(Journal of English Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics)     

                              Volume 8, No. 1, January 2022 Page. 1 - 7 

                               p-ISSN: 2356-2048    e-ISSN: 2356-203x    
 

   1 

 

 
THE UTILIZATION OF ‘ONLINE DICTATION’ CONTENT TO 

INCREASE STUDENTS LISTENING ABILITY IN STIKES MADANI 

YOGYAKARTA 

 
Surip Haryani1, Miftahul Zuhro2 

1Lecturer of S1 Nursing Program, Sekolah Tinggi Ilmu Kesehatan Madani Yogyakarta 
2Student of S1 Nursing Program, Sekolah Tinggi Ilmu Kesehatan Madani Yogyakarta 

Email Correspondence: sharyani81@gmail.com 
 

Abstract 

Listening is one of the skills considered hard for the students in learning English. Rapid 

listening practice can be used to overcome this. This is experimental research aimed to 

find out the effect of online listening dictation content using pre and post-tests design. 15 

students were taken randomly. Paired T-Test shows an increase in the value of the pre 

and post-test results of all study participants with a p-value of 0.003 and <p value 0.05 

means there is an influence of online listening content on the website to improve students' 

listening skills. 

 

Keywords: English, Listening Ability, Online Dictation 
 

 

INTRODUCTION 

In learning English there are 4 (four) basic abilities that must always be given to 

students. The 4 (four) skills in question are the ability to listen, read, write and speak. The 

final point of the goal of learning English is to speak fluently. These abilities are given on an 

ongoing basis and are related to each other supported by grammar. One of the skills that are 

considered hard for the students to be easily understood is listening to skill. During the years 

of teaching in STIKES Madani Yogyakarta where the students are non-English department 

students, listening is considered as a hard session in English learning activities.  

One of the activities in listening is dictation. (Richards & Schmidt, 2010) state that 

dictation is “a technique used in both language teaching and language testing in which a 

passage is read aloud to students or test-takers, with pauses during which they must try to 

write down what they have read as accurately as possible”. The students have to write down 

what they listen to from the audio or spoken passage accurately which means it indicates the 

ability to recognize the vocabulary. The spoken passage or sentences can be in the audio 

mailto:fatmaery@ymail.com


The Utilization of.... 

 
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format which is read by English native speakers or spoken by the teacher in the class. Of the 4 

English skills that are felt difficult by students, especially the class of 2019/2020 is listening 

to ability. This can also be seen from the results of the value of listening practice activities. 

Students tend to be more difficult to get the maximum value if it is related to listening 

practice. By still being one of the skills that are still a scourge in English courses, the author 

wants to get a solution related to it. But the problem is still limited listening resourc es in 

teaching for some reasons, especially for teaching listening materials. As (Nurjannah, 2019) 

findings in her research Meningkatkan Kemampuan Listening Siswa Dengan Running 

Dictation Strategy, researchers tried to find another dictation teaching technique online. The 

study used free dictation online teaching materials available on the website 

www.englishclub.com 

There are some resources of listening materials as (Alzuhdy, 2014) mentions in his 

article that online resources are abundant for improving listening skills. The materials are 

provided on the websites and students are free to practice the listening skills provided on the 

websites such as British council, syllabi, Englishteens, ryndal, etc. During covid -19 

pandemic distance learning or online learning is widely used all over the world, online or 

web-based materials are helpful to help teachers in providing teaching materials for the 

students. For those who have limitations in providing media for the material development of 

teaching materials, online materials are helpful for helping the learning-teaching process. Any 

Farikhatul Maghfiroh, (2016) finds that the dictation technique is effective to teach listening 

to the students. The author has the same insight with this finding and is trying to use the 

dictation method for improving the students listening ability. The dictation method was 

chosen for improving the listening ability as it is taken for the resources where the audio is 

spoken by the English /native speakers. This study is focused on the listening content of a 

website named englishclub.com. The content of “online dictation” can be used as one of the 

ways to improve the students listening ability. The audio on the content is provided at normal 

speed and slow speed of sentence reading. The students can practice the dictation especially in 

the slow sentence reading mode while the normal speed ones listen at the beginning of the 

number. 

 

http://www.englishclub.com/


Surip Haryani.... 
 

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METHODS 

This is a quantitative experimental research using one group pre-test and post-test 

design. The results of the listening pre and post-test listening ability scores were presented 

and measured quantitatively using dependent T-test analysis with SPSS application. If the 

significant value of Sig (2 Tailed) T-test <0.05, it shows a significant difference between the 

pre and post-test values. The population in this study were first-semester students of STIKES 

Madani Yogyakarta. Sampling was conducted using random sampling techniques to 15 

students representing students of the 2019/2020 STIKES Madani Yogyakarta. The researchers 

took 5 Respondents for each program; 5 students from the Nursing Bachelor Program, 5 from 

the D III Midwifery program, and 5 students from the D III Pharmacy program. The design of 

this study uses pre-experimental and true experimental designs. The steps were observation, 

pre-test, application, and post-test.  

Data collection techniques with primary data use observation and interviews to find out 

problems related to student listening skills. The treatment or experiment was given by 

providing material in the dictation online content to be done especially at the level that 

matches the screening results. The content was downloaded first with the consideration that 

the research participants did not do cheating or be dishonest in doing listening exercises.  

Then to find out how the listening ability, the students were given pre and post-tests. Analysis 

of the listening test results is analyzed using the T-test. 

 

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 

The content chosen by researchers was elementary level. This was because the results of 

screening indicate the level of student ability, especially for listening ability, were mostly at 

the basic level. On the observation stage, the author found that most of the student’s scores in 

the listening activities in the classroom tended to be below. In the interview, the author only 

gave a few simple questions related to their previous listening experience in their previous 

school because the research samples are 1st-semester students. Most of them explained that 

seldom had they done listening in their high school before but more exercise for other skills. 

On the pre-test stage, the score gained by the students tended to be below : 

 

 



The Utilization of.... 

 
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Tabel 1. Pre-Test result 

Name Program Pretest 

  Numbers of Correct Answers score (%) 

Respondent 1 D III Midwifery 25 15.43 

Respondent 2 D III Midwifery 37 22.84 

Respondent 3 D III Midwifery 60 37.04 

Respondent 4 D III Midwifery 50 30.86 

Respondent 5 D III Midwifery 48 29.63 

Respondent 6 D III Pharmacy 16 9.88 

Respondent 7 D III Pharmacy 68 41.98 

Respondent 8 D III Pharmacy 50 30.86 

Respondent 9 D III Pharmacy 34 20.99 

Respondent 10 D III Pharmacy 81 50.00 

Respondent 11 Nursing 25 15.43 

Respondent 12 Nursing 13 8.02 

Respondent 13 Nursing 16 9.88 

Respondent 14 Nursing 31 19.14 

Respondent 15 Nursing 62 38.27 

The post-test results indicate the improvement of the score  

Tabel 2. Post-Test results 

Name Program Post-test 

  Numbers of Correct Answers score (%) 

Respondent 1 D III Midwifery 152 93.83 

Respondent 2 D III Midwifery 63 38.89 

Respondent 3 D III Midwifery 92 56.79 

Respondent 4 D III Midwifery 70 43.21 

Respondent 5 D III Midwifery 58 35.80 

Respondent 6 D III Pharmacy 131 80.86 

Respondent 7 D III Pharmacy 78 48.15 

Respondent 8 D III Pharmacy 70 43.21 

Respondent 9 D III Pharmacy 48 29.63 

Respondent 10 D III Pharmacy 135 83.33 

Respondent 11 Nursing 39 24.07 

Respondent 12 Nursing 20 12.35 

Respondent 13 Nursing 38 23.46 

Respondent 14 Nursing 44 27.16 

Respondent 15 Nursing 72 44.44 



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As findings in (Nurjannah, 2019) show that students gained good results for dictation 

activity after some repetitions, the researchers conducted the dictation process in some steps 

of repetitions. Researchers played listening audio at normal speed, then repeat at a slow speed 

according to the audio downloaded from the website. The researcher repeated the audio sound 

with normal speed once then followed by audio with slow voice speed several times until the 

students understood. This type of dictation falls into the category of type of dictation for 

mixed class. As mentioned by (Newton & Nation, n.d.) that there are some types of dictation 

namely Running Dictation, One Chance Dictation, Dictation of Long Phrases,  Guided 

dictation, Dictation for Mixed Class, Peer Dictation, Completion Dictation, Perfect Dictation, 

Sentence Dictation, Unexploded Dictation, and the author took mixed class dictation to be 

used for the research. Students were allowed to write in the form of a draft first, then after the 

audio playback according to the theme is complete, students copy the draft writing into neater 

copies. This activity was carried out several times with different themes. The level taken is 

the element level. This is because when given training in special classes for listening in 

general the results show an average at elementarytary or elementary level. The pre and post-

test results are given below:  

Table 3. The Effect Of The “Online Dictation” Content Application On The Website       

Www.Englishclub.Com To Improve Listening Skills 

 
No Variable Pre-test Post-test p-value 

1 The effect of the “Online Dictation” 

content application on the website 

www.englishclub.com to improve 

listening skills 

26.66±12.12 45.67±23.80 0.003 

 

Standard Deviation values of the Pre and post-test indicate an increase in value. 

Analysis of the pre and post-test scores using SPSS 16 and the results of the T-test results 

show a Sig value of 0.003 which means there is a significant difference in value between the 

pre and post-test results. Utilization of the ‘Online Dictation” content on the website 

www.englishclub.com influences improving the English listening ability of students in the 

2019/2020 grade in STIKes Madani Yogyakarta.  



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Based on the data results, the author proved that the dictation method using online 

dictation content on englishclub.com can improve the students listening skills. It is in line 

with (Yonezaki, 2014) who states that dictation is an effective method in improving a 

learner’s listening ability in the sense that it develops several competencies necessary. The 

competence gained by the activities held by the author is listening and writing. The process of 

writing the words for some students needed some repetition. The audio was played 3-5 times 

and the students should write what they listen to. Some students made mistakes in writing the 

words even though they know what the words meant by the speakers in the audio.        

 

CONCLUSION 

TThe data analysis concludes that the student’s scores improved after the given 

treatment. It indicates the good effect of the “Online Dictation” content in 

www.englishclub.com website on their listening skill ability. It means that the problems of 

difficulties in listening practice can be solved by giving them online dictation content. The 

fact that almost all students have their audio player which is at least on their smartphone will 

make it easier for teachers to continue to give opportunity for students to have their practice 

of dictation from the “online dictation” content of the englishclub.com website. The common 

situation where education uses remote learning as the pandemic of Covid – 19 is still 

becoming an issue can make the use of online dictation as one of the best ways to self-

learning for improving the students listening ability. The web-based online dictation can be 

one of the alternative ways in teaching-learning materials during the pandemic situation.  

Further research on listening skills can be developed to create students’ habits in 

listening practices through online media. Research related to listening skills can be continued 

especially in improving the listening skills using selected topics that are appropriate with the 

students’ major such as pharmacy, nursing, midwifery, etc. The authors appreciate the 

management of STIKES Madani Yogyakarta for supporting and funding the research. 

Appreciation is also given as the institution had allowed the authors to research the institution 

for grade one students of Pharmacy, Nursing, and Midwifery Programs. 

 

 

 



Surip Haryani.... 
 

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REFERENCES 

 

Alzuhdy, Y. A. M. H. (2014). Meningkatkan Keterampilan Listening Lewat Sumber-Sumber 

Belajar Online. Http://Staff.Uny.Ac.Id/Sites/Default/Files/Pengabdian/Yosa-Abduh-

Alzuhdy-Ss-Mhum/Artikel-Ppm-Belajar-Listening-Lewat-Online.Pdf 

 

Any Farikhatul Maghfiroh, 2813123042. (2016). The Effectiveness Of Dictation Technique 

On Listening Ability Of The First Grade Students In Mtsn 2 Tulungagung. 

 

Newton, J. (Jonathan), & Nation, I. S. P. (N.D.). Teaching Esl/Efl Listening And Speaking. 

295. 

 

Nurjannah, S. (2019). (Pdf) Meningkatkan Kemampuan Listening Siswa Dengan Running 

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Dengan_Running_Dictation_Strategy 

 

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Yonezaki, H. (2014). Effectiveness Of Dictation In Improving English Listening Ability Of 

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