5

CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

A. Theoretical Framework

In teaching listening, there are some techniques that teachers can apply.

One of them which the writer is interested in applying in the classroom is

Dictogloss Technique. Dictogloss is a classroom dictation activity where learners

listen to a passage, note down key words and then work together to create a

reconstructed version of the text. It was originally introduced by Ruth Wajnryb

(1990) as an alternative method of teaching grammar. This technique not only can

be applied individually, but also in group work. By applying it, students can

discuss and exchange their views or their opinion each other, so that they can

effectively write based on what they listened for several times.

B. Listening

Listening is an invisible mental process, making it difficult to describe.

Listeners must discriminate between sounds, understand vocabulary and

grammatical structures, interpret stress and intention, retain and interpret this

within the immediate as well as the larger socio-cultural context of the utterance

defines listening, in its broadest sense, as a process of receiving what the speaker

actually says (receptive orientation); constructing and representing meaning

(constructive orientation); negotiating meaning with the speaker and responding

5
 6

(collaborative orientation); and, creating meaning through involvement,

imagination and empathy (transformative orientation). Listening is a complex,

active process of interpretation in which listeners matches what they hear with

what they already know (http://www.llas.ac.uk/resources/gpg/67).

Listening is the process involving a continuum of active processes which

are under the control of the listener, and passive processes, which are not (Rost:

2002). Rivers in Duzer (1997) states that listening is critical element in the

component language performance of adult second language learners, whether they

are communicating at school, at work, or in the community. Through the normal

course of a day, listening is used nearly twice as much as speaking and four to five

times as much as reading.

Then according to Brown and Yule (1983), listening is a demanding

process, not only because of the complexity of the process itself, but also due to

the factors that characterize the listener, the speaker, the content of the message,

and any visual support that accompanies the message.

Ronald and Roskelly (1985) define listening as an active process requiring

the same skills of prediction, hypothesizing, checking, revising, and generalizing

that writing and reading demand; and they present specific exercises to make

students active listeners to the same inner voice one hears when writing.

Listening is the first language mode that children acquire. It provides a foundation

for all aspects of language and cognitive development, and it plays a life-long role
 7

in the process of learning and communication essential to productive participation

in life.

Listening is the absorption of the meanings of words and sentences by the

brain. Listening leads to the understanding of facts and ideas. But listening takes

attention, or sticking to the task at hand in spite of distractions. It requires

concentration, which is the focusing of your thoughts upon one particular

problem. A person who incorporates listening will concentration in actively

listening.

Listening is an invisible mental process, making it difficult to describe.

Listeners must discriminate between sounds, understand vocabulary and

grammatical structures, interpret stress and intention, retain and interpret this

within the immediate as well as the larger socio-cultural context of the utterance

defines listening, in its broadest sense, as a process of receiving what the speaker

actually says (receptive orientation); constructing and representing meaning

(constructive orientation); negotiating meaning with the speaker and responding

(collaborative orientation); and, creating meaning through involvement,

imagination and empathy (transformative orientation). Listening is a complex,

active process of interpretation in which listeners matches what they hear with

what they already know.

In conclusion, listening is receiving the transfer of images, impression,

thoughts, beliefs, attitudes and emotions from the speaker.

 8

2. Some Factors that Affect the Listening Process

Listening is a demanding process, not only because of the complexity of

the process itself, but also due to factors that characterize the listener, the speaker,

the content of the message, and any visual support that accompanies the message

(Brown & Yule, 1983).

a. The Listener

Interest in a topic increases the listener's comprehension; the listener may

tune out topics that are not of interest. A listener who is an active participant in a

conversation generally has more background knowledge to facilitate

understanding of the topic than a listener who is, in effect, eavesdropping on a

conversation between two people whose communication has been recorded on an

audiotape. Further, the ability to use negotiation skills, such as asking for

clarification, repetition, or definition of points not understood; enable a listener to

make sense of the incoming information.

b. The Speaker

Colloquial language and reduced forms make comprehension more

difficult. The extent to which the speaker uses these language forms impacts

comprehension. The more exposure the listener has to them, the greater the ability

to comprehend. A speaker's rate of delivery may be too fast, too slow, or have too

many hesitations for a listener to follow. Awareness of a speaker's corrections and

use of rephrasing ("er. . . I mean . . .That is . . .") can assist the listener. Learners

need practice in recognizing these speech habits as clues to deciphering meaning.

 9

c. Content

Content that is familiar is easier to comprehend than content with

unfamiliar vocabulary or for which the listener has insufficient background

knowledge.

d. Visual Support

Visual support, such as video, pictures, diagrams, gestures, facial

expressions, and body language, can increase comprehension if the learner is able

to correctly interpret it.

3. The Concept of Listening

Anderson and Lynch (1998) distinguish between reciprocal listening and

non-reciprocal listening. Reciprocal listening refers to those listening tasks where

there is the opportunity for the listener to interact with the speaker, and to

negotiate the content of the interaction. Non-reciprocal listening refers to tasks

such as listening to the radio or a formal lecture where the transfer of information

is in one direction only-from the speaker to the listener.

Anderson and Lynch (1998) contrast the bottom-up view of listening

where the listeners segment the stream of the speech into its constituent sounds,

link these to form words, and chain the words to form clauses and sentences and

so on. The top-down view the listening where the listener bring knowledge

from outside the spoken words to understand and interpret the aural text; where
 10

the listeners utilized both inside the head knowledge and outside the head

knowledge to interpret what they hear.

4. Types of Listening

According to Rost (2002), there are three types of listening; intensive

listening, selective listening, and interactive listening.

Intensive listening refers to listening for precise sounds, words, phrases,

grammatical units and pragmatics units. Although listening intensively is not often

called for in everyday situations, the ability to listen intensively whenever

required is an essential component of listening proficiency. As such, intensive

listening needs to be included in listening instruction, although to be an effective

practice it need not be more than-a small part of each class session.The

prototypical intensive listening is dictation, the transcription of the exact words

that the speaker utters.

Selective listening tasks encourage learners to approach genuine spoken

texts by adopting a strategy of focusing of specific information rather than trying

to understand and recall everything. Reconstruction of the spoken material based

on selective listening tasks can help students link selective listening to global

listening.

Interactive listening refers to listening in collaborative conversation.

Collaborative conversation, in which learners interact with each other or with

 11

native speakers, is establish as a vital means of language development. Its

potential benefits seem to be both in forcing comprehensible output (Swain,

2000), that is, compelling the learner to formulate ideas in the target language and

in forcing negotiation, that is, compelling the learner to come to understand

language that is initially not understood. Learners acquirement linguistic forms

(syntactic structures, words, phrases) as a product of attending to them in the

communicative contexts that true collaborative discourse provides, where they are

concerned primarily with meaning. Because learners frequently experience

difficulty in attending to and producing accurate forms, collaborative discourse

provides the ideal and producing to give focal attention to target forms that are

necessary to arrive at meaning (Long and Robinson, 1998; Ellis, Loewen and

Basturkmen, 1999).

5. The Listening Strategies

In concidering listening, it is useful to note the items Rost (2002) identifies

as strategies that are used by successful listeners.

1. Predicting: effective learners think about what the will hear.

2. Inferring: it is useful for learners to listen between the lines.
3. Monitoring: good listeners notice what they do and do not understand.
4. Clarifying: efficient learners ask question (What does ____mean? You mean

___?) and give feedback (I dont understand yet) to the speaker.

5. Responding: learners react to what they hear.
6. Evaluating: they check on how well they have understood.

6. The Importance of Listening

 12

1. Listening is the most common communicative activity in daily life: we can

expect to listen as much as we speak, four times more than we read, and

five times more than we write. (Morley, 1991).

2. Listening is also important for obtaining comprehensible input that is

necessary for language development.

7. Listening Comprehension

Listening is an activity deliberately hearing someone while comprehension

is the learners understanding of what someone says or has said. Listening

comprehension is the aural ability which someone has secured in finding out the

information from the speaker.

Comprehension is often considered to be the first-order goal of listening,

the highest priority of the listener, and sometimes the sole purpose of listening

(Rost, 2002). Although the term listening comprehension is widely used to refer

to all aspects of listening, the term comprehension is used in a more specific

sense here. Comprehension is the process of relating language to concepts in ones

memory and to references in the real world. Comprehension is the sense of

understanding what the language used refers to in ones experience or in the

outside world. Complete comprehension then refers to the listener having a clear

concept in memory for every referent used by the speaker.

Listening comprehension is a complex process, crucial in the development

of second language competence. Listeners use both bottom-up processers

 13

(linguistic knowledge) and top-down processes (prior knowledge) to comprehend.

Knowing the context of a listening text and the purpose for listening greatly

reduces the burden of comprehension (Larry Vandergrift-

http://www.llas.ac.uk/resources/gpg/67).

C. Narrative

Narration or narrative provides details of telling a story. According to

Carol (2001: 77) narration is telling story. While Dumais (1998: 60) point out that

a narrative tells a story a series of connected indicates or an action process of an

action. In a narrative, the incidents that make up the story are usually told in the

order in which they would really happen.

Breteton (1982: 66) defines a narrative is a story. This story may be true as

in the writing of history, autobiography or news reports, the story may be fictional

as in a short story, novelette or novel. An effective narration has a plot. It is

arranged according to meaningful and dramatic sequence of action, which may or

may not follow the order in which events actually happened. Narrative text is

classified based on analysis of three main elements of text, namely:

a. The purpose of the text; why is the text made? And what is text made for by

its writer.
b. The generic structure of the text; analyzing the used structure in composing

the text, in what way is the text constructed by its writer.

c. The language feature; taking a look at the linguistic characterizations of the

text, what kind of language feature is used to build the text by its writer.
 14

1. The Types of Narrative

There are many types of narrative. They can be imaginary, factual or a

combination of both. They may include fairy stories, mysteries, science fiction,

romances, horror stories, adventure stories, fables, myths and legends, historical

narratives, ballads, slice of life, personal experience.

D. Technique

A technique is an implementation that actually takes places in classroom.

It is a particular trick, strategies, used to accomplish an immediate objective.

Technique must be consistent with a method, as well as approach. When teacher

teaches in the classroom, they must be able to create strategy how to manage the

class, when they face naughty or stupid students.

In Oxford Dictionary (1995: 1226), a technique means: (1) a particular

way of doing something, especially one in which you have learn special skills, (2)

the skill with which somebody is able to do something practically.

E. Dictogloss

Dictogloss is a technique adapted from Ruth Wajnryb (1990: 5), it is a

relatively recent in language teaching. Dictogloss borrows a little from traditional

dictation (hence part of its name) but in fact is quite distinct from dictation in both

procedure and objectively. In dictogloss, a short text is at normal speed to a class

of learners who jot down familiar words as they listen. At the end of dictation
 15

stage, most learners have only a small number of isolated words (or fragments),

which together make up a cohesion text.

Dictogloss is a teaching procedure that involves the speedy dictation of

short text to language learners. The students take notes during the reading of the

text and then working in a small group; proceed a new text as a cooperative

endeavor. This achieved by pooling of the groups notes and then making of

grammatical decision about the text: specifically about word choice, sentence

formation and cross-sentence connection. Finally, after each group has produced

its own version of the text, the whole class reconvenes and each group has to

present their text in front of the class which will be analyzed and corrected.

The key to the dictogloss is interaction. The technique requires learners in

the classroom to interact with each other in small group so as to reconstruct the

text as a cooperative endeavor. Working in this way, learners are actively engaged

in the learning process. Through active learner involvement, students come to

confront their own strength and weakness in English language use. And then they

find out what they do not know, and they find out what they need to know.

Through this process they can improve their language skills.

1. The Purpose of Dictogloss Technique

According to Wajnyrb (1990: 6) dictogloss has a number of purpose:

1. To introduce key words at the beginning of a work sequence.

2. To encourage students to focus on meaning when listening to a text.

 16

3. To provide an opportunity for learners to use their productive grammar in

the text of txt creation.

4. To develop proof reading and editing strategies.

5. To encourage learners to find out what they do and do not know about

language. This is realized in the attempts to reconstruct the text and in the

subsequent analysis of those attempts.

6. To develop effective listening strategy.

7. To provide an authentic opportunity for cooperative learning.

2. The Procedure of Dictogloss Technique

The basic steps in dictogloss listening classes are the same as those

outlined by Wajnrub (1990) for the purpose of grammar teaching. There are four

stages: preparation, listening, reconstruction and analysis and correction. Each

stage will now be described in more detail.

2.1. Preparation

The purpose of the preparation stage is to make students more receptive to

the listening passage. Listening is a dynamic process where the listeners construct

meaning based on the interplay of background knowledge and the new concepts

presented in the text. In other words, listening comprehension requires both

topical and linguistic knowledge. Teachers can facilitate this process by providing

background information and helping students with unfamiliar language. The

purpose of the preparation stage is therefore twofold: it should give the learners a
 17

topical warm-up as well as familiarize them with vocabulary that will appear in

the text.

2.1.1 Topical warm-up

The topical warm-up is important as it enables learners to activate their

background knowledge. Knowledge of the content helps listeners interpret the

message correctly. This is because understanding presupposes an interaction

between the knowledge stored in the semantic memory and perceptual experience

(Kintsch, 1977). As learners often have insufficient knowledge of the linguistic

system, content and textual schemata may be crucial for an understanding of the

text.

Topical preparation is particularly important when the texts may introduce

culturally unfamiliar concepts. Background knowledge is represented in human

memory through scripts, that is, sets of expectations people have about general

concepts, places, situations, actions and their sequences. Scripts play an important

role in human information processing and they tend to be culture-bound (Buck,

2001). Therefore, the extent to which the listener may share background

knowledge with the speakers is an important issue to consider at the preparation

stage.

One simple way to introduce the topic is to give students some topical

questions for discussion. For example, if listening is going to be about food,

asking students to discuss questions such as what kind of food do you like? How

healthy are your eating habits? Do you prefer to eat out or at home? What is the

most unusual food you have tried? And so on can be a good warm-up activity.
 18

Questions should gradually draw the students attention to the specific

topic of the listening extract.

2.1.2 Vocabulary preparation

Insufficient vocabulary knowledge is a frequent cause of listening

comprehension problems. Due to limited vocabulary size and problems with the

perception of acoustic forms, learners often experience difficulties in processing

audio input.

Learners may not know the words that appear in the spoken discourse, or

they may not be able to recognize them in the strings of connected speech. Failure

to understand the input correctly also means that learners will have difficulties

anticipating the upcoming discourse. Studies from L1 showed that native speakers

use context to make predictions about the utterances that are likely to follow

(Nattinger & DeCarrico, 1992; Ur,1998).

If the listener knows how the sentence is likely to finish, the closing words

become redundant and he/she can focus on the next significant piece of

information. As language learners often do not have enough linguistic knowledge,

they cannot take advantage of contextual redundancy in the way that native

speakers can. More mental effort is needed to process information which means

that less information can be stored at one time in the short-term memory. As

Nattinger and DeCarrico (1992) point out, such a reduction in storage capacity

means that less linguistic data can be analyzed simultaneously, thus impeding the

comprehension process.
 19

Sufficient vocabulary preparation is also important because lexical

knowledge entails background knowledge (Rumelhart, 1980). The more a learner

knows about a word, the more he/she is likely to be aware of the semantic links in

the structure of a text and consequently the more likely he/she is to activate the

relevant background knowledge crucial for text comprehension. Recognition of

word-forms triggers preexisting world knowledge as well as knowledge of any

associated words or concepts related to that word. For example, when the word

tuxedo, is encountered in a text, the cognitive processes that are attempting to

make sense of the text do not just access it as a formal suit of clothing.

All related concepts in the memory are activated. People remember that

tuxedos are expensive, that they are worn infrequently, they are uncomfortable,

they can be rented, they are often worn at weddings and so on (Willingham,

2006:2~3). Limited vocabulary may prevent students from activating the relevant

content schemata, which in turn may have a negative effect on their listening

performance.

Vocabulary activities at the preparations stage, therefore, have three main

objectives: (a) to familiarize the learners with the meaning and the form of new

words, (b) to help learners recognize lexical items in the strings of connected

speech, (c) to promote productive usage of the target words necessary for the

reconstruction stage.

Considering the limited time that can be devoted to explicit vocabulary

instruction, it is important to select activities that will promote the aspects of the

word knowledge outlined above, while not taking time away from the main
 20

objective of the lesson listening comprehension. Collocation-based lexical

instruction seems to be an effective way of achieving this goal. One activity that

was found to be effective is a Collocation Crossword. The students are given a list

of the target words with example sentences and definitions. After that, they are

asked to complete a crossword where the clues are collocates that go with the

target words. For each target word, two sentences are given. To facilitate

retention, typical collocates should be highlighted.

2.2. Listening procedure

When the dictogloss procedure is first introduced, learners may need to hear

the recording several times. The first time, the students are not permitted to take

notes or write anything. They only listen to get a general idea about the text. The

second time they can take notes. As inexperienced learners tend to try to write

down everything, teachers should emphasize that they should focus on key words

only that will help them with the reconstruction of the text. (These are often the

words that were introduced in the preparation stage). A third listening gives

learners a chance to confirm the information and revise their notes if necessary. A

short 5-minute break between the second and the third listening gives students a

chance to discuss their notes and identify the points they need to focus on. As

learners get used to the procedure and their listening comprehension improves, it

may be sufficient to only play the recording twice.

2.3. Reconstruction
 21

Reconstruction is the central part of the dictogloss listening lesson. Working

in small groups (3-4 people), students discuss what they heard and attempt to

produce a coherent text close in content and organization to the original version.

Limiting the group size is important to allow for individual contributions to be

incorporated into the group effort (Wajnryb, 1990). The groups reconstruct the

text in writing. The purpose is not to replicate the original text, but to maintain its

informational content. One person is the recorder and the text is produced from

the pooled information of the group members. In order to enforce the target

vocabulary and ensure that the main points are included, students are asked to use

all the words from the preparation stage.

During reconstruction, the teachers role is to monitor the activity. No

language input should be provided during this stage. There are several things,

however, that the teacher can do to make the reconstruction process easier for the

students. For example, enlarged copies of the lecture script may be posted around

the room. One member from each group can check the script and then go back to

the recorder to report what information was missing. Another student may go to

another group to ask for missing information or clarification. When gathering

information, students should not write anything nor have the written

reconstruction with them. All information should be exchanged orally.

During reconstruction, teacher should also observe the nature of group

interaction to ensure that all students participate and that the more advanced

students do not dominate the group. They should encourage silent students and

adjust the timing if necessary.

 22

2.4. Analysis and correction

The last stage of the dictogloss procedure is the analysis and correction of

the learners texts. In a dictogloss listening class, the main purpose of the analysis

and correction stage is to identify the problems students had with text

comprehension.

Therefore, although the reconstruction task requires writing ability,

spelling mistakes should be less of a concern. One well-recognized characteristic

of language processing is that learners tend to remember the content of the

message rather than the exact words used (Sachs, 1967). The reconstruction task

asks students to use their language ability to put words in the meaningful units. In

that process, higher-ability students are likely to replace the words from the

original text with their own synonyms. These ideas should be marked as being

correct. However, in order to facilitate the acquisition of new vocabulary, students

should get points for using the words from the preparation stage.

Correction can be done as a class or as group work. One option is to select

1-2 recorders to read what they wrote for each section / paragraph and then

compare it to the original text. Another option is to give the students the

transcripts of the recording and have them swap their reconstructions with another

group and then ask them to give feedback on accurate/inaccurate or missing

information. Instead of a transcript, teachers may want to give students a

Reconstruction Checklist.

In the list, the students are asked to check whether all target words have

been used and whether all ideas have been included in the reconstruction. For
 23

each idea students are given an option of fully included, partially included or not

included at all carrying 1 point, 0.5 points and 0 points respectively. Students can

be asked to check their reconstruction (self-assessment) or the reconstruction of

another group (peer-assessment).

Students could be assigned parts of the text to check, or one student could

be appointed as a Checker for the whole passage. The advantage of using a

Reconstruction Checklist is that students get immediate feedback on their

performance. Feedback is essential for language learning. As Ur (1998) observes,

unlike reading and writing assignments which can tolerate delayed feedback, for

listening it is essential that learners get feedback on their performance while what

they have heard is still echoing somewhere in their mind, and there is still a

possibility of hearing it again. Immediate feedback enables students to understand

their mistakes and to learn from them. They can clearly see which vocabulary

items or ideas are missing and group work provides assistance to members who

have difficulty comprehending the content.

The fact that the dictogloss task has very specific outcomes makes it easier

for students to evaluate their success. Having the students calculate their points

and fill in the progress chart allows students to monitor their progress. As the

students performance usually gets better with practice, increased perceived

achievement is likely to have a positive effect on student motivation. This is

important because a lack of perceived linguistic improvement can significantly

reduce students motivation.

 24

The teacher's job is to make sure that peer feedback is correct and to

provide additional linguistic guidance if necessary.

By circulating among the groups, the teacher can observe and interact with

a greater number of students and assist them with the problems they may

encounter with the language or the content. In addition to linguistic feedback, the

teacher could also discuss with the students how interaction among group

members could be modified to make it more effective.

F. Conceptual Framework

Listening has become the important skill in learning English. In reality,

students face difficulties to understand what their teacher said while in teaching

learning process. Most of them are not interested and passive in the activity

because of their unknown. In the second grade of Senior High School, they have

this skill that must be learnt and master to make English subject for the rest skills

are easier to do.

To make the students be active and interested in English subject, firstly the

writer thinks that the students must be good in listening. To practice their listening

skill, the writer chooses Dictogloss as the technique expected to run well. It can be

done individually or in group work to improve their ability.

In conclusion, by applying this technique, the students achievement in

listening skill that is proof in writing test can be increases. That is why the

Dictogloss technique is suitable for students achievements in learning English. It

is expected to help the teachers role to make students be active and interested in
 25

rising up with good interaction in classroom. So that it is easier to understand

English well.

C. Hypothesis

Based on theoretical and conceptual framework above, the hypothesis can

be formulated as follows:

The use of Dictogloss Technique has a significant effect the students listening

comprehension.