INVESTIGATING THE DIFFICULTIES IN LISTENING CLASS:

PERSPECTIVE OF ELT DEPARTMENT STUDENTS OF UNIVERSITAS

MUHAMMADIYAH PURWOKERTO

Bima Cakra Pangestu, Tono Suwartono

Universitas Muhammadiyah Purwokerto

ABSTRACT
Research entitled “Investigating The Difficulties in Listening Class:
Perspective of ELT Department Students of Univeritas Muhammadiyah Purwokerto”
discussed about the difficulties that are mostly faced by ELT Department students of
Universitas Muhammadiyah Purwokerto in listening class. The aim of the study was
to describe the difficulty that mostly faced by third semester student of English
Teaching Department Student of Universitas Muhammadiyah Purwokerto in listening
class.
Survey research was used to find the problems that students faced in listening
class. The research was conducted in Universitas Muhammadiyah Purwokerto.The
population of this stud was third semester ELT Department students of Universitas
Muhammadiyah Purwokerto. The number of population was 102 students from three
classes. Purposive sampling technique was used to select the sample and the sample
consists of 41 students. Data was gathered by questionnaire.
The result of analyzing the difficulties in listening class: perspective of third
semester ELT Department students of Universitas Muhammadiyah Purwokerto
showed that listening is very difficult skill for students who study foreign language. It
was based on three factors influencing their listening were listening material, listeners
and speaker, and physical setting. Therefore, speed of delivery, noise, lack of
concentration, and bad quality of equipment were major problems encountered by
students’ English Teaching Department.
Keyword: Listening, Student difficulties, Listening difficulties

Background
Listening is one of the most important skills in English skill, without good
listening skill people will not be able to share the information or communicate well
with other people, as stated by Mendelsohn (1994) as cited in Gilakjani and Ahmadi
(2011) that listening has important role in communication in which listening takes up
40-50%; speaking, 25-30%; reading, 11-16%; and writing about 9%, meanwhile,
Harmer (2007) stated that listening is good for our students’ pronunciation too, in that
the more they listen/hear and understand English being spoken, the more they absorb
appropriate pitch, intonation, stress, and the sound of both individual words and those
which blend together in connected speech. In spite of the importance of the listening
skill, student may also face some problems in listening or find the difficulty when
listening. As stated by Buck (2001) that “listening is complex process in which
listener takes the income data, and acoustic signal and interprets it based on a wide
variety of linguistic knowledge”.
There are the factors that make listening difficult, as stated by Dunkel, 1991;
Richards, 1983; and Ur, 1984 as cited in Ratna Sitaningrum (2018), there are eight
factors that make listening difficult as follows: Clustering, Redundancy, Reduced
Form, Performance Variable, Colloquial Language, Rate of Delivery, Stress, Rhyme,
Intonation, and interaction. Maybe, there are other factors that make listening difficult
beside the eight factors above. It can be from the student or the person itself or from
external such as the environment or the tool (sound system) that is used when they
have listening practice in classroom.
There are many studies about the problem that faced by student, in listening
one of them is an article entitled Analyzing Students’ Difficulties toward Listening
Comprehension by Darti (2017). In her research, she found many factors which make
listening are difficult. They are pronunciation, speed of speech, insufficient
vocabulary, different accent of the speaker, lack of concentration, and bad quality of
the recording. Meanwhile, as stated by Houmouda ( 2013 ) that factors causing
students listening comprehension problem are categorized into different sources
including problems related to the listening text , listening problem related to task and
activity, listener problems related to the listener and teacher’s methodology.
Meanwhile, investigating student’s difficulties toward listening in listening
class help the students in listening test as well as TOEFL or EPT test many students
found difficulties in listening test, so with this study also teacher can find way to help
student to solve that problem.

Theoretical Review

Student difficulty
According to British English, student is usually someone who studying or
training at university or college. Then, according to Cambridge dictionary student is a
person who is learning at college or university. Student is a person who study in an
educational institution to get achievement or knowledge, meanwhile, difficulty is
unable to do something because does not have necessary skill or knowledge. Thus,
student difficulty is the condition that affects or interrupts students’ achievement. It
was something directly related to their cognitive that might interrupt the student
knowledge or skill and according to Darti (2017) students difficulty is something
that interrupt a person who enroll in the educational institution because do not have
skill or knowledge to do it.
The Nature of Listening
Listening is not like hearing, when you listen to someone you need to
understand and interpreted what someone say, but in hearing, you don’t need to
understand what people say.Listening is a process of receiving what the speaker says,
making and showing meaning, negotiating meaning with the speaker and answering,
and creating meaning by participation, creativity, and empathy (Gilakjani and Narjes,
2016). According to Goss (1982) listening is as a process of understanding what is
heard and organizing lexical elements to which meaning can be allocated.
Morley (1972) as cited in Gilakjani and Narjes (2016) said listening involves
auditory discrimination, aural grammar, selecting necessary information,
remembering it, and connecting it to the process between sound and form of meaning.
From many definitions above about listening, I can say listening is the ability to
understand what other people say, negotiate meaning with the speaker and answering.

Major Problem in Listening Classes

In the process of listening student has many problems such as student cannot
understand fast, lack of concentration, and soon. Listening difficulties are defined as
the internal and external characteristics that might interrupt text understanding and
real-life processing problems directly related to cognitive procedures that take place
at various stages of listening comprehension stated by (Goh, 2000). There are several
problems which may appear during or before listening. According to Azmi Bingol,
Celik, Yidliz, and Tugrul Mart (2014), there are 7 Potential problems in Listening
classes. Some of them problem as Follows:
Quality of recording material
Sometime, some teachers do not prepare or check the quality of recording
material, it is good or not before they give it to their student. According to Azmi,
Celik, Yidliz, and Tugrul (2014),” the quality of the sound system also affects
understanding of listening”. The student cannot listen to the audio clearly due to the
bad quality of the sound system and recording material.
Cultural different
Indonesian and United Kingdom has different culture. The Indonesian student
will confuse and cannot understand well when they listen to material about UK
culture. Here the instruction should give prior knowledge about the topic beforehand
(Azmi, Celik, Yidliz, and Tugrul, 2014).

Accent
There are two accents of English Language; those are American and British
English. The student who is Familiar with American accent will get confused when
they listen to British accent because a person who speaks with British accent is
different with person who speaks with American Accent. Different in here is the way
they pronoun words. Buck (2001) indicated that when listeners hear an unfamiliar
accent such as Indian English for the first time after studying only American English
will encounter critical difficulties in listening.
Unfamiliar Vocabulary
According to Hung (1998) as cited in Azmi, Celik, Yidliz, and Tugrul, (2014)
information that listening passage with known words are easier for learners to
understanding, even if them is unknown to them. So in her the more words you know,
the easier you to understand. The student who has lack vocabulary will get trouble
when they listening and there are some words that they know. It makes them fail to
understand the passage.
Length and speed of the listening
For student who has low ability in listening will get problem if they listen to long
dialogue or passage. They can keep the information that they listen and they can
become confused because of it. Azmi, Celik, Yidliz, and Tugrul (2014) stated that
“the level of the students play great a role when listening long part and keeping all the
information in the mind. It is not easy for the lower level student to listen more than
three minutes long listening then completing the desire activities”. In spite of the
length, speed of the speaker also can become the problem, according to Underwoood
(1989), speed can make listening passage difficult. If the speaker speaks too fast,
probably some student cannot catch what he or she say.
Physical conditions
According to Azmi, Celik, Yidliz and Tugrul (2014) the size of the classroom
affect the student listening. In the large classroom, students who are sitting on the
black rows may not hear the recording as student sit in the front rows. The
temperatures on the class can affect the student listening. If the class is too hot, the
student can lose their concentration because the class is too hot either the class is
cold. Noise from the outside can also disturb the student while listening; they cannot
listen to the audio well because of the noisy.
Lack of concentration
While listening, the student needs to concentration on what they listen because
they need to understand meaning of the text or the dialogue. The topic and the length
of the material also can make student lose their concentration because the topic is not
interesting for them and the recording is too long and those make them become
boring. When students find the topic of the listening is interesting, comprehending
would be easier (Azmi, Celik, Yidliz, and Tugrul, 2014).
The factors that make listening difficult
For many students, listening is a difficult skill to master. Because in listening
they should understand about word, sound and give interpreting meaning from what
they hear. According to many experts (Dunkel, 1991; Richards, 1983; and Ur, 1984),
as cited in Ratna Ritaningrum (2018), there are eight factors making listening difficult
as follows:
1. Clustering, in written language we are conditioned to attend the sentence as the
basic unit of organization. In spoken language, due to the memory limitations and
our predisposition for “chunking” or clustering, we break down speech into
smaller group of word.
2. Redundancy, spoken language unlike written language, has good deal of
redundancy. The next time we are in conversation, notice rephrasing, repetition,
elaborations, and little insertion of “I mean” and “you know”, here and there.
3. Reduced form, while spoken language does indeed contain a good deal of
redundancy, it also has many reduced forms. The reduction can be phonological,
morphological, syntactic, and pragmatic. Some student probably, miss to listen
between cannot and can’t and it make them wrong to interpreter the dialogue or
text.
4. Performance variables, it is related to the performance of the speaker when they
speak, Learners have to train themselves to listen for meaning in the midst of all
these distracting performance variables.
5. Colloquial language, learners who have been exposed to standard written English
and/or “textbook” language sometimes find it surprising and difficult to deal with
colloquial language. Idioms, slang, reduced forms, shared cultural knowledge, are
all manifested at some point of conversation.
6. Rate of delivery, when speaker speek too fast, it can be problem for the student,
especially, for student who has low ability in listening. They will be confused and
cannot catch what the speaker said.
7. Stress, rhythm, and intonation, the prosodic features of the English language are
very important for comprehension. As a stressed time language, English speech
can be a terror for some learners. As we know there are some word that have the
same pronunciation but different stress, for example word sheep and ship for
student who rarely listen to English language will get trouble with those word
8. Interaction, unless language learner’s objectives is exclusively to master some
specialized skill like monitoring radio broadcast or attending lectures, interaction
will play a large role in listening comprehension.

When person listen to other person or something, we do not only listen to what
someone say to us but also we have to understand and interpret what they say. So we
can understand and communicate or share information without problem.

Research Method

In this research the researcher used survey as the research method. The subject
or the population was the third semester ELT students of Universitas Muhammadiyah
Purwokerto and the total of the population was 102 students. The sampling technique
that researcher use in this research was purposive sample and the total of the sample
was 41 students. The researcher used questionnaire as the technique for collecting
data.

Finding and Discussion

In collecting the data of questionnaire, the researcher gives the link of the
questionnaire to the respondents and there are 20 statements in that questionnaire.
The result of the questionnaire can been seen in the table 1.1 below

Table 1.1 Result of Questionnaire

No Indicators Yes No
1. I do not understand the grammar and 20 21
the structure spoken.
2. I find it difficult to understand 37 4
listening text when the topic is
unfamiliar
3. I find it difficult to interpret the 31 10
meaning of long spoken text
4. I find it difficult to understand 17 24
reduce forms
5. I find it difficult to recognize the 20 21
signal which indicates that the
speaker is moving from one point to
another.
6. The speaker talks very fast 35 6
7. The speaker does not speak clearly 31 10
8. The speaker uses different accent 29 12
9. I am feeling worry before having a 27 14
test
10. I am afraid if the test is difficult 29 12
11. I am afraid if I am not able to answer 30 11
the question
12. I do not feel confident when I have 20 21
listening test.
13. The bad quality of sound system 30 11
14 The material is too hard 24 17
15. It is difficult for me to concentrate 39 3
with noise around
16. I am lack of focus during a test 23 18
17 I lose my concentration when the 34 7
text is too long
18. I am unable to concentration because 30 11
I think for the answer and I listen to
the dialogue at the same time.
19. I do not know what to do and how to 18 23
listen well or when I do listening test
in class.
20 I have to translate what I am 29 12
listening

The table 1.1 shows that there are many respondent still find it difficult in
listening class, although some respondent find it easy in listening class.Tabale 1.1
also shows a number the statement of the problems faced by respondents in listening
class. The statement are related with the knowledge of the respondents about the
grammar or linguistic, the speakers, anxiety, the material, and concentration of
respondent before and after have listening test.

Problem pertinent to poor grammar

The statement about grammar knowledge. There are 20 students from 41 students
have responded that they lack in grammar so it interfered their listening
comprehension in listening class. Some students found difficulties because they poor
so their ability to listening complex sentence is bad.
Problem pertinent to unfamiliar topic
From the result of the questioner above, unfamiliar topic is one of students’
problems in listening class. There are 37 students have responded yes and only 4
students have responded no. it indicates that most of student find difficult in listening
class when the topic of the material is unfamiliar for them.

Problem pertinent to interpret the meaning of long spoken text

Long spoken text was one of factor the loss of concentration of the student during
listening test. It is also make some students difficult to interpret what the speaker
said. The results from the table above, there are 31 students from 41 students have
responded yes. The student found difficult to interpret meaning or long spoken text
due to the vocabulary capity that student has.

Problem pertinent to reduce form

Some students probably confuse or cannot differentiate when they hear some
reduce form such as can’t or don’t and other reduce forms. It can be known from the
result of the questionnaire. From 41 students, there were 17 students answered yes
and 24 students answered no. it indicates there are some students find difficult with
reduce form.

Problem pertinent to material

The material is one of the problems that become student’s obstacle in listening
class, probably, the topic of the material is unfamiliar and the material is too long or
long spoken text material for student and it makes some students face difficulties in
listening, as can see in the table above there are 24 students said yes and 17 students
said no. it indicates that hard material can interred student listening in listening class.

Problem pertinent to use signal word

Signal word helps the students to graph the thread of thought in the material. The
student can predict what may come next by using signal word. From the table above
shows that some student find difficult in recognizing the signal which indicate that
speaker was moving from one point to other. From 41 students, there were 20
students answered yes and 21 students answered no. It shows that there some student
dail to recognize the signal which indicated that the speaker was moving from one
point to another.

Problem pertinent to speed of delivery

Speaker talk too fast is one of factor that interfere the students’ listening in
listening class. The table indicates that there were 35 students said yes and only 6
students said no. many students point out that when the speaker speak too fast, it is
difficult for them to understand what is being said by the speaker, even the words are
familiar for them.

Problem pertinent speaker delivery

Beside of the speed of delivery of the speaker, unclear pronunciation or how the
speaker deliver the dialogue, sometimes the student cannot hear clearly what the
speaker said because the speaker speak unclear such as low volume, weird intonation
and unclear pronunciation or probably it is because of the students’ has lass
knowledge about pronunciation so they can not recognized the word what the speaker
said. The result of questionnaire shows that there were 31 students from 41 students
answered yes and 10 students answered no. It is also one of the factors that interfere
the students’ listening in listening class.

Problem pertinent to variety accents of the speaker

The table shows that, there were 29 students said yes and 12 students said no. it
indicates that there are some students difficult to understand spoken text because he
speaker uses different accents. The students felt confused when the speaker use
British English because the students often listen to American English and also both of
them has quite different pronunciation and intonation.

Problem pertinent lack of focus

As can be seen from the table, there were 23 students answered yes and 18
students answered no. there are some student find difficult in listening class because
of lack of focus. It can be happened because students feel afraid of the listening test,
they think they will get bad score and another reason that can make the student lost
their focus.

Problem pertinent lack of concentration (long spoken text)

The result of the questionnaire that can be seen on the table, there were 34
students said yes and 7 students said no. It indicates that long spoken text can make
the student lost they concentration. Listening long spoken text make the student felt
tired because they tried to understand the unfamiliar sound, lexis, and syntax for long
stretches of time.

Problem pertinent unable to concentrate when answer and listening at the same time
Based on the table, three were 30 students have responded yes and only 11
students have responded no. it means that some of students find difficulties to
concentrate because they should search the answer and at the same time the student
should listen to the dialogue.
Problem pertinent in listening strategy
The result of the questionnaire shows that 18 students said yes and 23 students
said no. Although some people find it no problem for them, but many people still
find it as the problem in listening class. They are some students still confused when
they have listening class or test. They do not know what to do and how to listen in
English well, so that is why the students need listening strategies to improve their
listening skill
.
Problem pertinent in translating
The result of the questionnaire can be seen on the table, there were 29 out of 41
answer yes that they have difficulties in translating what they hear or during listening
test. It shows that there are some student find difficult in listening class because they
need to translate what they hear during the listening class, sometimes student cannot
answer correctly because they late to translate what they hear and the audio indicate
different number. The student needs to practice more so they can familiar with it.

Problem pertinent anxiety

Based on the result of questionnaire above, there were 27 students said yes
and 14 student said no that the students feel worry before having a listening test, and
there were 29 students have responded that they afraid if the test is difficult for them,
and also there were 30 students have responded that they feel afraid if they cannot
answer the question, other result from the questionnaire shows that there were 20
students answered yes and 21 students answered no that they do not feel confident
when they have listening test. It can be seen that psychology factor can interfered the
students’ listening in listening class.

Problem pertinent poor quality of equipment

Another problem connected with listening was poor quality of the equipment. The
table indicates that there were 30 students said yes and 11 students said no. majority
of students have responded that the difficulties that they faced in listening class
because of poor quality tape or disks. Poor quality of tape will make sounds of the
speaker is not clear and make the student cannot hear well and also it makes the
student loss of their concentration.

Problem pertinent noise around

Noise around is one of an obstacle in listening class. When the noise in the room
and poor preparation of the lab, it will make the students cannot concentration on
listening to the recording material. Table indicate that there were 39 students said yes
and only 2 students said no. it is sure that noise around can disturb of students’
listening in listening class.
CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

Conclusion

The aim of this study was to find out and describe the difficulties that third
students of English Teaching Department of Universitas Muhammadiyah Purwokerto
faced in listening class. Based on the data analyzes in chapter IV, it can be concluded
that:
There are some students still have problems in listening class, each students has
their problems in listening class. There are some problems that students faced in
listening class that were found in analyzing of students’ problem in listening class
from the result of questionnaire: poor grammar knowledge, variety of accents, lack of
concentration, speed of delivery, anxiety, noisy, lack of focus, unfamiliar topic,
inability to apply listening strategy, bad quality of recording. It is true that the
problems in listening faced by student’ not only from the students themselves or
listener but also from the content of material, the speaker, and environment or
physical setting.
Suggestion

Based on the result of the study formerly, listening is one of difficult skills for
student master it as foreign language learners even though they are students in
English Education Department. The student needs to study hard and often to practice
to improve the listening skill. Accordingly, the researcher offers the following
suggestions:
The students as the listeners
The students need to practice or train their listening at home intensively in
order to help them to overcome their problem in listening and also to improve their
listening ability. They need to always listening various accents by listening to the
English songs or watching movie. It also will help them to improve their vocabulary
and also do not forget to keep positive thinking of your listening test.
The lecture of English
The lectures need to be aware about students’ psychological. Anxiety will
interrupt in their learning and it indicates as barrier in their listening test. The lecture
also should prepare the good material that the topic or them of the material is familiar
for them , the equipment and also the lectures find a good strategy to teach in order to
make the students become a better listener.
 REFERENCES

Abidin,M.J.Z. & Juan,X.W. (2013) . English Listening Cpmprehension Problems of

Students From China Learning English in Malaysia, Vol 13, April,
http://languageinindia.com/april2013/chinastudentsenglishfinal.pdf. ( Retrieved on
October 15th, 2019).

Azmi, B.M., Celik, B., Yidliz, N., & Tungrul,M.C. (2014). Listening Comprehension
Difficulties Encountered by Students in Second Language Learning Class. Journal of
Educational and Instructional Studies in the World, Vol 4, Issue 4.

Buck, G. (2001) . Assessing Listening. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Darti,A. (2017) . A. Analyzing Students’ Difficulties Toward Listening

Comprehension, English Teaching Learning and Research Journal, Vol 3, No2.

Gilakjani, A.P. & Sabouri, N.B. (2016) . Learners’ Listening Comprehension

Difficulties in English Languge Learning: A Literature Review. English Languge
Teaching, Vol 9, No 6.

Gilakjani, A.P. & Ahmadi, M.R. (2011) . A Study of Factors Affecting EFL Learners’
English Listening Comprehension and the Strategies for Improvement. Journal of
Language Teaching and Research, Vol 2, No. 5.

Goh, C. (1999) . A Cognitive Perpective on Language Learners’ Listening

Comprehension Problems. Sytem, 28.

Hamouda, A. (2013). An Investigation of listening Comprehension

ProblemsEncountered by Saudi Students in the EL Listening Classroom. HR
Mars:International Journal of Academic Research in Progressive and Development,
vol.2.

Harmer, J. (2007) . How to Teach English. United Kingdom Pear-son Education.

Ritaningrum,R. (2018) . Investigating Reasons Why Listening in English is Difficult:

Voce from foreign Language Learners, The Asian EFL Journal, Vol 20, Issue 11.

Singarimbun Masri, Efendi Sofia. (2019) . Metode Penelitian Survey. Jakarta: LP3es.

Suwartono. (2014) . Dasar-Dasar Metodologi Penelitian. Yogyakarta: ANDI

OFFSET.
Taherdoost, H. (2016) . Sampling Method in Research Methodology; How to choose
a sampling Technique for Research. International Journal of Academic Researchin
Management, Vol 5, No.2.