RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT FOR ENGLISH USAGE THROUGH SPEAKING IN A LARGER SCHOOL ENVIRONMENT


ENGLISH REVIEW: Journal of English Education ISSN 2301-7554
Vol. 1, Issue 1, December 2012 http://journal.uniku.ac.id/index.php/ERJEE

ANALYSIS OF BARRIERS IN LISTENING COMPREHENSION
AMONG JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

Setia Muljanto
Department of English Education, STKIP Garut, Indonesia

E-mail: tanto_sm@yahoo.com

APA Citation: Muljanto, S. (2012). Analysis of barriers in listening comprehension among
junior high school students. English Review: Journal of English Education, 1(1),
97-103

Received: 09-08-2012 Accepted: 22-10-2012 Published: 01-12-2012

Abstract: This research paper identifies barriers and difficulties in listening comprehension
faced by junior high school students. The research questions were what barriers did
students encounter and how did they used strategies to overcome those barriers. This
study used a qualitative method and was a case study involving 40 students and one
English teacher. The data were obtained by ways of conducting a test of listening taken
from TOEIC test. The tests indicated that the results scores were not quite satisfactory. This
is primarily caused by speech delivery of the native speaker which was too fast. This means
that students faced listening barriers especially in processing information. The data also
indicated that students were also nervous when doing the test as habitual barrier.
Strategies used to overcome these barriers are by msaking students get used to listen and
use English and making them familiar with certain contexts in real life.
Keywords: listening barriers, listening comprehension, TOEIC test.

INTRODUCTION
English is one of important

subjects to study for junior high school
students in Indonesia. Indonesian
Decree No. 20, 2003 on National
Education System verse 37 states that
English is an international language
which is essential for international
communication. Hence, the government
of Indonesia includes English as one of
the subjects to be tested in the national
examination for junior high school,
along with Mathematics and the
Indonesian language.

The School-based Curricullum
for junior high school also states that
English teaching is conducted in 4 lesson
hours in a week which consists of 40
minutes teaching and learning in each
hour. But there is no exact time
allocation for each listening, speaking,
reading and writing skill. On the whole

for each 7th through 9th grade, English
teaching spends about 36 weeks of
effective schooling period. The sum of
lesson hours for English is the same with
those allocated for Mathematics and
Indonesian Language.

In a study about listening
comprehension by Suryanti (2002), it
was indicated that listening was indeed
a difficult subject for students to learn.
Another study by Chen (2005), explored
the barriers confronted by the EFL
(English as a Foreign Language) learners
while comprehending listening during a
training program. The findings indicated
that the obstacles confronted by the
learners were multi faceted (Chen,
20051). She found out that listening
barriers were associated with the
internal factors of learners such as their
affective statuses, listening habit,
information processing capacities,

mailto:tanto_sm@yahoo.com


SETIA MULJANTO
Analysis Of Barriers In Listening Comprehension Among Junior High School Students

English proficiencies and their beliefs
about their listening abilities. Other
barriers were concerned with the nature
of listening strategies and the listening
material used.

This research explored the barriers
in listening comprehension experienced
by 9th grade students identified as the
source of obstacles the hearer
experiences in getting the right message
from the spoken language. Spoken
language has distinct characters from
writen language. These differences may
cause barriers in listening
comprehension. Eight characteristics of
spoken language which are adapted
from several sources (Dunkel, 1991;
Richards, 1983; Ur, 1984; in Brown
2001:252-254) are as follows.

The first characteristic of spoken
language is clustering, that is breaking
down speech into smaller groups of
words. The second is redundancy like
rephrasing, repetitions, elaborations, and
little insertions of “I mean” and “you
know.” The third is reduced forms like
phonological, morphological, syntactic,
and pragmatic reduction (Brown, 2001:
253). The fourth is performance variables
such as hesitations, false starts, pauses,
and corrections. The fifth is colloquial
language like idioms, slang, reduced
forms, and shared cultural knowledge.
The sixth is rate of delivery which
indicates number and length of pauses
used by a speaker. The seventh
characteristic is stress, rhythm, and
intonation which are very important
because English is a stress-timed
language. And the eighth characteristic
is interaction which rules include
negotiation, clarification, attending
signals, turn-taking, and topic
nomination, maintenance, and
termination.

Chen’s study concerned with
barriers in learning strategies in listening
comprehension. She categorized
listening barriers into seven categories;
affective, habitual, information
processing, English proficiency, strategic,
belief, and material barriers (Chen, 2005).
These barriers are the foundation to
conduct this research.

METHOD
The focus in this research is

students’ barriers in listening
comprehension. To find out their
listening barriers the research used
qualitative research. As mentioned by
Denzin and Lincoln, qualitative research
involves an interpretive, naturalistic
approach to its subject matter. This
means that qualitative research studies
things in their natural settings,
attempting to make sense of, or interpret,
phenomena in terms of the meanings
people bring to them (Denzin and
Lincoln in Gall, Gall and Borg, 2003, p.
24).

The primary data in this research
were obtained from two kinds of sources.
They were questionnaire and interview.
The first source of data came from the
questionnaires followed by the second
source that was in-depth interview with
the students and their teacher to explore
insight toward this research. The
interview also served as a tool to cross
check the data from questionnaire.

The data from questionnaire and
interview were the primary data which
would be used as a mechanism of
analysis of the barriers and the TOEIC
test serves as secondary data to support
the questionnaire.

This research was conducted in a
private junior high school in Bandung,
West Java. Meanwhile the participants of
this research were one English teacher



ENGLISH REVIEW: Journal of English Education ISSN 2301-7554
Vol. 1, Issue 1, December 2012 http://journal.uniku.ac.id/index.php/ERJEE

and one class of 9th grade students which
consisted of 40 students in a private
junior high school in Bandung in
academic year 2006-2007. Those students
were chosen from five classes of ninth
grade students. From each class there
were eight representatives which were
recommended by their English teachers.
The 40 students were expected to
represent the number of population of
each class.

Questionnaire used in this
research was a written questionnaire
which consisted of thirty three items and
two open ended questions. Respondents
were expected to record a written or
typed response to each questionnaire
items to find out their perception
towards listening comprehension. Those
options are given according to Likert
scale (attitude scale) procedure which
elicits informants’ subjective responses
(Wray, Trott and Bloomer, 1998:175).

Interview used for this study was
a semi structured interview (Gall, Gall
and Borg, 2003) in which questions by
the interviewer were based on a list of
questions prepared. In this research the
interviews were conducted following the
interview guidelines which had been set
before. Six respondents were taken as
sample for interview. There were
fourteen pairs who were consistent with
their result from TOEIC test 1 and 2. A
pair of students who joined in consistent
groups, higher, middle and lower level,
were chosen for the sample. The first
two students belonged to the consistent
groups taken as sample for interview in
this study.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
From the data collection

involving TOEIC test, distribution of
questionnaire and interview to the
respondent, the analysis for those data

was using reflective analysis method.
Reflective analysis is a process in which
the researcher relies primarily on
intuition and judgment in order to
portray or evaluate the phenomena
being studied (Gall, Gall and Borg, 2003).

The primary data from the
questionnaire obtained from the
respondents were presented in the form
of table. Those tables were arranged
according to listening barriers categories.
Eight tables of those categories were
used to present data in a form of
frequency distribution of the responses
by using percentage formula:

f
P = --- X 100%

n

P in this formula means the result
of percentage, f means the number of
responses, and n means the number of
the whole responses (Sudjana, 2001:129).

Identifying listening barriers
concern with recognizing the obstacles
or difficulties in listening comprehension
found in the data from the respondents.
In this case recognizing categories of
listening barriers are identifying those as
mentioned in Chen (2005) and Janusik
(2006).

After the process of identification,
“each data was categorized into eight
major categories of barriers, either
affective, habitual, information
processing, English proficiency, strategic,
material, belief” (Chen, 2005, p. 9-10) or
distraction barriers (Janusik, 2006).

The eight categories of barriers
were distributed into thirty three
questionnaire statements. To obtain data
from those statements, students chose
the most appropriate answer according
to their condition during the listening
comprehension test from five options.



SETIA MULJANTO
Analysis Of Barriers In Listening Comprehension Among Junior High School Students

The result of TOEIC Test which
was far from satisfactory indicated
several barriers which might be
encountered by students in listening
comprehension. Barriers in listening
were shown by result of TOEIC test
which was not quite satisfactory. From
twenty items in TOEIC listening section
given during the first test, on the average
students could only answer about 8.5 or
42.5%. On the second test the average
number of the items answered correctly
on the test was 8.75 or 43.75% .

The questionnaires were
distributed to 40 respondents on 28th of
November 2006. Data from
questionnaire indicated that there were
several barriers students encountered in
listening comprehension.To follow the

classification of listening barriers, the
listening barriers students encountered
will be classified into; affective, habitual,
information processing, English
proficiency, strategic, belief, material
barriers and distraction barriers.

The followings are findings from
questionnaires which are put into
categories of listening barriers. They are
put that way so that it is easier for the
researcher to explain the findings.

Affective barriers are defined as
students’ attitudes such as anxiety,
distress, frustration and resistance which
can influence their listening
comprehension. Students’ responses to
affective barriers’ statements were
recorded as follows.

Table 1. Respondents’ answer to affective barriers’ item questions

Item
s
No.

Questions
Range of options

1 2 3 4 5
F % F % F % F % F %

1
I feel nervous when
listening to questions in
English

2 5 7 17.5 24 60 6 15 1 2.5

2
I just want to give up
when listening to
questions in English

7 17.5 14 35 17 42.5 2 5 0 0

3
I don’t like English
lesson

11 27.5 18 45 10 25 1 2.5 0 0

4

I’m not optimistic in
facing national
examination because
there will be listening
section on the test

4 10 16 40 11 27.5 7 17.5 2 5

Based on the table above, 33 out
of 40 respondents seemed to be nervous
during listening comprehension test
(77.5%). This is in line with the affective
dimension as mentioned in Mac Intyre
and Noels (1996, in Chen 2005) that puts
forward affective variables including
anxiety, motivation, attitude, etc as
aspects that affect students’ performance
in listening comprehension. Despite

nervousness, the surprising fact was that
95 % of respondents or 38 pupils did not
want to give up easily in doing the
listening test.

The results from the
questionnaires showed that, 92.5% of
respondents often lost their
concentration when listening to verbal
question. With regard to students
understanding of individual word, the



ENGLISH REVIEW: Journal of English Education ISSN 2301-7554
Vol. 1, Issue 1, December 2012 http://journal.uniku.ac.id/index.php/ERJEE

data from questionnaire indicated that
they still had some difficulties in this
aspect. The result showed 95% of
respondents were having trouble in
understanding every word in listening
test though they had listened carefully to
the text. Concerning vocabulary practice,
75% of respondents stated that if they
had vocabulary practice, their burden
during listening would be lessened.

Information processing barriers
deals with students’ ability to process
the information from the utterances they
have heard from the speaker. The
respondents found that the speaker
spoke too fast.

The ability in guessing the
context in listening comprehension was
one of important parts in listening, there
were 90% of the respondents who tried
to guess the context of questions by
pictures during the test. This is in line
with Richard (1990) and Rost (1994)
taxonomy of general listening skills (in
Rost, 2002:119).

English proficiency barriers
concern with what students’ think of
their English competences and whether
these competences help them during
listening test.

It was found that 87.5% of
respondents felt unfamiliar with the
speaker’s accent in the listening test. This
was also shown in Chen study which
indicates some of her respondents’
problems with the accent of native
speaker (2002:10).

In this study all respondents
were having difficulties in remembering
the words that the speaker was saying.
There were also 100% of the respondents
who recognized the words in listening
test but forgot their meaning.

The followings are findings from
interview which are put into categories
of listening barriers. They are put that

way so that it is easier for the researcher
to explain the findings.

During the interview the teacher
expressed her difficulty in teaching
listening. This is Mrs. SaA’s excerpt of
interview:

“In my opinion, emm… teaching
listening is so difficult because I have to
emm… what is it… I have to teach to
the students of how to concentrate, how
to receive information, to focus on the
sound while they are listening to the
sound, listening (to the) material
itself.”She said clearly that there are a lot
of factors which caused difficulties in
teaching listening materials to the
students.

Despite barriers mentioned by
respondents during the interview above
and barriers stated in the questionnaire,
one of the students, Elr still showed her
optimism in facing listening in the up
coming English national examination
because for her it was a challenge.

The barriers related with material
of listening were expressed in these
following interview excerpts by San and
Res.
San : “Yes… I think (the material taught

in listening classes) help a little.”
Res : “Emm… it’s good. There’re

loudspeakers (in the lab),
everything that students need to
listen and to speak is very
complete.”

Apart from separate hours for
listening and speaking lesson, Res
suggested more hour lesson for
practicing listening. San added that
listening material given in the language
lab has proven to be useful for the
students in facing listening test.

The following is the example of
distraction barriers that indicates that
Agg distracted when there were a lot of
noises from other students who didn’t



SETIA MULJANTO
Analysis Of Barriers In Listening Comprehension Among Junior High School Students

pay attention during listening test, while
other student, Des often lose his
concentration when some students
around him were asking for answers.

Agg : “I feel distracted when there are
a lot of noises from other students
who didn’t pay attention (to the
listening test)”

Spoken English materials are
actually abundant. There are TV
programs like news, quizes, films, songs
or other activities that use English. This
is also supported by students’ answers
in the questionnaire. Students can
actually learn from them as well as be
entertained by them. Chen respondents
also trained themselves by listening to
the news and watching movies to
increase their skill in listening (Chen,
2005:10).

From the interview of six
respondents found the applied strategies
such as using music when they were
practicing listening at home (Res, Fit and
Yuy). Songs in English are useful for
practicing English pronunciation, tone,
recognizing slang words, etc.

CONCLUSION
With regards to the first research

question, this study supports the
findings of the previous research in
listening barriers. There are eight
barriers that students encounter during
listening comprehension. First, Affective
barriers, most students seemed to feel
nervous but were optimistic when
listening to questions in listening
comprehension. Second, Habitual
barriers, students often lost their
concentration when listening to the
spoken question, though they always
tried to listen carefully, but they still had
trouble in understanding every word.

Third, Information processing
barriers, students believed that the
speaker spoke too fast during listening
comprehension test and as a result they
got low scores in the listening
comprehension tests. English proficiency
barriers, students did not understand the
accent of the speaker and they agreed to
the assumption that they have trouble in
memorizing the words that the speaker
said, they weren’t familiar with some
English words, sometimes forgot the
meaning of the words and felt that their
English grammar knowledge is not good
enough.

Fourth, the strategic barriers,
most respondents stated that they
sometimes forgot to apply the
knowledge of answering listening
comprehension questions and they also
thought that there were a number of
rules and methods to be remembered
when they tried to answer the listening
comprehension questions. Fifth, Belief
barriers, some of the students felt that
even though they knew they have a
weakness in listening, they did not know
how to overcome the problems. So, they
agreed if listening comprehension test
was taken out of the national
examination test rather than taking a risk
of failure during national examination
test.

Sixth, material barriers, students
felt difficult in getting the main idea
from the text, they felt they couldn’t
remember the words because they
unfamiliar with the spoken text’s topic
or theme, the level of the test was
difficult, the text was long. But they did
not feel that the materials given during
listening lesson was the cause in the
failure of understanding listening
comprehension. Seventh, distraction
barriers, students agreed that
handphone rings or noises from other



ENGLISH REVIEW: Journal of English Education ISSN 2301-7554
Vol. 1, Issue 1, December 2012 http://journal.uniku.ac.id/index.php/ERJEE

students often made them lost
concentration. And further the students
think that the limited school equipments
as a barrier in a listening comprehension.

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