MUKHDAR & MELDA YENI 39

FACTORS INFLUENCING STUDENTS’ LISTENING

COMPREHENSION AT THE FOURTH SEMESTER
ENGLISH STUDY PROGRAM OF UNISI TEMBILAHAN
1
Mukhdar, 2Melda Yeni
Islamic University of Indragiri
E-mail: mukhdartbh@gmail.com, 2meldayeni@outlook.com
1

Abstract

This research was done because the researchers found that most of the students'
listening comprehension of the fourth semester was low. Therefore, the
researchers decided to conduct research about factors that causing it. So that the
researchers want to find out students' listening comprehension factors at English
study program of UNISI. This aim was achieved through a descriptive qualitative
design. The sample of this research was the students of the fourth semester of
English Study Program of UNISI. They consist of 13 students. They were chosen
by using total sampling technique. By conducting this research, the researcher
found that there are three factors influencing students’ listening comprehension at
the fourth semester of English Study Program of UNISI, they are reduced form,
colloquial language and rate of the delivery. It can be interpreted that their low
result in listening to English monologue text was because of those factors.
Key Words: Listening, Factors

Abstrak

Penelitian ini dilakukan karena peneliti menemukan bahwa kebanyakan

pemahaman listening siswa sangat rendah. Olehkarena itu, peneliti ingin meneliti
tentang faktor yang mempengaruhi hal tersebut. Tujuan ini dicapai dengan
penelitian descriptive qualitative. Penelitian ini mengambil sampel dari siswa
semesterempat yang berjumlah 13 orang. Sampel ini diambil dengan
menggunakan total sampel. Dengan melakukan penelitian ini, peneliti
menemukan bahwa ada tiga faktor yang mempengaruhi kemampuan mendengar
siswa, yaitu reduced form, colloquial language and rate of the delivery. Ini dapat
diinterpretasikan bahwa kemampuan siswa yang rendah dalam listening
dikarenakan beberapa faktor tersebut.

Kata Kunci: Mendengar, Faktor

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INTRODUCTION every semester. Every university has

Listening is one of the skills different rules for those subjects.

that should be mastered by the Some universities have 3 levels of

students in order to be able to use each subject above and some others

English well. English without have 4 levels. In UNISI, its English

listening will be meaningless Study Program provides those

because trough listening students can subjects in 4 levels. Especially for

learn how to pronounce the words. listening class, it has listening 1, 2, 3

Without listening to the examples of and 4. It means that this university

how to pronounce words well, it is has its own goal to make students

impossible for the students to master this skill (listening). Hence,

communicate English well. At least mastering listening is not easy. It

the students should listen to their needs several efforts and strategies.

teacher as exposure in using English. Some students sometimes have their

In Indonesia, every student at own strategies to master it, but

each level of education should learn several of them feel difficult to

English as a compulsory subject. master it. It is because many factors

But, nowadays for elementary level, influencing students’ listening

English is not as a compulsory comprehension. Many researchers

subject anymore because of the had also conducted research related

changes in the curriculum model. to this problem. According to

However, English is still taught to Hamouda (2013: 118), there are

them as an extracurricular. It means various factors found by some

that English is still needed to be researchers that can influence

taught to beginners. students' listening comprehension.

In university level, English is Because of this condition,

one of the important majors. This researchers also want to investigate

major provides students with some factors influencing students' listening

continuous subjects, such as comprehension at the English Study

speaking, listening, reading and Program of UNISI.

writing. Those subjects are taught in

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Based on the researchers’ Influencing Students’Listening

preliminary research to the fourth-
semester students of English Study
Program of UNISI, they found that
some students said listening is very
difficult. Some others felt
comprehending what the speaker
means is quite hard. Besides, they
also said that the speaker speaks too
fast so that they can not understand
what she/he means. Then, based on
the information gotten from the
lecturer that most of the students
achieved a bad result in their
examination.
Based on the description
above, the researchers assumed that
there are some factors influencing
their listening comprehension.
Therefore, the researcher had tried to
find the answer of this assumption
(factors influencing their listening
comprehension) by conducting a
research a titled: "Factors
Comprehension at the fourth
semester of English Study Program
of UNISI”.
METHOD
The population of this
research was the fourth-semester
students of English Study Program
of the Islamic University of Indragiri
where the amount of them are 13
persons. Then the sample of this
research was all of them. The
descriptive quantitative was used as
the design of this research. To collect
the data, the researchers used a
questionnaire with a Likert scale. All
the questionnaire statements were
taken from all the factors of listening
comprehension indicators.
Then, the amount of the
students’ score will be interpreted
based on the table below:

Table 1. The Students’ Score

Score Amount Factor Classification
54 – 65 Strongly Agree
43 – 53 Agree
32 – 42 Undecided
21 – 31 Disagree
10 – 20 Strongly disagree

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FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION that to understand what the speaker

Listening is actually a hard means, students need to have special
process. The listeners cannot directly strategies, in order to understand that
go back to the previous passage if language spoken. Gilakjani and
they do not understand what the Ahmadi (2011: 979) also add that
speaker means, because "listening listening comprehension is regarded
involves real-time processing, theoretically as an active process in
generally without the option of going which individuals concentrate on
back to earlier sections of the selected aspects of aural input, form
passage the listener may have meaning from passages, and
missed" (Buck, 2001; Flowerdew, associate what they hear with
1994 in Bloomfield, et al, 2010: 3). existing knowledge.
Besides, listening can be said So, it can be concluded that
as a difficult skill to be reached by listening comprehension is the ability
the students because there are many of students to understand the spoken
things to be considered when they text to get information from what the
want to comprehend one spoken text. speaker says. In other words,
As expressed by Chengxing (2005: students need to be active in
1) that "listening comprehension is a listening, because in listening
complicated decoding process students not only hear the passage
involves a number of basic but also try to understand it.
processes, some depending upon Therefore, to understand the passage,
linguistic competence, some students need to know and
depending upon previous knowledge, understand the types of listening
some depending upon physiological performance. In order that they know
variables”. what kinds of listening that they need
Hence, Mendelsohn (1994) in in the classroom.
Gilakjani and Ahmadi (2011: 978) Based on some definitions
defines listening comprehension as above, it can be understood that
the ability to understand the spoken being master on listening is not easy,
language of native speakers. It means it may be because of some factors

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that actually can influence students’ information and the looking for
listening comprehension. According the signal of redundancy.
to Brown (2000:252-254), there are 3. Reduced forms. Reduction can be
eight factors influencing students’ phonological (“djeetyet?” for
listening comprehension, they are “did you eat yet?”),
clustering, redundancy, reduced morphological (contractions like
forms, performance variables, “I’ll”), syntactic (elliptical forms
colloquial language, the rate of the like “when will you be back?”,
delivery, stress, rhythm and “tomorrow may be”) or
intonation and interaction. Below is a pragmatic (phone rings in a
clear explanation about them: house, child answers and yells to
1. Clustering is speech chunking. It another room in the house,
happens because of the memory “mom! Phone!”).
limitation of someone so that he 4. Performance variable. In spoken
or she breaks down his/her language, except for planned
speech into smaller groups of discourse (speech, lectures, etc)
words. Clauses are common hesitations, false starts, pauses,
constituents, but phrases within and corrections are common.
clauses are even more easily Learners have to train themselves
retained for comprehension. to listen for meaning in the midst
2. Redundancy such as rephrasing, of distracting performance
repetitions, elaborations and little variable.
insertions of “ I mean” and “you 5. Colloquial language such as
know” help the hearer to process idioms, slang, reduced forms and
meaning by offering more time shared cultural knowledge are all
and extra information. Learners manifested at some point in
can train themselves to profit conversations. Colloquialisms
from such redundancy by appear in both monologues and
becoming aware that not every dialogues.
new sentence or phrase will 6. The rate of delivery. Students
necessarily contain new think native speaker speaks too

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fast. Unlike reading, where a that includes listening

person can stop and go back to
reread. In listening the hearer
may not always have the
opportunity to stop the speaker.
7. Stress, rhythm, and intonation.
Stress can change the meaning
and intonation will help listeners
understand the recording, not just
for interpreting straight forward
elements such as questions,
statements, and emphasis but also
for understanding more subtle
messages like sarcasm,
endearment, insult, solicitation,
praise, etc.
8. Interaction, to learn to listen is
also to learn to respond and to
continue a chain of listening and
responding. Classroom technique
components must at some point
include instruction in the two-
way nature of listening. Good
listeners are good responders.
They know how to negotiate to
mean (give feedback, to ask for
clarification, to maintain a topic).
So the process of comprehending
can be complete if there is
interaction.
All the factors above also
become the indicators to make a
questionnaire in this research.
After conducting the
research, the researchers found the
recapitulation of every statement that
had been answered by the
respondents. This is the table:

Table2. Recapitulation of Questionnaire Result

Score Score Perception

No Indicators Total
Positive Negative Classification
1. Clustering 43 34 77/2=38.5 Undecided
2. Redundancy 33 34 67/2=33.5 Undecided
3. Reduced forms 46 42 88/2=44 Agree
Performance 39 36 75/2=37.5 Undecided
4.
variable
Colloquial 51 45 96/2=48 Agree
5.
language
The rate of the 49 38 87/2=43.5 Agree
6.
delivery
Stress, rhythm, 38 37 75/2=37.5 Undecided
7.
and intonation

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8. Interaction 43 26 69/2=34.5 Undecided

317/8= Undecided
Total
39.62

From the table of the above, highest score is the colloquial

it can be seen that there are three language. Then the lowest is
factors that influence students' redundancy.
listening comprehension (bold type Based on the data presented
in the table above). They are reduced above, it was found that factors
form, colloquial language, and rate influencing students' listening
of the delivery. These three comprehension of the fourth
indicators are taken as the factors semester of English Study Program
because their results are in agree of UNSI are reduced form, colloquial
category. Besides, every indicator language and rate of the delivery. It
has a different result. For clustering means that students were disturbed
is 38,5. It is categorized into by all these three factors. From 13
undecided. Then for redundancy is students, they agree that they were
33.5, It is also categorized into influenced by reduced form. It is a
undecided. The reduced form is 44, contraction form. Besides, they were
It is categorized into agreeing. also disturbed by colloquial
Performance variable is 37.5, It is language, where it is a kind of idiom
categorized into undecided. or slang. Another factor that disturbs
Colloquial language is 48, It is their listening was the rate of
categorized into agreeing. The rate of delivery. It is when the speaker
the delivery is 43.5, It is categorized speaks to fast, so it disturbs students’
into agreeing. Stress, rhythm, and listening comprehension.
intonation is 37.5, It is categorized Besides, the researchers also
into undecided. The last is found that the most influencing
interaction; it is 34.5, where the factor that disturbs students' listening
category is also undecided. comprehension is the colloquial
Therefore, from all the indicators, the language. Because the score for this
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indicator is 48, it is categorized in comprehension in listening (reduced

agreeing. It means that students get
difficulties in understanding listening
if the recording contains some slang
or idioms.
form, colloquial language and rate of
the delivery). So, the researchers
want to give his suggestion to the
following:
1. It is suggested to students in

CONCLUSION order to listen to many examples

This research was descriptive of listening materials. They can

quantitative research. It was used to hear many examples of listening
know the factors influencing material through the internet in
students’ listening comprehension of order that they can be familiar

the fourth semester of English Study with idioms and slang.

Program of UNISI. To answer the 2. It is also suggested for the next
research question, the researcher was researchers in order to continue
distributing a questionnaire to the this research, especially about

fourth-semester students of English the investigation of why reduced

Study Program, especially the fourth form, colloquial language and
semester. The questionnaire consists rate of the delivery can
of 16 statements, 8 in negative and 8 influence students in listening
in positive statements. comprehension.
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