LANGUAGE CIRCLE: Journal of Language and Literature .... p-ISSN 1858-0165 Available online at http://journal.unnes.ac.id e-ISSN 2460-853X 413 Asynchronous Online Learning: Top-down and Bottom-up Processes for Listening Practices Slamet Utomo Universitas Muria Kudus slamet.utomo@umi.ac.id Titis Sulistyowati Universitas Muria Kudus titis.sulistyowati@uk.ac.id Abstract Asynchronous learning can be the best choice to provide a new learning environment during the pandemic situation because asynchronous environments treat students as autonomous learners. Students can learn with no time limitation, and students can learn on online activities independently. E- EFL learning can be done by adopting asynchronous learning. This study examined the asynchronous learning effect on the students listening skills. This learning also adopts the principle of top-down and bottom-up listening strategies. Teachers modify and develop the listening activities to meet the students' needs by using the Google Form link. In this research, the researchers introduce news items as listening resources. The researchers conducted this study to study the listening proficiency of first-semester students before and after implementing the top-down and bottom-up listening processes in asynchronous learning environment. This experimental research is one group pretest and posttest only. To determine the effectiveness of the asynchronous top-down and bottom-up listening processes, the researchers used the Wilcoxon test to analyze the significant difference between the pre and posttest. The researchers conclude that the top-down and bottom-up process in listening is suitable for teaching news items. The paired sample test proved a significant difference between the pre and posttest data which then indicates that the students' listening comprehension on news items increases significantly. Asynchronous learning offers students many advantages while they are practicing online listening. Problems and listening difficulties challenge the teachers to develop the learning management for further achievement. Keywords: Top-down, Bottom-up, Listening, News, and Online learning INTRODUCTION During the pandemic, many education institutions adjust their approach to providing a learning environment. The English education department of Universitas Muria Kudus has struggled to accommodate the learning process into e-language learning. Some e-learning platforms and apps are used to cope with the situation. However, the institution and the faculty members should consider the simplicity and applicability. For some students, the e-learning mode is considered something new, and due to the internet connection, and some devices needed to support the e-learning, they need to adjust themselves to it. Some students might need to get familiar with online learning; therefore, teachers should provide easily accessed learning resources. Asynchronous learning is the solution to the growing demand in e-learning system development. E-learning system facilitates e- learners to learn independently and supports each learner's characteristics as they use individual learning styles. The learning emphasis the process and learning style of the learners. In the distance education (DE) concept, asynchronous online teaching supported self-paced with highly independent forms of DE. This system can be the best solution for giving virtual courses with a poor http://journal.unnes.ac.id/ mailto:slamet.utomo@umi.ac.id mailto:titis.sulistyowati@uk.ac.id LANGUAGE CIRCLE: Journal of Language and Literature .... p-ISSN 1858-0165 Available online at http://journal.unnes.ac.id e-ISSN 2460-853X 414 internet connection to avoid troubleshooting. (Murphy et al., 2011; Shahabadi & Uplane, 2015) Commonly, there are two methods in providing e-content in the online learning environment. These include synchronous and asynchronous e-learning modes. Doe to the massive improvement in online education, various vendor and tools or software program create facilities that support synchronous and asynchronous e-learning. Tools such as threaded discussion, instant messaging, and blogs play an important role in highlighting the online courses by designing a virtual classroom environment that enables learners and teachers to exchange information, give instruction, and construct social interaction without time and space limitation. Synchronous e-learning is live, real-time (and usually scheduled), facilitated education, and learning-oriented interaction. Asynchronous e- learning, on the other hand, is mainly adopted because it is not time-bound, and learners can respond anytime. Learners are given more time to do the tasks and submit their responses. This opportunity allows them to develop their response critically as they use various points of view. Therefore, asynchronous space leads to self- paced, independent, student-centered learning. (Murphy et al., 2011; Perveen, 2016; Salmon, 2021; Shahabadi & Uplane, 2015). Asynchronous e-language learning provides a learning environment with no time bond, and students can assess the learning material leisure time. Various e-language materials are available online so that learners will have more authentic language materials. With this new language learning environment, learners will have less anxiety during the practice. However, teachers should also be aware that asynchronous learning, despite being able to carry many multimedia information, it is lack the interactivity (Liu, 2007). To avoid miss conception in doing the task, teachers sometimes need to design the task by considering the purpose of the learning and the language learning need. Because the focus of this research is to implement some principles of listening in e-language learning, the researchers design the steps by steps listening task by adopting the top-down and bottom-up listening processes into a series audio listening tasks. Although e-language learning materials have been developed massively along with the world web development and technology enhancement, some learning principles need to be highlighted to support the learning process. In EFL learning, Listening is a fundamental skill to introduce students to speaking because listening is the first communication process in which students get the language input as the learning of a language begins (Nunan, 2001; Richard, 2008; Solak, 2016). The new conception of viewing listening as an active process in communication can be traced from the sense of paradigm shift in language learning from the traditional approach to communicative approach. Listening is now viewed as a process of deriving information and processing them through negotiation between the speaker and the listener, and finally, the meaning is created through involvement, imagination, and the ability of a person to respond to information. Listening comprehension is not merely the process of a unidirectional receiving of audible symbols but an interactive process. (Brown, 2000; Maxwell & Meiser, 2005; Rost, 2011) Generally, in listening comprehension, students need to acquire the listening technique to be able to comprehend and produce responses. One of the listening strategies involves top-down and bottom-up processes, which refer to how the listeners employ the information. Bottom-up processes show the student's previous knowledge and information which refer to lexical awareness and knowledge of grammatical and syntactical aspects of the language, whereas top-down processes deal with the student's ability to utilize background knowledge that has been gathered and stored from previous experiences to interpret meaning. (Richard, 2008; Walker, 2014) Siegel (2018) offered some listening strategies which adopted the top-down (TD) and bottom-up (BU) listening processes. The top-down listening processes could be done by following these activities. http://journal.unnes.ac.id/ LANGUAGE CIRCLE: Journal of Language and Literature .... p-ISSN 1858-0165 Available online at http://journal.unnes.ac.id e-ISSN 2460-853X 415 Table 1. TD and BU Listening Processes Top-down (TD) Bottom-up (BU) The first activity in pre-listening section is brainstorming. A brainstorming session can be done by introducing the learners to some keywords before listening activity begin. Giving contextual information about the text before listening (e.g., where it takes place, who the speakers are) is done to provide the listeners with clues about the text they will listen. Using the idea of genre, students are told what type of text they will listen to (e.g., hotel reservation phone call, lecture on campus safety). Teachers play a short portion of an audio or video text to let the learners to predict the topic of the text. Bottom-up listening processes concern the details of the text, such as the number of the words in the text. Students’ task is to count the words they hear. As they are listening, listeners can identify word beginnings and endings. Listeners identify keywords whiles listening, and make a list of close approximations of those keywords (e.g., coat/code; fix/fish; day/days). Source: (Siegel, 2018) Much research analyzes top-down and bottom-up listening strategies in listening comprehension. The result shows that those strategies offer different advantages. A combination of both strategies will enhance the listening comprehension at the level of contextual understanding and the vocabulary as well as the lexical knowledge. Top-down listening processes offer students the opportunity to use their previous knowledge to understand more about the text regarding the overall message in connection to the actual issues. While the bottom- up listening processes focus on understanding the given text through words and their lexical connection in clauses to form detailed information (Ardini, 2015; Khuziakhmetov & Porchesku, 2016; Mandarani, 2017). Khuziakmetov & Porchesku (2016) tried to support the effectiveness of bottom-up by connecting it with the psycholinguistics approach to analyze the students' perception. They reported that the bottom-up approach effectively develops listening strategies and psycholinguistic findings and experiments support it. Current research on foreign language listening comprehension has revealed the importance of linguistic knowledge in the bottom-up speech perception process. Effective L2 materials teaching listening skills should provide L2 learners with guided listening practice following their proficiency level. The psycholinguistic approach to the problem of teaching listening comprehension helps to get relevant information about the perceived image of linguistic units of the language taught. To provide more understanding on Top-down listening strategy, Bekaryan (2016) stated that psychological pressure such as frustration and anxiety could affect learners' listening performance. This condition was often experienced by the learners when facing listening tasks. It can block their understanding and impede their further learning. Hence, it seems reasonable to encourage learners to develop top- down listening strategies reliant on background knowledge in understanding the message. (Bekaryan, 2016; Khuziakhmetov & Porchesku, 2016) This research exposes the first semester students with English used in the news item. Short news items are chosen to introduce the students to factual information closely related to the current information. By adopting top-down and bottom- http://journal.unnes.ac.id/ LANGUAGE CIRCLE: Journal of Language and Literature .... p-ISSN 1858-0165 Available online at http://journal.unnes.ac.id e-ISSN 2460-853X 416 up in asynchronous learning mode, it is expected that learners will be able to avoid psychological pressure during the learning and develop their learning style. They will be able to improve their listening skill. This research is experimental research with a single class only. The aim is to explain the significant difference between the students’ listening proficiency before and after implementing the top-down and bottom-up listening strategies in understanding news items. To provide more detailed information about some aspects that might influence the learning achievements, the researchers obtained more data from questionnaires to know the students' perceptions. The audio used refers to news about current events and lifestyles. News items can be used as contextual learning material for practicing English, because they give factual information (Adnan, 2017). This research is conducted to implement the listening module, which has been designed by adopting bottom-up and top-down listening processes. The researchers choose the top-down and bottom-up listening processes because this process allows students to recall some background knowledge before the main listening activity begins (Richard, 2008; Rost, 2011). This kind of activity will give the students some important information as listening clues before they start the main listening session. By giving them brainstorming, they will be able to manage the strategy that they will use to do the listening tasks. The researchers use web-based Google Form software to adjust with the current e- learning system. METHODOLOGY This research uses an experimental design. The researchers use an experimental research design with one group only using pre and posttest design to answer research questions. The population of this research is the first semester students of the English Education Department in Universitas Muria Kudus. The whole class of the first-semester student of the academic year 2020/2021 is four classes with 90 students. The researcher used class C as the experimental class by using random sampling. The research subjects are students in class C with a total number of students of 26. During the treatment, the number of students who joined the pretest was 26, but only 22 students joined the posttest. Therefore the data calculated in this research are 22. Due to the current pandemic situation, teaching and learning was done by adopting an online learning system. Therefore the treatment used an asynchronous learning strategy by utilizing Google form as learning media. In participating in the learning process, students are given the link which is specially designed to offer students some listening activities. These activities enable students to practice listening online without teachers' assistance, and they can access the materials freely. A listening pretest was conducted before the intervention period to measure the students' listening proficiency, and the posttest was administered after the intervention. The design of the test was adjusted to suit the regular listening tasks used during the intervention. Thus, it consisted of three sessions with three different oral news items. The first session completed the missing fragments in a text, the second session identified true or false information, and the third session was multiple-choice questions. The intervention process was done in a half-semester and totally in six consecutive meetings. By adopting the asynchronous online learning technique, the researchers tried to offer suitable learning media to cope with the pandemic. The design of the top-down and bottom-up listening processes followed these steps. 1. Before listening session Students learn keywords or new vocabulary related to the topics. They identify pictures that might be related to the current issues. 2. Whiles listening session Students listen to audio news and fill in the missing part of the text. They identify the new words and find the synonyms. They make a list of the primary information. 3. After listening session Students listen to the audio once again and draw some conclusions. They evaluate the process http://journal.unnes.ac.id/ LANGUAGE CIRCLE: Journal of Language and Literature .... p-ISSN 1858-0165 Available online at http://journal.unnes.ac.id e-ISSN 2460-853X 417 and how the topics are related to their daily lives. Before the listening session, these two first activities adopt the top-down listening approaches. This session aims to introduce the main topic to the students and stimulate the students' prior knowledge about the subject matter. It is an important start to give students apperception before going to the main activity. The above activities in whiles listening session are adopted the bottom-up listening processes. This activity is intended to stimulate the students to understand the text from the words level and specific information. The last session emphasizes evaluation as the final remark on learning and how the new topics enrich the students’ knowledge. Based on the research questions, this research is intended to find out whether there is a significant difference between the students' listening proficiency before and after implementing top-down and bottom-up listening strategies in understanding news items. Paired Sample test was used to do the hypothesis testing. The test was required to compare the pretest and posttest scores of the same groups. Data were subjected to non-parametric test analysis because the participants were in a small group (N=22). The data were analyzed using the Wilcoxon Singed Ranks Test to confirm a significant difference between the group's pretest and post-test scores. The statistical calculation was done by utilizing SPSS software version 25. The researchers also studied students' perceptions of the learning process. The questionnaire highlighted some learning aspects such as learning difficulties, listening anxiety, task flexibility, and TD and BU listening process. Twenty-six participants participated in the survey, and they were students listed in the experimental class, although they might not complete both pre and posttest. The questionnaire required students to respond with five-point Likert scales (1= strongly disagree, 2= disagree, 3= neither, 4= agree, and 5= strongly agree). RESULT AND DISCUSSION Paired Sample test was used to answer the research question. Those questions required the researcher to do a comparative analysis between the same groups' pretest and posttest score of the same groups. The hypothesis of this research is: Ho: there is no significant difference between the students' listening proficiency before and after implementing top-down and bottom-up listening strategies in understanding news items. Ha: there is a significant difference between the students’ listening proficiency before and after implementing top-down and bottom-up listening strategies in understanding news items. The criterion which was used to determine the result of statistical analysis for these statements of the problem is that if the significance value (p-value) is higher than  (level of significance) = 0.05, Ho is accepted. On the other hand, if the significance value (p-value) is lower than  (level of significance) = 0.05, Ho is rejected. Table 2. Paired Samples Statistics Mean N Std. Deviatio n Std. Error Mea n Before treatmen t 57 22 13.60 2.90 After treatmen t 71.8 22 9.43 2.01 http://journal.unnes.ac.id/ LANGUAGE CIRCLE: Journal of Language and Literature .... p-ISSN 1858-0165 Available online at http://journal.unnes.ac.id e-ISSN 2460-853X 418 Table 3. Paired Samples Correlation N Correlation Sig. Before & after treatment 22 .553 .008 Because the p. value of sig. is lower than 0.05, it can be concluded that there is a significant correlation between the students' listening ability before and after the treatment. Table 4. Wilcoxon Sign Rank Test N Mean Rank Sum of Ranks Negative Ranks 0 .00 .00 Positive Ranks 21 11.00 231.00 Ties 1 Total 22 From the Wilcoxon Sign Rank Test, the writers found zero Negative Rank. It means that most of the students' posttest achievements were increasing; therefore, the Positive Ranks are very high. Twenty-one participants increased their listening achievement after the TD and BU listening intervention, and only one participant remained the same. Table 5. Pretest and posttest comparison Z -4.029b Asymp. Sig. (2- tailed) .000 The value of Asymp. Sig. (2-tailed) is lower than 0.05, it can be concluded that there is a significant difference in the students' listening ability before and after the treatment. Therefore the H0 is rejected, but Ha is confirmed. Table 6. Descriptive Statistics Pretest Post-test N 22 22 Mean 57.00 71.82 Median 60.00 68.00 Mode 60 64 Std. Deviation 13.603 9.440 Variance 185.048 89.108 Minimum 20 56 Maximum 80 88 Sum 1254 1580 The pretest result shows that the minimum score is 20 and the maximum score is 80. It indicates that there is a huge gap in the students' listening proficiency. This fact is supported by the http://journal.unnes.ac.id/ LANGUAGE CIRCLE: Journal of Language and Literature .... p-ISSN 1858-0165 Available online at http://journal.unnes.ac.id e-ISSN 2460-853X 419 value of the standard deviation of 13.6. High standard deviation indicates data are more spread out. It indicates that the data are not clustered around the mean; therefore, the students' listening proficiency is varied from very low to very high. The subjects of the research are first-semester students. It means that this is their first listening subject; therefore, it is reasonable when their proficiency is not at the same level. It is also their first experience to practice listening using news items. They need to possess some vocabulary that is related to factual information. It is challenging for them to listen to some new English speeches because their English is still limited. After the students are treated by implementing the bottom-up and top-down listening strategies, they improve their listening proficiency. The value of the mean is increasing up to 71.8. It means that, in general, the students improve their listening capability. Statistics data also support this fact as the value of the standard deviation decrease to the lower level with the value of 9.4. It was caused by the increase of students' vocabulary mastery, due to their effort to adjust themselves to the level of difficulty in the text. After they experience listening to the texts, they get familiar with the vocabulary. They can practice the listening strategy and learn that when they have to comprehend an audio text or oral text, they also need to have previous knowledge or background knowledge to make them familiar with the topic even before listening. Salahsuri (2011) and Sadighi and Zare (2006) confirmed the positive influence of background knowledge. (Sadighi & Zare, 2006; Salahshuri, 2011) The given keywords before the listening section give the students clues on the vocabulary they need to comprehend before trying to understand the complete text and the preliminary and detailed information. The listening module also provides activities that enable students to complete the missing vocabulary in the text to focus on vocabulary mastery. To stimulate the students' understanding of the listening gist and details information, the module is designed with questions that demand students' understanding of the details information. To attract the students' attention and stimulate the students' background knowledge, pictures are presented as visual aids. To make students know more about the current issues related to text, teachers set discussions about the current issues. (Siegel, 2018) Based on the students' progress in the listening task, the researchers note some aspects of the students' development of vocabulary focus activities and detailed information focus activities. In completing the text with missing words, students make mistakes in spelling, and they sometimes incorrectly comprehend the words with almost similar sounds (e.g., producer- consumer, fruit – food, producing – depending, according – recording, etc.) They also often make mistakes in recognizing a series of numbers, names of cities, and people names. It seems that they need to be trained to focus on numbers and characters. They commonly make some errors in recognizing fifteen, fifty, thirty, thirteen, and they tend to jumble the number when they hear longer series of numbers. Yilmas and Yavuz (2015) reported some problems beginner students face in acquiring listening skills. The problem started with sound recognition. They suggested that sounds in the phonetic alphabet should be taught during listening activities at the beginning of learning English. The researchers find some facts that support the previous research in this research. (Yılmaz & Yavuz, 2015) 1. When students are assigned to comprehend the detailed information by answering multiple-choice questions, they still focus on word recognition and identifying ideas with similar words. Therefore they sometimes miss the correct information and fail to synthesize the information. 2. Some students can understand the main ideas or purposes of the news when the information is given explicitly. However, students still have many difficulties in integrating or synthesizing information. However, their ability to recall important details and follow the essential ideas presented in the news needs to be http://journal.unnes.ac.id/ LANGUAGE CIRCLE: Journal of Language and Literature .... p-ISSN 1858-0165 Available online at http://journal.unnes.ac.id e-ISSN 2460-853X 420 improved. They still had a limited understanding of certain vocabulary. 3. Students acquire the ability to understand ideas which clearly stated with simple English. They easily recognize ideas at the group level or clauses with simple structure. Many students fail to understand more detailed information. Students can answer 'what, where, and when' questions compared to 'how and why’ questions. It indicates that their level of comprehension is still at the level of wording. Despite all of the positive progress on the students' listening proficiency and the new experience in online learning, leaving the students with asynchronous learning without being closely monitored increases the chance for the students to take the course perfunctory. This research reported that not all the students assess the task regularly. This behavior concludes that students do not submit the assignment with high responsibility. Moreover, few of them completed all the exercises and did all the steps. Therefore teachers' assistance, intense instruction, and regular progress monitoring are the primary forces to lead students to a better learning process during online courses in asynchronous learning. The research points out some aspects that might influence the students' learning success from the questionnaire. Twenty-six students had participated in filling the questionnaire. Based on their experience in practicing listening using news items as the audio materials, students gave responses to the Likert-based questionnaires to voice their opinion and perceptions toward asynchronous listening activities and top-down and bottom-up listening processes and strategies. Some learning aspects were highlighted to capture the learning advantages, challenges, and difficulties during listening. The first aspect being addressed was the technical problems in administering the online learning. Online learning requires supportive advanced technologies such as supportive ganged with advanced qualifications that enable students to assess internet and learning applications without excessive delay. Besides the internet coverage and supportive e-technology, students' self-capability or familiarity with operating those smart technologies can also be the major problem in administering e-learning. Therefore both students and teachers need to have adequate capability in working and utilizing the technologies for learning purposes. The result of the questionnaires is presented in table 7 and is attached in the appendix. The questionnaire reported the technical problems in accessing Google Form and internet coverage. In terms of the flexibility and accessibility of Google form, it can be concluded that many students could easily access the listening tasks given in Google Form (Neither 27%, Agree 46%, and Strongly Agree 19%), and only a few students encounter difficulties (Disagree 8%). On the contrary, the students claimed that they still have problems with the internet connection. 30% of the respondents have internet connection problems (Statement 4). In comparison, many of them choose not to give clear judgment (46%) or it can be concluded that they might encounter difficulties although they still can manage the internet well. When the participants were questioned about their preference for indirect listening practice or direct listening practice, most of them preferred indirect Google Form listening. Doing direct listening practice using the zoom application might not be very convenient due to their internet's low bandwidth coverage. These findings are also supported by Nugraha et al. (2018). Recently, they evaluated the implementation of the E-learning program and found out that the development of technology and e-learning supportive applications used to support the programs need to be adjusted with the need and the potential resources of the institution (Nugraha et al., 2018). The characteristics of the students, the financial background, and the internet access in the students' living environment need to be put forward as the essential consideration to implement the e-learning techniques. Asynchronous learning is possible to http://journal.unnes.ac.id/ LANGUAGE CIRCLE: Journal of Language and Literature .... p-ISSN 1858-0165 Available online at http://journal.unnes.ac.id e-ISSN 2460-853X 421 manage online learning for students with limited internet access. Doing Asynchronous listening practice is also very effective in reducing students' anxiety because of its flexibility and time bondless. Students could do the tasks anytime when they feel convenient. Therefore they feel comfortable and less anxious (see table 7, statements 2, 3, and 5). The questionnaire reported that the anxiety aspects were dominated by agreeing and strongly agreeing. However, teachers need to give students simple instruction to adopt asynchronous learning. Indirect instruction can be troublesome and lead to misinterpretation. Moreover, the teachers usually directly guided and supervised the students in a classroom environment. Students perceived that they needed both direct and clear indirect instruction during asynchronous learning. Although they could simply understand the instruction in the Google form (statement 7), they thought they still needed more guidance from their teacher (statement 6). Although some research claimed that synchronous face-to-face classroom learning was reported to be more effective compared to asynchronous learning (Lotfi & Hosseini Pozveh, 2019), due to the pandemic situation in Indonesia, all the learning processes were done online. In contrast, Lotfi & Hosseini used email as the media of asynchronous learning with limited interaction among students and teachers; this research uses Google form. Google form offers a more interactive way of learning because teachers can modify the format of the listening task to meet the needs and learning purposes and monitor the students' works as they log in. This research offered alternatives of designing asynchronous listening practice using Google form as a listening log book. The questionnaire revealed that students did not encounter many difficulties in comprehending the content of the news items. They claimed that they could understand the content well and had no significant difficulties doing the task (statements 9 and 12). The news items used in this research were created and designed by the teacher to meet the students' level as freshmen. The news was simple and was edited using a text-voice converter, and the speed of the speech was adjusted. In addition, the activity before listening sessions stimulated the students’ knowledge because it provided keywords to understand the topics. Many students had started to use their background knowledge. However, 12% of the respondents could not provide clear judgment (statement 11). Strategy training to use background knowledge to improve students' listening skills was needed. Listening is a receptive language skill is not a passive process. Listening strategy knowledge, background knowledge, and linguistics knowledge support listening as comprehension and language acquisition. (Cross, 2010; Richard, 2008; Rost, 2011) The data found that students were likely to use top-down listening processes because their preference to focus on general information in the text was higher than their intention to focus on words, phrases, and detailed information (statement 13, 14, and 15). The students' strategy preference supported the previous findings of students' spelling errors and failure to recognize words with an almost similar sound. However, they tried hard to focus on the speaker. This misinterpretation affected the students' recall of the essential information presented in the oral news items. CONCLUSION After analyzing the research data, the researchers conclude that the top=down and bottom-up process in listening is suitable for teaching news items. From the paired t-test sample, it is proved that there is a significant difference between the pre and posttest data which then indicate that the students' listening comprehension on news item increases significantly. The pre-listening activities give the students a chance to gain some listening clues, and by doing so, the students' background knowledge is stimulated. Brainstorming the students by describing some visual aids and understanding keywords related to the topics will encourage students to connect the topics with current issues. http://journal.unnes.ac.id/ LANGUAGE CIRCLE: Journal of Language and Literature .... p-ISSN 1858-0165 Available online at http://journal.unnes.ac.id e-ISSN 2460-853X 422 Therefore before the students start listening, they already possess some valuable knowledge. This knowledge helps them to understand the subject even before they start listening. The questionnaires explained how students perceive asynchronous learning and the listening processes. The internet connection is the major technical problem in the e-learning process. Although doing listening tasks in Google Form is more convenient to them due to the time flexibility, they still need clear steps by steps instruction, because they need to learn listening strategy as well. Students need teachers' assistance during asynchronous learning as they cannot fully implement autonomous learning without explicit instruction. Students need to develop their listening strategy and words recognition ability to comprehend detailed ideas in oral news items. It is confirmed that the treatment done by the researchers is applicable for teaching listening with news items as audio materials, but in the process of learning, there are many weaknesses. In doing the online learning with the asynchronous method, a rigorous analysis needs to be done focusing on students' behavior. Most asynchronous learnings depend on students' self- motivation to do the tasks independently; however, it is an obligation that the teachers control the practice to monitor them. For better learning improvement, teachers should also focus on improving students' positive behavior to assist them in becoming independent learners. It is also crucial for teachers to adjust and select the listening materials to meet the students' needs and listening levels. There is much authentic material for teaching news, but most are either too difficult or too complicated because of the vocabulary level. REFERENCES Adnan, A. (2017). Assigning students to listen to the English news in listening course. Lingua Didaktika: Jurnal Bahasa Dan Pembelajaran Bahasa, 7(1), 1. https://doi.org/10.24036/ld.v7i1.3527 Ardini, S. N. (2015). Top-down and bottom-up processing in listening. 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Teaching, 167–175. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/58911108.p df Yılmaz, H., & Yavuz, F. (2015). The Problems Young Learners Encounter During Listening Skills. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 197(July 2015), 2046– 2050. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.07.570 Appendix Table 7. Students’ perceptions Aspects Statement Response Strongly Disagree Disagree Neither Agree Strongly Agree Technical Problem 1. I have no difficulty in doing listening tasks utilizing Google Forms. 2 (8%) 0 7 (27%) 12 (46%) 5 (19%) Anxiety 2. During the pandemic, I feel more comfortable doing Listening tasks in Google Forms. 0 1 (4%) 7(27%) 5(19%) 13(50%) http://journal.unnes.ac.id/ LANGUAGE CIRCLE: Journal of Language and Literature .... p-ISSN 1858-0165 Available online at http://journal.unnes.ac.id e-ISSN 2460-853X 424 Anxiety 3. I don't feel anxious while doing my assignments in Google Form. 1 (4%) 0 5(19%) 10(38.5%) 10 (38.5%) Technical Problem 4. I have no problems with internet connection during online learning. 4 (15%) 4 (15%) 12 (46%) 5(19%) 1 (4%) Anxiety 5. Practicing listening asynchronously in the Google Form gives me more flexibility to work on it. 1 (4%) 0 2 (8%) 8 (31%) 15 (58%) Instruction 6. While doing assignments in Google Form, I still need direct instruction from the lecturer. 1 (4%) 3 (11.5) 10 (38.5%) 5 (19%) 7 (27%) Instruction 7. The instructions in the Google Form are clear and understandable. 0 1 (4%) 6(23%) 10 (38.5%) 9 (34.6%) Technical Problem 8. I prefer to do listening assignments in Google Form rather than directly with the zoom application. 0 0 8 (31%) 9(35%) 9 (35%) Listening Difficulties 9. I can understand listening material in news items well. 0 1 (4%) 12 (46%) 13(50%) 0 Top-down Listening 10. The terms in news items are not new to me. 0 3 (11.5%) 13 (50%) 9 (37%) 1 (4%) Top-down Listening 11. My background knowledge helps me in listening to news items. 0 1 (4%) 12 (46%) 12 (46%) 1 (4%) Listening Difficulties 12. I have no difficulty in doing the Listening news items task. 0 2 (8%) 13 (50%) 10 (38.5%) 1 (4%) Bottom-up Listening 13. I prefer listening tasks that focus on words and phrases. 0 1 (4%) 16 (61%) 8 (31%) 1 (4%) Top-down Listening 14. I focus more on general information presented in Listening News items. 0 2 (8%) 9 (35%) 14 (54%) 1 (4%) Bottom-up Listening 15. I focus more on analyzing detailed information in listening to News items. 0 3 (12%) 12 (46%) 11 (42%) 0 http://journal.unnes.ac.id/ LANGUAGE CIRCLE: Journal of Language and Literature .... p-ISSN 1858-0165 Available online at http://journal.unnes.ac.id e-ISSN 2460-853X 425 http://journal.unnes.ac.id/