Research and Innovation in Language Learning Vol. 4(1) January 2021 pp. 18-30 P- ISSN: 2614-5960 e-ISSN: 2615-4137 http://jurnal.unswagati.ac.id/index.php/RILL Copyright 2021@ Anita Fatimatul Laeli,Widya Oktarini 18 Article VOA VIDEO ADOPTED INSTRUCTION: AN ATTEMPT TO ENGAGE EFL STUDENTS' ACTIVE PARTICIPATION IN LISTENING ACTIVITIES Anita Fatimatul Laeli anitafatimatul@unmuhjember.ac.id English Education program, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Universitas Muhammadiyah Jember, Jember-Indonesia Widya Oktarini widyaoktarini@unmuhjember.ac.id English Education program, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Universitas Muhammadiyah Jember, Jember-Indonesia Abstract Teaching English listening skills remains difficult for English teachers at Junior High School, particularly in Indonesia's remote area school. This study was conducted to portray listening activities' implementation by adopting VoA video instruction and materials to engage students' active participation. In this study, twenty-one participants from one of the states of Junior High school in Jember were selected based on their English proficiency, especially in listening. The data were collected using fieldnote and questionnaires. The result of field notes analysis reported that the implementation of VOA engages the students to participate in listening activities actively. They are also highly motivated to learn English and to have more practice in listening comprehension. The result of the questionnaire shows that the students give positive responses to videos taken from the VOA Learning English program for their listening class. Using VoA video materials and instruction as authentic materials effectively engage students' active participation in listening class. Consequently, the teacher needs to upgrade their ability to use technology and select appropriate materials. The English teachers also need to consider the importance of authentic materials such as VoA listening materials in teaching the students listening skills. This study's results may also be beneficial for Junior High School teachers or those interested in improving students' involvement in Junior High School listening activities. Keywords: English,lLearning, listening, student, participation, Video, VOA Sari Mengajar keterampilan mendengarkan bahasa Inggris tetap sulit bagi guru bahasa Inggris di Sekolah Menengah Pertama, terutama di sekolah daerah terpencil di Laeli, AF. & Oktarini, W. 19 p-ISSN 2614-5960, e-ISSN 2615-4137 Indonesia. Penelitian ini dilakukan untuk menggambarkan pelaksanaan kegiatan menyimak dengan mengadopsi pembelajaran video VoA dan materi untuk melibatkan partisipasi aktif siswa. Dalam studi ini, dua puluh satu peserta dari salah satu sekolah menengah pertama negara bagian di Jember dipilih berdasarkan kemampuan bahasa Inggris mereka, terutama dalam mendengarkan. Pengumpulan data dilakukan dengan catatan lapangan dan kuesioner. Hasil analisis catatan lapangan melaporkan bahwa penerapan VOA melibatkan siswa untuk berpartisipasi aktif dalam kegiatan menyimak. Mereka juga sangat termotivasi untuk belajar bahasa Inggris dan lebih banyak berlatih dalam pemahaman mendengarkan. Selain itu, hasil angket menunjukkan bahwa siswa memberikan respon positif terhadap video yang diambil dari program VOA Learning English untuk kelas listening mereka. Jadi, menggunakan materi video VoA dan instruksi sebagai materi otentik secara efektif melibatkan partisipasi aktif siswa dalam kelas menyimak. Akibatnya, guru perlu meningkatkan kemampuannya dalam menggunakan teknologi dan memilih materi yang sesuai. Guru bahasa Inggris juga perlu mempertimbangkan pentingnya materi otentik seperti materi menyimak VoA dalam mengajarkan keterampilan menyimak siswa. Hasil studi ini juga dapat bermanfaat bagi guru Sekolah Menengah Pertama atau mereka yang tertarik untuk meningkatkan keterlibatan siswa dalam kegiatan mendengarkan untuk Sekolah Menengah Pertama. kata kunci: Video, mendengarkan, partisipasi siswa, VOA, English Received 2020-08-11 accepted 2021-01-22 published 2021-01-31 APA Citation: Laeli , AF. & Oktarini. W.. (2021). VOA Video Adopted Instruction: An Attempt to Engage EFL Students' active participation in Listening Activities. Research and Innovation in Language Learning, 4(1), pp.18- http://dx.doi.org/10.33603/rill.v4i1.3980 Introduction Learning to listen in a second language is among the most challenging things for any learner since there are no guidelines, such as grammar (Hasan & Hoon, 2012). Investigating students' difficulties in listening skills has become the focus of research among researchers recently. Darti and Asmawati (2017) addressed that higher education students faced internal and external difficulties in improving listening skills. The internal problem included lack of vocabulary, accent, bad quality of the recording, anxiety, noise, and inability to apply listening strategies, while external problems, including inappropriate listening materials and supportive environment, improve listening skills. Similar to this previous study, a research review explained that significant problem faced by English language learners are including the quality of the listening materials (audio), the different cultural knowledge of the learners and the http://dx.doi.org/10.33603/rill.v4i1.3980 Research and Innovation in Language Learning Vol. 4(1) January 2021 p-ISSN 2614-5960, e-ISSN 2615-4137 20 materials, the accent performed by the speaker, unfamiliar vocabulary, and length, speed of the materials (Saraswaty, 2018). Further, in secondary school, Jaelani & Zabidi (2020) reported that students the Junior High School in their study faced two main problems in listening skills: lack of vocabulary and low motivation to actively participate in listening to the materials. Related to this study, surprisingly based on the result of the interview with the English teacher in one of remote school in Jember, revealed that the students were not intensively exposed to listening skill for some reasons; a) the teacher has an assumption that it is hard to drill the students with English listening skill since the students also had difficulty in improving their National Language (Bahasa Indonesia), the students in this school mostly used their ethnic language as the medium instruction in the school-, b) the teacher confesses that she has difficulties in selecting English listening materials that match with the students' characteristics and proficiency-, c) the teacher also claim that she is not expert in using technology as the source to search any materials. One way to help both students and teachers create fun listening classes and make it easier to find listening materials appropriate for students' level of English competency is to utilize the development of technology, especially with the industry revolution 4.0. Learning can be fun and exciting by adapting and implementing technology as the media for learning English. As we know, the young generation in this era is very familiar with the internet in their everyday life. Specifically, most of their time was spent playing with gadgets. Concerning the development of teaching-learning English, there was a breakthrough in English language learning that emphasized using a mobile application known as Mobile Assisted language learning- MALL (Makiabadi & Square, 2019; Ruengkul & Sukavatee, 2017). Various programs in the electronic technology media (in this case is the internet) can be accessed, such as Google, YouTube, and Podcast. The news and information abroad can access BBC News, Euro News, and Voice of America (VOA). These automated programs provide various materials that can be used as the media to help to learn English. One known program that promotes students' English learning is Voice of Laeli, AF. & Oktarini, W. 21 p-ISSN 2614-5960, e-ISSN 2615-4137 America (VOA)(Alavijeh and Marandi, 2019). Besides, materials provided in the VOA program is highly recommended to teach or to drill listening skills. (Makiabadi and Square, 2019). However, few discussions on how VoA adopted instructions and materials to engage students' active participation in the listening class, particularly for students in Junior High School. For those reasons, this present study investigates how the implementation of teaching materials from the VOA video instruction and materials in Listening learning in class and how students respond to the use of material from VOA for listening learning in the classroom. Hopefully, the present study's result would significantly contribute to teaching English listening using VoA adopted instruction and materials, particularly for secondary students. The Essential of Listening Comprehension Listening is one of the four English skills that must be mastered to understand English well. There are many definitions to define what listening is. First, listening is active, purposeful processing of what we hear (Zhang, 2019). Morales (2018) states that listening is a mental process of constructing meaning from spoken input. She also adds that listening is vital in the language classroom because it provides input for the learner. Without understanding input at the right level, learning cannot begin. Thus, listening is fundamental to speaking. Additionally, Trinh (2018) expresses that listening is a "receptive skill" where people obtain the main idea according to what they hear. Besides, Zhang (2019) supports that listening helps learners be "flexible listeners," to know how to listen to get a general idea or the specific information needed to understand videos. Similarly, Hasan and Hoon (2012) argue that "although listening is a passive skill, it is very much an active process of selecting and interpreting information from auditory and visual clues." Besides, Hamouda (2013) claims that listening is an active process in which listeners select and interpret information comes auditory and visual clues to define what is going on and what the speakers are trying to express. Further, active means listeners get information (from visual and auditory clues) and relate this Research and Innovation in Language Learning Vol. 4(1) January 2021 p-ISSN 2614-5960, e-ISSN 2615-4137 22 information to what they know. Select means that listeners use only part of the incoming information to make sense of the input. Interpret- means the listener uses their background knowledge and the new information of what is going on and figuring out what speakers intend. Listening is more complicated than merely hearing. It is a process that consists of four stages: sensing and attending, understanding, and interpreting, remembering, and responding. The stages occur in sequence, but we are generally unaware of them. Listening influences other skills. Experts show that the quality of an individual's listening ability will affect both their spoken and written language development. If the target language sounds are presented to the learners before presenting them in written form, their ease of integrating them will be reflected in their understanding and language production. Thus, listening as an essential input material is very important for the students in learning English. It is a highly complex process that draws on knowledge of the linguistic code (language form) and cognitive processing skill (the skill process in mind). VOA English as materials in the English listening class. An overview of the advantage of using the VOA program as sources of English learning materials as one type of Podcast was written by Makiabadi and Square (2019). In this review, teachers could take advantage of technological developments on Android to implement mobile-assisted language learning (MALL). One type of electronic program included in MALL is VOA English Program. This report shows that the VOA listening website is applicable in the android system. It eases the students to access the listening materials. A report was written by Lauer (2011) about the use of podcasts, especially VOA English materials, in improving students listening comprehension. Based on this report, the use of VOA listening materials driven from the VOA English website motivates the students to improve their listening skills by customizing listening to the material in the class and outside the class. The VOA English website materials provide authentic materials that can help the students learn English efficiently and appropriately. Further, Laeli, AF. & Oktarini, W. 23 p-ISSN 2614-5960, e-ISSN 2615-4137 most of the teachers implement VOA English material with the following activities; a) the students were asked to listen to a particular listening (as the students' topic preference) at their home and present the reports in class orally. B) Teachers ask the students to make their listening materials (in the form of video or audio) and ask them to upload them on their own on the VOA English Website. Those activities are yet very challenging but exciting. Most of the students are motivated then to improve their listening comprehension. In the next year, Lauer (2012) continue investigating hoe the students' opinion toward using VOA listening materials. The survey revealed that students showed a positive attitude in using VOA as the source input in enhancing their listening skills. VOA listening materials help them and make them more interested in listening to activities. Pre-experimental research focusing on using English Video was taken from the VOA English website to increase Vocational Scholl students' listening comprehension was done by Sabinus, Bunau, and Novita (2013). The research instrument used in this study was a multiple-choice test. The study results show that students' listening comprehension significantly improves after exposure to VOA listening materials, especially video. A critical analysis of the students' and teachers' perspectives on using VOA English materials in Persia was investigated by Alavijeh & Marandi(2019). Based on the survey, VOA English materials provide authentic materials, including culture, the natural situation on the use of the language, vocabulary family, and pronunciation practice appropriately. Based on some of the above studies, VOA English materials provide authentic and appropriate input in learning English, both in the classroom and outside the classroom. Besides, all materials provided on this website is straightforward to download, so that both teachers and students are always easy to choose topics as needed. Not only that, but the material on the VOA program is also designed based on the user's level of English competency, starting from the beginner level to the advanced level. However, none of the previous studies have examined the use of VOA listening materials in junior high school who have low English proficiency. Research and Innovation in Language Learning Vol. 4(1) January 2021 p-ISSN 2614-5960, e-ISSN 2615-4137 24 Methods This study aimed to investigate how is the implementation of adopted learning instruction and materials from the VoA video English program for Junior High School listening class. Twenty-one students participate in this study during school hours. They were selected based on the students' English proficiency, particularly for students' listening skills seen from the teacher's documentation. The data were collected from field notes and questionnaires. The field note results obtain data about the extent to which VOA listening teaching materials can actively foster students' motivation to participate in listening learning classes. During the observation using fieldnote, the English teacher of the class and the second researcher participate as the observer, while the first researcher play as the instructor who implements VoA adopted instruction and materials in teaching listening. The fieldnote results from both the English teacher and the second researcher were analyzed to know how the students' participation during VOA materials implementation. The analysis focused on the students' responses to the researcher's instruction in the listening activities. The questionnaire has adapted from Sawitri et al. (2017) then the context changed into listening materials. The questionnaire was used to know students' responses in using listening material from the VOA Learning English program. Results and Discussion The implementation of VOA listening material This research was conducted based on the results of interviews with English teachers at the school. In the interview, the teacher revealed that the listening ability of the 8D graders was fragile. This teacher's conclusion is based on the assumption that listening to and understanding Indonesian alone is very weak, especially if given learning to listen in English. So during the semester, the teacher never facilitates his students to improve their listening skills (listening). The research was conducted in four meetings, from the 3rd, 4th, 10th, and 11th March 2020. At each meeting, researchers and teams provided listening learning with the theme of Narrative text, using teaching material taken from the VOA Learning English Laeli, AF. & Oktarini, W. 25 p-ISSN 2614-5960, e-ISSN 2615-4137 program. The material taken from the VOA Learning English program is in the form of video, with a beginner level. Figure 1. The class situation At the first meeting, the topic given was "Yesterday was Amazing." Activities provided are students asked to sort randomized sentences into a story following the video that has been given. Students work on this activity in groups. This video from VOA was played three times. Students only listened to the audio from the video in the first and second rounds without being shown the visuals. Finally, students were allowed to listen and see the visual in completing the task to arrange sentences into a paragraph. At this first meeting, students still look unfamiliar with the forms of activities that are given. Most groups ask for an extension of time to complete their assignments. Finally, at this meeting, it takes longer to complete the activity, so researchers have less time to review the tasks that have been done in groups. However, actively participating in the activity, the students seemed enthusiastic to participate in the activity; they were active discussions in the group. Based on observations, they divided their tasks in solving problems. Two students have listened to the audio, one student has prepared papers to stick to the answers, and the rest of the students in the group read the sentences provided in the cards. From these observations, it can be concluded that students do the group activities effectively. Furthermore, at the 2nd meeting, the topic given was "I Passed." The stages of activities given are the same as the activities given at the first meeting. The difference is the formation of different groups from the first meeting. The aim was that students could work together with all the characters of their friends. At this meeting, students have begun to understand the process stages of the activity. They can complete the task, Research and Innovation in Language Learning Vol. 4(1) January 2021 p-ISSN 2614-5960, e-ISSN 2615-4137 26 Arranging sentences to become a paragraph following the time determined by the researcher. At this meeting, researchers have more time to review and provide feedback on the work done. From the work results at this meeting, students can arrange sentences following the video's storyline. The results were better than their work at the first meeting. Then the 3rd meeting, "I Was Minding My Own Business," and at the 4th (last) meeting was "Long Time Ago." The activities at this meeting are the same, students make small groups according to the lottery from the researchers, and they are asked to identify the ways in the video based on the generic structure in the Narrative text. From observations at the 3rd and fourth meetings, they recognized new vocabulary they had not found before in the video, even though they still did not know the meaning of the word in Indonesian. Students asked the researchers that they heard a new word and asked what the word meant in Indonesian. Therefore, the researchers helped students to understand the word in Indonesian. Regarding the information conveyed in the video, students can retrieve the information submitted even though it is not sufficiently obtained from the language used but is also influenced by the video's visual appearance. From the observations recorded in the fieldnote, it can be concluded that learning using teaching materials from VOA Learning English can help students learn to hone their listening activities in English. However, it is essential to note that, in addition to choosing the material that matches the level of English language ability in VOA learning English, teachers should combine with activities that can make students actively participate in these activities. As Saraswaty (2018) suggests, teachers play an essential role in providing activities, strategies, and materials to improve their English listening skills. Further, teachers should be able to arrange the materials from the basic to the complex level. In this study, the activities designed by researchers are small groups discussion and puzzle games. This present study also supports previous study finding that the use of authentic material like video from VoA English Program could engage students' motivation to be involved in listening class activities (Tasya et al., 2018). Besides, the use of adopted materials from the VoA English program could Laeli, AF. & Oktarini, W. 27 p-ISSN 2614-5960, e-ISSN 2615-4137 attract the students' enthusiasm to learn English listening skills with an informative, detailed, and exciting report (Astuti et al., 2019). Students' Responses Toward The Implementation of VOA Listening Materials. To find out students' responses to teaching materials from VOA learning English, researchers gave a questionnaire. This question is given in the form of Google Form after the research implementation activities are completed. Fill out via Google Form because the school's learning activities were closed because of the COVID 19 virus outbreak. Table 1. students' response No. Question ∑n answer Yes No 1 Is the English used in the video easy to understand? 21 58,8% 41,2% 2 Do you enjoy learning listening (listening) in English subjects using the video? 21 100% 0% 3 Do you have a high motivation to learn Listening (listening) in English subjects using the video? 21 76,5% 23,5% 4 Do you think that learning to listen using this video can help you learn English in class quickly? 21 88,2% 11,8% 5 Can the learning video help you to add new vocabulary in English? 21 94,1% 5,9% 6 Can the learning video help you to capture information delivered using English? 21 76,5% 23,5% 7 Do you still want the teacher to use the video later in learning to listen to English in class? 21 88,2% 11,8% The questionnaire results show that data was obtained in the field note was strengthened by information obtained from the students' answers to the questionnaire. Information obtained includes students feeling happy and motivated in listening to learning using teaching materials taken from the VOA Learning English Program. Therefore, students hope the teacher will still be able to use VOA teaching materials in listening activities. Besides, students also stated that they could find new vocabulary while listening to videos from the VOA Learning English program. It is supported by (Astuti et al., 2019; Muzdalifah, 2018) report that videos from the VoA English Program provide the students with a large amount of repeated vocabulary and diverse contexts. Further, the material from VOA can also help students to train them in improving their ability in listening skills. The VOA English website's materials can be used as either the primary or supporting materials in teaching and learning English. It also engages Research and Innovation in Language Learning Vol. 4(1) January 2021 p-ISSN 2614-5960, e-ISSN 2615-4137 28 students' motivation and competency in English skills (listening, writing, reading, and speaking) (Wahyudi, 2013; Phu'ong, 2011). Conclusion and recommendation The use of listening material from the VOA program as a source of listening learning material can motivate and assist students in the Listening learning process in the classroom. Further, the material used in learning to listen is in the form of videos with the selection of themes appropriate to students' daily activities. The VOA program also provides various listening material with many exciting themes and matches the level of students' English proficiency, from beginner to advance. Moreover, this study's results will be an alternative learning activity that is innovative and fun that can be used by English teachers in class. There are some limitations weaknesses in this study. One of them is that the researcher did not analyze which learning strategy is suitable for using listening material from the VOA program for junior high school students. In this study, researchers still focus on using VOA listening material as teaching material in listening learning. Therefore, future researchers are suggested to research collaboration between specific strategies or learning techniques with VOA material in listening learning that can help junior high school students learn Listening more effectively. Acknowledgment Most enormous gratitude is given to Universitas Muhammadiyah, who is supported financially in conducting this research through an internal research program. And special thanks to Principle and English teacher of MTs. Negeri 5 Arjasa Jember, who has allowed conducting this research in the class. References Alavijeh, K. K., & Marandi, S. S. (2019). VoA Special English for Persian Learners from the Perspective of Persian Speakers : A Critical Analysis. 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Non-English Majored Learners' Attitude Toward EFL Teachers' Use of ICT in Teaching Listening. European Journal of Education Studies, 72–87. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1332550 Wahyudi, N. S. D. (2013). Teaching Listening Comprehension Through Voice of America (VoA). Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling, 53(9), 1689– 1699. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107415324.004 Research and Innovation in Language Learning Vol. 4(1) January 2021 p-ISSN 2614-5960, e-ISSN 2615-4137 30 Zhang, J. (2019). Research on the Strategy-based Instruction of News Broadcast Listening for English Minors in China. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 10(1), 103. https://doi.org/10.17507/jltr.1001.12 Conflict of Interest Authors do not have conflict interest. Author Biography Anita Fatimatul Laeli is an English lecturer at English Education Program in Universitas Muhammadiyah Jember. Her interest is in TEFL research. Her Sinta ID is 6173699