where people all over the world FDQ ´PHHWµ DQG VKDUH WKHLU NQRZOHGJH DQG thoughts and everything. It brings a good advantage if the teacher can use them appropriately because the international language that is used for communication is English. They can also provide the teacher wide opportunity to get authentic material for teaching. Take one example Podcast, an internet feature where we can download many VSRNHQ PDWHULDOV ZLWK GLIIHUHQW WKHPHV FDQ EH RQH RI WKH WHDFKHU·V considerations to get the materials to teach. It certainly must be adapted to the syllabus that the teacher has and the teacher sould be creative in designing the exercises or activities using the material.
This research and development also take some materials from Podcast and other recorded resources needed to result in a suitable material for the tenth year students since it has its own curriculum.

METHOD
Since this research was done on the purpose of developing listening materials that were suitable for the tenth graders, it could be done through Research and Development (R&D) (Borg and Gall, 1983:771). There were some steps done to develop a product and the R&D cycles proposed by Borg and Gall used in this study. They were adapted and adjusted to meet the real condition in the field and for the sake of practicality.
The steps of adapted and adjusted model of developing listening materials were needs survey (based on the first step of Borg and Gall research and information collecting), developing the materials (the simplified form of the second and third steps in Borg DQG *DOO PRGHO H[SHUW DQG WHDFKHU·V YDOLGDWLRQ SUHOLPLQDU\ ILHOG testing), main product revision (based on the result of experts and WHDFKHU·V YDOLGDWLRQ PDLQ field testing. Considering the limited time, the researcher used only one try out of the product, second revision in this study was the seventh step of Borg and Gall model operational product revision. This was done based on the result of the try out), and the final product (the production of the new materials).
The development processes used in this study consists of QHHGV VXUYH\ GHYHORSLQJ WKH PDWHULDOV H[SHUWV DQG WHDFKHU·V validation, revision, try out, second revision and the final product.
Some instruments were used in this research to get the data and to analyze them in different ways. They are elaborated in table 2. Questionnaire for the students was distributed to obtain the data DERXW WKH PRVW GLIILFXOW ODQJXDJH VNLOO VWXGHQWV· LQWHUHVW LQ SUDFWLFLQJ listening skill, their need toward listening materials, the availability of pictures in listening materials, the exposure of good pronunciation in listening materials, and exercises they expected in listening activities. Meanwhile, questionnaire for the teacher was to dig up the opinion on 1) the need of listening materials, 2) whether listening materials VKRXOG EH FRPSOHWHG ZLWK WKH WHDFKHU·V JXLGH DQVZHUV NH\ DQG DOVR tape script, 3) the recommendation of activities in listening activities, 4) the form of recording, and 5) the topics coverage in listening materials.
Interview with the English teacher was conducted to obtain the information concerning with the difficulty level of the materials, the suitability with the standard of content, as well as the practicality. In addition, classroom observatio was also done during the try-out of the product.

Result and Analysis of Needs Survey
Based on the results of questionnaire given to the students, it was found out that 15% of the students really agree, 60% agree, and 25% were doubtful with the statement that listening was the most difficult language skill.
7KH QH[W LWHP ZDV DERXW WKH VWXGHQWV· LQWHUHVW WR SUDFWLFH WKHLU listening skill. ten students or fifty (50%) convinced that they really put hard effort to practice their listening skill, six students or thirty percent (30%) put hard effort, and four students or twenty percent (20%) were doubtful whether they had done hard effort to practice their listening skill. Related to the needs of listening material, 85% of students stated that listening material was very necessary to be given and 15% of them stated it was necessary to provide listening material. Further, related to the availability of picture in listening materials, 30% of them said that picture was very necessary, 45% said it was necessary, 15% of students were doubtful about it, and 10% said that picture was not necessary to be provided in listening materials. In term of the necessity of pronunciation exposure, 30% of students answered that pronunciation was very needed in the listening material because they needed good example or model how to pronounce the expressions correctly and the rest of the students answered that pronunciation was needed. Concerning the types of activities or exercises students expected in listening, 75% of students chose multiple choice, 60 % chose picture matching, 30% selected complete the text/dialogue, 15% selected answer the questions, 5% chose true-false, and another 5% of the students chose making summary as their activities in listening.
Questionnaire distributed to on female English teacher resulted some information. It was known that she did not have the listening material. The textbooks she used did not provide the listening exercise with the tape and also tape script. She agreed that listening materials shRXOG EH FRPSOHWHG ZLWK WKH WHDFKHU·V JXLGH answers key, and tape script. The reason was to make easy or to OLJKWHQ WKH WHDFKHU·V MRE LQ OLVWHQLQJ DFWLYLW\ 7KH WHDFKHU recommended multiple choice, pronunciation, answering questions, picture matching, complete the dialogue/monologue, and true-false as the activities in listening activities since those were suitable to the tenth graders. Related to the form of recording, she preferred Compact Disc as the form of recording with the consideration of practicality and effectiveness. Besides, it will be much easier for the teacher to operate and play any part of the necessary exercise. In relation to the topics coverage, the English teacher agreed that they should cover functional language in the forms of some expressions that had to be possessed by the tenth graders in the first semester based on the 2006 standard of content. They are greeting, leavetaking, accepting request/invitation/offer, expressing pleased, showing sympathy, and giving instruction. The result of questionnaire was supported by the data gathered from interview stated that, as what the teacher said, the level of difficulty, the suitability with the 2006 Standard of Content, and the practicality should become the basic things to determine the listening material.

First Developed Draft
The

Result of Expert and Teacher Validation
The expert and the English teacher considered that in general the materials and the tasks given were good for listening activities in the classroom. Therefore, they suggested that after being revised the materials could be tried out to the students directly without being brought to them anymore.
Concerning to the language, three components were judged. The\ ZHUH WKH VXLWDELOLW\ RI WKH ODQJXDJH OHYHO ZLWK WKH VWXGHQWV· development, communicable, and the coherence of the idea in each XQLW )RU WKH VXLWDELOLW\ RI WKH ODQJXDJH OHYHO ZLWK WKH VWXGHQWV· development, the expert judged good for all units, except fair for unit 4. He said that the language was just right for the level of the tent graders not too difficult and not too easy. The teacher judged good for units 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6 but she judged fair for the suitability of the language to the students level in units 3 and 6.
Pertinent to whether or not the language used in developed materials was communicative, the expert said good for all units except unit 4 because he thought that the message was clear and easy to comprehend for the students and it had followed the rule of the English rhetoric. The teacher gave good judgement for all units because he knew the characteristics and the condition of the students that they would understand the message given in the developed listening material.
Related to the coherence of the ideas of the language used, the expert judged good for units 2, 3, and 6 and he judged fair for units 1, 4, and 5 because he thought that the message and the material given in each unit had coherence in conveying the ideas. The English teacher judged good for all units.
For the validation of the content, three components were also needed to judge. They were the suitability of the contents with the basic competence and standard of competence stated in the 2006 standard of content, the depth of the material, and the accuracy of the material. For the first component, the expert judged good for all units and the English teacher judged good for all units except unit 6. The expert gave good judgement for all units except unit 4 and the teacher judged good for all units for the second component. The accuracy of the materials in the third component was judged good for all units both by the expert and the English teacher.
The next thing being validated was the length of the materials. There were two components needed to be validated. The first component was the suitability of the length of the listening materials with the coverage of the questions and the attractiveness of the materials. The expert judged it good for all units and the English teacher judged it good for all units except unit 2. The second component was about the topic given in the materials. Both the expert and the English teacher agreed that the topics given in the listening materials were interesting by giving good judgement for all units.
Pertinent to the speed of delivery, the expert judged it good for units 1, 2, 3, and 6 while the English teacher judged it good for all units. So it can be concluded that the teaching materials given had the appropriate tempo for the tenth graders.
Related to the evaluation of the whole listening materials, three aspects were validated. They were the sound variation, the quality of the recording, and the easiness of the application. The expert agreed that the materials given had given the students the chance to explore their listening with the native and non native speaker by giving good judgement for all units, while the English teacher considered only unit 3 that had fair judgement, the rest of the units were judged good by her. About the second aspect to be validated, the expert judged good for all units except unit 3 that had fair quality of recording. The English teacher had different opinion, she gave good judgement for units 1, 2, 5, and 6 and fair judgement for units 3 and 4. The last aspect was judged good for all units by the English teacher but the expert gave fair for units 1, 2, and 5 and good for units 3, 4, and 6.
The last item on the validated form was the suggestion for improving. Here, the expert and the English teacher were given freedom to deliberate their opinions and suggestions for improving the developed listening materials. The English teacher gave her opinion that basically the prototye of listening materials validated were good enough to be applied for the tenth graders. The expert, on the other hand, gave much valuable suggestion and opinion to improve the developed listening material such as; the consistency of providing the pictures for each unit, all the recorded materials should be completed with the tapescript so it was easy to operate, the rename of the folder so it could be operated in order of the delivery, the presence of learning objectives and expansion activitiy in each unit, the repairment of punctuation, design format, and display of each unit, and see the details VXJJHVWLRQ LQ WHDFKHU·V JXLGHERRN DQG VWXGHQWV· ZRUNERRN

Result and Analysis of the Try-Out
During the try-out of the product, the process of teaching and learning was observed. Some notes about the situation of the class, the involvement of the students, and some obstacles happened can be elaborated as follows. Firstly, all the participants were seriously joining the listening class with fun atmosphere because they were encouraged by the teacher that it was not for the test. Besides, the exercises provided in the listening activity were vary. Secondly, the teacher implemented the steps of learning as suggested in the WHDFKHU·V JXLGHERRN smoothly. Thirdly, the teacher could play the recording easily. Fourthly, the students were enthusiastically doing each exercise especially when they watched the video of the native speaker delivering the material. They felt happy imitating sentences after the speaker on the Compact Disc because some of them did not know how to pronounce some words or sentences in the workbook. They also felt that it helped so much with their listening comprehension.
Next, the students complained that the pause in unit 3 exercise 3 and unit 4 exercise 4 were not giving them enough time to answer the questions. Then, the students enjoyed the exercise individually, pairs, and group very much and when they were asked it was because they had never received such listening exercise before. Seventh, the students really enjoyed the expansion activity given at the end of each unit because they were given example in the book in advance especially the gesture game on unit 6. Eighth, the students hoped that listening activity should be done in the language laboratory to help them concentrate more. Finally, the students said that it would have been better to have listening material regularly since the beginning of the education year.
From the elaborated situations above, it can be concluded that the developed listening materials had been effective and practical to WHDFK OLVWHQLQJ 7KH VWXGHQWV· HQUROOPHQW DFWLYHOO\ DQG VSLULWIXOO\ LQ the listening class was the proof that the developed listening materials were effective while the practicality of the developed listening material was shown by the easiness of the teacher and the students following each activity and instructions in the book.
In addition, from the questionnaire, VWXGHQWV· RSLQLRQV RQ WKH materials were obtained. 65% of the students said that the exercises helped them very much, thirty percent (30%) said they helped them, five percent (5%) of the students said the exercises helped them fairly and no student said that the exercises did not help them at all. In relation to the exercises provided in the book, 20% of the students stated they were very interesting, 70% of them stated they were interesting, and 10% of the students stated they were interesting enough. Concerning to the pictures providing in the workbook, 55% of the students said that the pictures helped them very much in comprehending the topics, 30% of them said the pictures helped them, and 15% said the pictures helped them enough to comprehend the topics in the workbook. The display of the workbook was very interesting according to 15% of the students, 65% of them stated it was interesting while the rest, 20% of the students, stated that it was fair enough.
Pertinent to the language difficulty for all units, no student considered that the language was very difficult, 45% of students considered it was difficult, 50% of the students considered it was fair, and only 5% of the students considered it was easy. In term of the quality of the recording, 70% of the students considered it was clear and 30% of them considered it was fair enough. Concerning with the videos provided in the developed materials, 45% of the students agreed that the videos were very interesting, 35% stated they were interesting, and 20% stated the videos were interesting enough. Besides, 60% of the students agreed that the vidoes helped them very much, 25% of them stated the videos helped them, and 15% stated that the videos helped them fairly. Related to the expansion activities, they were very fun according to 40% of the students, fun according to 50% of them, and 10% of them said that they were fun enough. In addition, 65% of the students stated that the expansion activities supported them very much in comprehending the topic given in the workbook, 35% stated they were suported, and only 5% stated they were fair.
In term of practicality, the teacher gave very good judgement for units 1, 2, 5, and 6. She gave good judgement for units 3 and 4. She said that the recorded materials were easy to prepare and implement since each part of the unit was saved in one file so the teacher could choose and play any part of the unit easily. In addition, she said that WKH WHDFKHU·V JXLGH ZDV TXLWH XVHIXO WR GLUHFW KHU KRZ WR FRQGXFW WKH teaching and learning process in the multimedia room. In term of effectiveness, the teacher gave very good judgement for units 1, 2, 3, and 4 and she gave good judgement for units 5 and 6. She said that the PDWHULDOV FRXOG LQFUHDVH WKH VWXGHQWV· PRWLYDWLRQ WR OHDUQ (QJOLVK DQG improve their listening comprehension skill. However, the pause provided for the students to answer the questions were mostly too fast for the students. In conclusion, based on the data from the try out, it could be considered that the materials did not need revision in terms of language difficulty, appropriateness, VWXGHQWV· HQUROOPHQW OHQJWK RI materials, attractiveness, the speed of delivery, and the clarity of the recording. The complained aspect came to the lack of pauses in the Compact Disc (CD) to give the students time to think of the answers. So, revision was made by providing more pauses between one number to another.

The Final Product
The product of this R & D is in the form of audiovisual &RPSDFW 'LVF &' RQH WHDFKHU·V JXLGHERRN DQG RQH VWXGHQWV· workbook. The Compact Disc (CD) contains videos and recorded monologue and dialogues of each unit based on the topic. Accordingly, the recorded materials are practical since it is saved in one file for each number of exercise so the teacher can play any part of the exercise without being confused finding it for several times.
7KH WHDFKHU·V JXLGHERRN FRQVLVWV RI OHDUQLQJ REMHFWLYHV suggested teaching procedures for each topic i.e pre-listening, whilst-listening, and post-listening, expansion activities, answers key and also the tapescript of the recorded materials.

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Based on the results of the study, the conclusions are then made. First, the final product of this research is materials for teaching listening for the tenth graders ZKLFK FRQVLVWV RI VWXGHQWV· ZRUNERRN WHDFKHU·V JXLGHbook, and the Compact Disc (CD). Second, the product was developed in the forms of sets of lessons and designed in a systematic format namely learning objectives, brainstorming/warming up, pre-listening, whilst-listening, postlistening, and expansion activities, Some recommendations are proposed for the teachers as well. First, before using the materials, the teachers are suggested to learn the objectives of the lesson which are stated in each unit. Second, before applying this product, teachers are recommended to encourage and motivate the students to be relaxed enjoying the listening task so WKH VWXGHQWV ZRQ·W SDQLF LI WKH\ PLVV RQH RU WZR WKLQJV LQ WKHLU listening activity. Third, teachers are welcomed to have repetition for three times based on the condition of the students in the class especially in repeating after the CD instrtuction. It is done due to ge WKH PD[LPXP DFKLHYHPHQW RI WKH VWXGHQWV· SURQXQFLDWLRQ DQG prepare them with some vocabulary items which help them comprehending the listening. Fourth, teachers are also welcomed and recommended to make improvisation or variation in delivering this developed listening materials outside the suggested method GHSHQGLQJ RQ WKH VWXGHQWV· FRQGLWLRQ )LIWK VLQFH LW PLJKW EH WKH ILUVW listening activities for the students, it is better to use this product in language laboratory by using headset though it is also possible to be aplied in the classroom. Then, for the expansion activities, make sure that it is done in the class since it will sarpen what they have got from the listening activities. Finally, teachers are recommended to sharpen their listening skill by using any kind of listening materials from any source.