TEACHING CRITICAL LISTENING Indonesian EFL Journal, Volume 1 (1) January 2015ISSN 2252-7427 TEACHING CRITICAL LISTENING TO YOUNG LEARNERS IN INDONESIAN EFL CONTEXT Fetty Poerwita SaryTelkom University, IndonesiaEmail: f.poerwitasary@gmail.comAPA citation: Sari, F. P. (2015). Teaching critical listening to young learners in Indonesian EFL context. Indonesian EFL Journal, 1(1), 41-47Received: 01-02-2014 Accepted: 11-03-2014 Published: 01-01-2015 Abstract: The teaching of English in Indonesia includes four skills—listening, speaking, reading, andwriting, and two language components—vocabulary and grammar. Listening is one of the fourlanguage skills that have an important role in teaching of English in our country. In the context of earlychildhood education—including the teaching of English in elementary school—there has been apersistent misconception about how children learn—including learning a foreign language. To ensuresuccess in learning a foreign language, children should have a great deal of exposure to, engagement in,and support for the language they are learning. Therefore, the aims of the study are to know theresponse of the young learners in learning listening skill through storytelling and whether they canapply the critical listening into the other language skills—speaking, reading, and writing. The subjectsin this study are students of level 3 in one of English course in Bandung-Indonesia. Their ages arearound 9 -12 years old. The data are gathered from activities in the classroom, observation, andinterviews. This reseach provides steps of critical listening activities. The results shows 1) theactivities are sucessfully help the students to sharpen their listening skill and 2) most of the studentscan apply the listening skills to the other skills. In the end of this study, the pedagogical implicationswere provided. Keywords: critical listening, young learners, Indonesian EFLcontext. INTRODUCTIONThe teaching of English in Indonesiaincludes four skills—listening, speaking,reading, and writing, and two languagecomponents—vocabulary and grammar.Listening is one of the four language skillsthat have an important role in teaching ofEnglish in our country. What is listening?According to Howat and Dakin (1974),listening is the ability to identify andunderstand what others are saying. Thisinvolves understanding a speaker’s accent orpronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, andgrasping the meaning. Call (1985) refers tolistening as one of the four skills that plays avery important role at the beginning stage oflanguage acquisition.The basic idea why we teach listening isthat it is impossible the people to be able tospeak without listening first. As peoplelearning their mother tongue, children listento other people around them. For example,their mother and father, before they begin to speak. They begin to speak after a period oftime called “silent period” (Krashen, 1983).Meanwhile, Barker et al. (1980) asquoted by Bozik (1986) shows that 70percent of our life waking day communicating;14 percent of that time is spent writing, 17percent reading, 16 percent speaking, and 53percent listening. But actually, until now,listening has attracted the least attentionamong the four skills. This neglect may comefrom the fact that listening is considered apassive skill and from the belief that merelyexposing students to the spoken language isadequate in developing the skill (Call, 1985).Another reason is that a teaching learningprocess often gives the impression thatteachers are teaching listening when in factthey are teaching other skills, e.g. speaking(Persulessi: 1988). That is why, listeningshould be taught proportionally and have aplace in the teaching of English in our country.In actuality, as we have learned fromresearch, children have their own world, 41 mailto:f.poerwitasary@gmail.com Fetty Poerwita Sary Teaching Critical Listening toYoung Learners in Indonesian EFLContext which is far different that of adults. Morespecifically, children have their own cultureand learning preferences. That is, accordingto Musthafa (2002), children learn by way ofphysical activities (i.e. hands on experiences)in the context of doing things embedded intheir daily lives, both individually and socially.Children have a relatively short attentionspan, and they learn with the motive ofmeeting goals. This uniquely child-like waysof doing things call for a certainmethodological style, which emphasizesconcrete activities, social interaction andseries of little bits of action-based learningsessions packaged in various models ofdelivery.To ensure success in learning a foreignlanguage, children should have a great deal ofexposure to, engagement in, and support forthe language they are learning. This meansthat children should have ampleopportunities to hear and see the Englishlanguage being used for communicativepurposes in their social environment.Additionally, children themselves must haveopportunities to use English—especially inthe context of learning the language—forsome communicative purposes. To enhancetheir learning, children should also be giventhe necessary support so that they feel thatwhat they are learning is useful andinteresting.Basically, listening has different meaningfrom hearing. The former needs to make aneffort to hear somebody or something whilethe later perceives sounds with ears. “Welisten carefully but heard nothing.” From thesentence, it seems that listening is always anactive process, while hearing can be thoughtas passive condition (Underwood, 1989).Listening is an active process in whichthe listener tries to identify the sound,decodes them, and understands the meaningof the words by means of context. Listening isnot a passive skill since it requires fullparticipation and the undivided attention ofthe listener (Morley, 1984). Therefore, whenthe nature of the skill is understood, theprocess becomes existing. In other words,listening involves an active participation onthe part of the listener. The listener cannotunderstand well what is said to him unless he first of all recognizes the sound, words,phrases, and the structure of the foreignlanguage, and then selects the main points ofthe message. Moreover, listening is a creativeskill. In order to comprehend the soundsfalling on someone’s ears, he takes the rawmaterial of words, arrangement of words, andthe rise and fall of the voice, and from thismaterial, he creates a significant. Thesignificant which comes from the listener’sside is dependent on three factors. They are(1) linguistic factors, (2) situational context,and (3) intentions of the speaker (Rivers,1981)In the strategy of teaching listening, it isnecessary for the teachers to consider somespecific questions about listening in order tomake the process of teaching listening runswell. Those questions are: What factors affectgood listening? What are the characteristicsof “real-life” listening? What are the manythings listeners listen for? What are someprinciples of designing listening techniques?How can listening techniques be interactive?What are some common techniques forteaching listening?Language learning is largely process ofdeveloping automatic cognitive processes, oflearning procedural knowledge, and this alsooccurs in listening process. The success inlanguage learning is to get students toactivate the process and skills they usedealing with the complex world around them.What this all means is that there is a need fortwo different types of listening practice: (1)pre-communicative listening practice and (2)real communicative listening practice(Littlewood, 1981)In the pre-communicative listeningpractice, there are some pre-listeningactivities that can be done. These pre-listening activities are intended to facilitatestudents with the background knowledge thatmay help them to comprehend the spokentext such as discussing the topic, brain-storming ideas, asking general ideas aboutthe topic, or anything else to orient andprepare them for what they will hear, so theywill be able to use their inference and predictskills to understand the spoken texts.In communicative listening practice,students are engaged in communicative 42 Indonesian EFL Journal, Volume 1 (1) January 2015ISSN 2252-7427 practice. It is the most important listeningactivity. It is believed that learning languageis learning to use it for meaningfulcommunication, and this applies to alllanguage skills, not just listening.Communication takes place wheninformation is conveyed from one personwho has it, to another person who doesn’t.This means that communicative languagepractice, the emphasis is not on the language,but on the content of communication.Learners must listen carefully because theywant to know what is being said.In teaching listening, a teacher must becareful not to go to extremes, either by beingconcerned too exclusively with theorieswithout thinking about their application toteaching, or by obstinately following frozenroutines—opening text-book and explainingnew words, playing the tape recorder, andasking/answering questions. It is essential fora teacher to have an overall understanding ofwhat listening is, why it is difficult to foreign-language learners, and what some solutionsmay be (Yagang, 1993). The vital question ishow to bridge the gap between an analysis oflistening and actual classroom teaching.Some teachers think that listening is theeasiest skill to teach, whereas most studentsthink it is the most difficult to improve. Thiscontradiction tells that there are somethingabout teaching listening that need to beexplored. Perhaps those who say it is “theeasiest to teach” means that it does notrequire much painstaking lesson preparationand all they need to do is play the tapes andtest the students. But is there nothing more toteaching listening than testing? Teachersmust find out all they can about how listeningcan be improved and what activities areuseful to this end and then use thisknowledge and these activities in their ownclassroom.The importance of listening in languagelearning should by now be quite apparent. Inthe process of teaching and learning listening,teachers play an important role for theirstudents’ success. The success of teachinglistening much depends on the teachers.Teachers are able to play a role as managersthat organize the process of teaching. If the goal of communicative languageteaching (CLT) is to have students becomecommunicative competence (Larsen-Freeman,1986), then what role should the teacher playin enabling their students to becomecommunicative competence in listening? Inthis case, Rubin (1990) acknowledges that ateacher may have a role of a mediator for thestudents in the classroom activities that helpstudents grasp the understanding of thespoken text they hear. If the teacher fulfillsthis role in the listening class, students willbecome more efficient and critical listeners.There are many activities that we can useto teach listening to young learners such asthrough stories, song, rhymes, finger plays etc.But in this research I only apply one of themthat is by using stories. Stories for childrenexist in every country and every culture.Stories entertain children, educate them, andgive them their cultural ability.In the current literature, argumentabound which encourage us to exploit thechildren’s natural abilities for learning ratherthan to impose our own adult approach tolearning. The thinking is based on thefollowing assumptions: children’s ability tograsp meaning; children’s creative use oflimited language resources; children’scapacity for indirect learning; children’sinstinct for fun and play; the role ofimagination. All these five elements arecombined in the use of stories. AndrewWright as quoted by Musthafa (2002), anexpert on children’s literature, oncecommented on children’s ‘hunger’ for storiesthat “We allneedstories forourmindsaswe need food forourbodies…Storiesare particularly important in the livesof our children: storieshelpchildren tounderstand theirworld andshare it withothers. Children’s hunger for stories is constant.Every time they enter theclassroomtheyenterwithaneed for stories.”Additionally, in the context of earlychildhood education—including the teachingof English in elementary school—there hasbeen a persistent misconception about howchildren learn—including learning a foreignlanguage. That is, according to Musthafa(2002), there has been widely-held wrongassumption that children learn things 43 Fetty Poerwita Sary Teaching Critical Listening toYoung Learners in Indonesian EFLContext (including English) exactly the same wayadult do. This misconception has resulted in afar-reaching set of problems. That is, teacherstend to approach the teaching-learningprocess and employ teaching methods andtechniques for the teaching of English foryoung learners in an exactly the same way asthey would teach adult learners. Thismismatch can surely lead to failure.The research questions then areformulated as follows:1. Do children feel more comfortable inlearning listening through stories thanonly listen to the tape-recorder and thenanswer the question?2. Can they apply the critical listening intothe other language skills—speaking,reading, and writing? METHOD Subject ofResearchThe subjects in this study are elementarystudents who take English Course in one ofEnglish course for children in BandungIndonesia. There are 6 levels in the EnglishCourse, but I took student samples from level3. I will take seven students (4 females and 3males). Their ages are around 9 -12 years old.There are several reason for choosing thisparticular subjects. First, their priorknowledge of English is still average (theirability is not too fluent but they have learnedand known English at their school). Second,because I expected to make a communicativeclassroom in teaching learning. The studywill utilize a set of methods to get the data,relying on activities in the classroom,observation, and interviews. ProcedureUsually, the listening activity in the classis 1) only playing the cassette, asking thestudents to listen to it carefully and at the endthe students will be asked several question ofwhat they have heard from the cassette; 2)teachers play the cassette, ask the students topronounce the words that they heard from it,memorize the written form of the words, andthe last they are given a test. It happens allthe time.For this research, I got the opportunity tosubstitute one of the teachers to teach in her class for a month (4 meetings). I read a shortstories for two meetings and longer storiesfor the next two meetings. Of course I have tobe very expressive when I became astoryteller. The pictures in the storybook andmy expression help the students tounderstand the vocabulary and the story.They can see and hear the English they havelearned come alive through storybookcharacters. I reread the story often and eachtime I reread the story, I stop on a differentpage, talk about the picture, ask questionsand encourage them to answer in their ownwords.When I did these activities, I follow somesuggestions: before, during, and after I readthe story as proposed by Musthafa (2002) asfollows: Before thestory - I practiced reading the story before Iread it to students - I thought of a different voice that I coulduse for each character - I practiced the intonation; for example: ifthe child in the story is sad, I make myvoice sound sad. - I used the cover of the storybook to helpchildren learn to predict what the storywould be about. - As I read the title and run my fingerunder it, I asked them to think what thestory would be about, I also asked theirpredictions and wrote their predictionon the board. During theStory - I held the book so they can see thepictures on the pages. - I read the story to them in a fun way,using different voices and showing that Iwas enjoying it. Then, I went back tocheck children’s predictions. - I talked about the pictures and showedthem how looking at the pictures couldhelp them understand what washappening. - When I got to a part that said “He said”or “She said”, I wanted the understoodwho was talking. 44 Indonesian EFL Journal, Volume 1 (1) January 2015ISSN 2252-7427 After thestory - I quickly reviewed what had happened inthe story. Then I asked them questionsabout things that happened in the storyto check their understanding. - After I read the story the first time, Iwent back to check children’spredictions. - I invited children to show theirunderstanding through drawing, actingout the story, or doing an art project. - I gave them time to talk about theirprojects or drawing. I asked them if theyever did anything that was likesomething that happened in the story. ObservationThe observation process was carriedbefore I started my research. I observed howthe teacher taught the students, the facilitiesto support the students in learning English,the students’ response to the teachingmethod conveyed by the teachers. InterviewsStudents will also be interviewed abouthow they feel in doing the activities, as thesemay be their first experience in learning EFL.Do they feel more comfortable in learninglistening through stories than only listen tothe tape-recorder and then answer thequestion? Which situation is more facilitatingthrough stories or cassettes? And thestrategies they use to apply the criticallistening into the other language skills—speaking, reading, and writing. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONBased on my observation about theregular teaching-learning activity at theEnglish course, I made 4 categories: ConduciveclassroomenvironmentWhy I put this into one of the categories?According to Harmer (2001), young learnershave very special characteristics, goodteachers at this level need to provide a richdiet of learning experiences whichencourages their students to get informationfrom a variety of sources. They need to workwith their students individually and in groupsdeveloping good relationships. They need to plan a range of activities for a given timeperiod, and be flexible enough to move on tothe next exercise when they see theirstudents getting bored.Actually, what is an ideal and conduciveclassroom for young learners? First of all theclassroom are supposed to be bright andcolorful, with windows the children can seeout of, and with enough room for differentactivities to be taking place. Teachers mightexpect them to be working in groups indifferent parts of the classroom, changingtheir activity every ten minutes or so.Halliwell (1992) as quoted by Harmer (2001)write, ‘not talking about classrooms wherechildren spend all their time sitting still inrows or talking only to the teacher’.Even though, the explanation aboveshows an ideal and conducive classroom, itdoes not mean that every course can fulfillthat because it needs extra budget to makethe class like that. Unfortunately, I could notfind a description of a conducive classroom inthis English Course. The class is sometimestoo small to accommodate students. Inseveral classes, there are no window, do nothave enough ventilation, and lack of sunlight. Interactionbetween teacher andstudentsAccording to Brown (2001), interactionis the collaborative exchange of thoughts,feelings, or ideas between two or morepeople, resulting in reciprocal effect on eachother. Theories of communicativecompetence emphasize the importance ofinteraction as human beings use language invarious context to “negotiate” meaning, orsimply stated, to get an idea out of oneperson’s head and into the head of anotherperson and vice versa.From the very beginning of languagestudy, classroom should be interactive. Rivers(1987) as quoted by Brown (2001) puts itthis way: Through interaction, students can increase their language storeas they listen to or read authentic linguistic material, or even theoutput of their fellow students in discussions, skits, joint problem-solving tasks, or dialogue journals. In interaction, students can use all they possess of the language—all they have learned or casually absorbed—in real-life 45 Fetty Poerwita Sary Teaching Critical Listening toYoung Learners in Indonesian EFLContext exchanges. …Even at an elementary stage, they learn in this way to exploit theelasticity of language.To make an interaction happens in theclassroom, teacher should play as a controller,director, manager, facilitator, and resource.Because the learners still felt unsatisfactorywhen they learned English especially learninglistening, I concluded that the teachers in theEnglish Course were still unable to play roleof interactive teacher. Students’ strategies in learning listeningLearning strategies are steps taken bystudents to enhance their own learning(Oxford, 1990), while Wenden (1987) definesthat learning strategies are specific mentalsteps or operations learners implement tolearn. Strategies are especially important forlanguage learning because they are tools foractive, self-directed involvement, which isessential for developing communicativecompetence. Appropriate language learningstrategies result in improved proficiency andgreater self-confidence. It is also happenedwhen students use the strategies in listening.From my observation, I concluded thatwith an attractive way of teaching, studentscould get their self-confidence when theylearn EFL. In fact, they admitted that they feelbored when they learned listening. They justlistened to the cassette and then answeredthe question but they felt interested whenthey were given another activities. Students’ response to thestoryA response-based view of the role ofchildren’s literature in the elementaryclassroom has recently been brought to theattention of educators (Galda, 1988 as quotedby Hancock, 1992). Rosenblatt (1991) hasintroduced us to an aesthetic and an efferentreading. When our students’ emotion isinvolved in appreciating literature and thenthey enjoy it, it means that they have anaesthetic response.In my observation, when they weregiven a story the students were veryresponsive and could cooperate in makinginteraction through the activities. In myopinion, this activity can be applied in theclassroom by the teachers at The English Course. The research activity that I conductedthere is just to give other option of teaching inthe classroom.Through the using story activity,students were successful in following theinstruction. I conclude that: They understandwhat was the story about. When I asked themfor feedback, they always gave a positiveresponse. They were also able to retell thestory with their own words. It shows theirability in speaking. They can recognize thecharacters in the story. They enjoy theexcitement in the story. They can memorizethe vocabularies on the story easily. They canrecords and the words and able to write themin a written text. It shows their ability towrite. They can absorb the moral messagesfrom the story. It shows their ability to givean aesthetic response. In discussing the story,they can make an interaction with me as afacilitator in the class CONCLUSIONFrom my observation and findings Ifound in the classroom, I can conclude thatlistening activity through story improve andhelp the students to learn English in fun way.The students can apply what they havelistened into other skills such as reading,writing, and speaking. There are severalsuggestions that I can share based on myobservation and findings: It is important toprovide the students with many storybooks,songs, and games for students. I thinkthrough these activities, EFL learning inIndonesia will be successful; English teachersshould be provided with training, seminar orworkshop in order to improve their teachingmethod especially for teaching children. ReferencesBozik, M. (1986). Teaching critical listening. In Golub, J. Activities topromote critical thinking: Classroompractices in teaching English (pp. 55-59). Illinois: NCTE.Brown, H. D. (2001). Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language pedagogy (2nd ed.). N.Y.: LongmanCall, M.E. (1985). Auditory short-term memory,listening comprehension and input hypothesis. TESOLQuarterly, 19(4), 765-781Hancock, Marjorie R. (1992). Literature responsejournals: Insight beyond the printed page. Language Arts, 69, 36-42. 46 Indonesian EFL Journal, Volume 1 (1) January 2015ISSN 2252-7427 Harmer, J. (2001). The practice ofEnglish language teaching. New York: LongmanHowat, A. and Dakin, J. (1974). Language laboratory materials. Journal ed. J.P.B. Allen, S.P.B. Allenand S.P. Corder.Krashen, S. and Terrel, T. 1983. The natural approach language acquisition in theclassroom. SanFrancisco: Pergamon.Littlewood, W. (1981). Communicative language teaching: An introduction. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.Morley, J. (1984). Listening and language learning in ESL: Developing listening comprehension. New York:Brace Jovanovich.Musthafa, B. (2002). EFL for young learners. Bandung:CRESTNunan, D. (1989). Understanding language classroom: A guide for teacher initiated action. New York:Prentice Hall. Oxford, R. L. (1990). Language learning strategies.Boston: Heinle & Heinle Publishers.Persulessi, G. H. (1998). Listening improvement for students of english as a second language. Jakarta:Dirjen Dikti Depdikbud RI.Rivers, W. M. (1987). Interactive language teaching.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Rosenblatt, L. M. (1991). Literature—S.O.S.!. Language Arts, 68, 444-448.Rubin, J. (1990). Improving foreign language listening comprehension. Washington D.C.: GeorgetownUniversity Press.Underwood, M. (1989). Teaching listening. London:Longman.Wenden, A. L. (1987). A Conceptual Background andUtility. In Wenden A. & Rubins, J. (Eds). Learners strategies in language learning.Yagang, F. (1993). Listening problemsand solutions.Forum. XXXI, 1 (January) 47