Improving English Listening Comprehension by Watching Subtitled Movies
Rivaldi Anwar
English Education 2D
Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, University Singaperbangsa Karawang
rrivaldianwar23@gmail.com
Abstract
In learning English, listening is an important aspect and cannot be separated from learning
language, listening is the first course must be learned by people or student. because by
listening we can learn how to pronounce and understand meaning spoken by speakers
however learning to listen becomes difficult for those people because they must understand
the meaning of each word spoke. therefore i found a method of learning to listen and one of
them is watching a movie, by watching a film we learn to listen to language while learning
every meaning of speech, watching films also makes students learn language and enjoy it
faster so they don't feel bored.for this research I used the literature study method by searching
from various articles and opinions of experts who became the references of this journal, with
the results of this study listening learning using the film method turned out to have a positive
impact on the ability to understand language and meaning or listening comprehension of a
person.
Key words : listening comprehension, method of learning language, watching subtitled
movie
Introduction
Listening is one of the four language skills which learners usually find the
mostdifficult. According to Rivers (1986), we have to spend much of our time
throughlistening activities, he estimates that the time adult spends in communicationactivities
is 45% for listening, 30% for speaking, 16% for reading, and only 9%for writing skills.
Besides that in studying foreign language listening is the first course that must be learn by
student, in other words before someone understands and starts to speak english, they have to
hear sound, words, and speech patterns first. because with that they can understand how good
pronunciation and understand the meaning of their speech.
Unfortunately most people or students who study English have difficulty
understanding the word spoken by speakers it means that the students have difficult in
catching information. This difficulty is a challenge for people who are first learning English
because before they learn to speak and write they need to be able to listen to good English
pronunciationThis might be caused thestudent's limited vocabulary mastery and the condition
of the class was verynoisy. As a result, the students have hearing problem and most of them
have low motivation to learn listening.
Listening skill is as important as speaking skill, many people cannot communicate
face to face unless the two types of skills are developed in tandem (Anderson and Lynch,
2002:3). It means that without good listening skill usually people can't speak fluently with
others, they need listening skill to help their idea inunderstanding what someone says. this
makes listening skills an ability that must be mastered by anyone who is learning English
because by understanding conversations we can understand the meaning of these words.
Moreover, related to the previous research which was conducted by Winda(2010), it
was found that the students had difficulty in comprehending stated andunstated meaning
conveyed in the text in terms of identifying the main idea,specific information and inference
in listening comprehension text. Even more,since listening skill affects the speaking skill, the
students could not follow whattheir teacher was talking about. They were unable to speak
English fluentlybecause they lacked of motivation in learning listening subject.
The Process of Listening Listening is not a passive activity as many people thought
but it is an active activity that has an internal process. The process of listening passes three
stages, Underwood (1989). The stages are:
1. The sounds go into echoic memory for a very short time to be organized into meaningful
units according to the knowledge of the language the listener already has.
2. The information is then processed by the short time memory. In a matter of seconds, words
are checked and compared with information already held in the long-term memory and
meaning is extracted.
3. The meaning extracted is stored in the long-term memory for later use.
Background
The background of making this research is to see how much influence watching
movie and listening comprehension ability because listening comprehension is an ability that
must always be trained in order to understand the meaning of words from the speakers,
listening comprehension language has a great influence on someone's language proficiency,
because it is the basis of language learning before we learn to write, and speak then we must
listen to what language is like, how to pronounce it, what is the meaning of the word, what is
the meaning of the word, because listening comprehension is an important factor that can not
be separated in language learning, especially English because in this era English is an
international language and the language used by people from all countries in the world to
communicate with other countries, there is no reason not to understand English.
There are various methods to improve listening comprehension skills, for example by
listening to audio from mp3 and text that has been prepared to be read along with listening to
audio. Usually the method is done in schools or tutoring institutions where students are taught
by teachers. but the method is an old method that makes students feel bored quickly from that
case I want to examine how watching English films with subtitles can improve someones
listening comprehension because by seeing our film presented with interesting videos and
storylines, but in addition to getting it we can improve listening comprehension by
understanding every word spoken by the actor in the film.
Based on the explanation above, the researcher purposes video movie to increasethe
students' listening comprehension. Video movie is one of theaudio visual aids that can be
used in language teaching. In line with statement above, Sadiman (2005:29) said that video is
storage of picture and soundinformation system where audiovisual signal is not only recorded
on magnetictape but also on disk. The use of video movie can motivate students to follow
theclass actively because a movie provides interesting pictures and sounds. It canalso help the
students retain information, introduces new vocabularies, grammar,messages, and
entertainment at the same time.
Purpose
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Improve listening comprehension skills for students or who are learning English
Explain the importance of learning listening comprehension
Provide ways to learn listening English
Give a method for improving listening comprehension
Correct old methods related to listening learning
Benefits
1. Can improve students' listening comprehension skills
2. Students can learn from various methods
3. The method of learning from this movie makes students entertained and learning at
the same time
4. Students can learn listening anytime and anywhere
Problem
Problems in listening emphasized by Field (2003) are those: Learners know the word,
but get the wrong sense.Phonetic variation of a word mislead them. (reduction ,assimilation,
elision, cliticization, resyllabification). Learners know the word in written form but not the
oral version. Learners have difficulty to catch the word from a connected speech such as a
dialogue.
Yiching (2005), however, thinks that some barriers cause problems in listening such
as belief barriers, material barriers, habitudinal barriers, information processing barriers,
English proficiency barriers, strategic barriers and affective barriers. He introduces forgetting
to activate strategies, regarding strategies as extra burdens to information processing, being
challenged by the complex nature of the strategy, having problems conducting the proper
strategies and even being unable to comprehend the text after applying strategies.
Yousif (2006) mentions more about psychological barriers in listening, the
importance of speech rate in listening and giving breaks during a long listening activity.
According to him, lecturers should be more aware of their students' listening problems and
adjust activities to their students.
Kurita (2012) also gives different suggestions for advanced and low level learners in
listening after examining researches done recently. She suggests dictation especially for
young learners while she sees reducing anxiety useful in listening for both learners to high
extent.
From those definition which was presented in several research journals many
obstacles of students in learning listening comprehension in the journal explained that these
obstacles such as belief problems, psychological barriers of students, obstacles in processing
information heard and the implementation of listening strategies when applied are not able to
be applied by students. this case motivate me to examine what solutions can be applied in
learning this listening comprehension.
Solution
According to Swift (2007:18), teaching listening suggest that we need to take a more
active approach to improve listening abilities, by focusing on the specific problems that the
students have and planning listening activities, which will help to resolve the problems.
Learning English through subtitled movie is very interesting. In fact, English students have
many advantages for them to regarding the other language. Western movies are better to
improve their skill because it is created in English language film. As international language,
the western movies are useful for the students in ELL.
According to Rahmatika I (2014:5) How to implementation the movie in classroom listening
activities (illustration of example
In the classroom, the students use the media for the listening is watching the movie
like through Youtube ,VCD,DVD, etch. The implementation for the students are, the lecturer
turn on the movie without subtitle and give the piece of paper . After that, the lecturer
give exercise for the students to write the vocabulary from the movie. Then, the
lecturer give 3 times occasion to listen it. It can assign the student’s skill in getting
vocabularies from movie. If they get many vocabularies, so they may be understand and
able develop their ability. With this way, the students will be focus and remember the
vocabularies from the movie.
Conclusion
So from all experts explanation and journal we can conclude that watching movie is very
useful for students because there is a lots benefits to improve our listening comprehension
skill, and it is a modern technology so the student can't be bored in the class and its very
interesting for student because it can show the visual and audio that ease the students to
understand it. Movies can we get from the social media, such as; Youtube,DVD,VCD,etc.
Listening the movies can do everywhere and whenever we have the time. Especially in the
classroom, to apply the listening movie is show the movie and turn on the subtitle of
movie therefore it turns out to learn listening comprehension does not have to use old
methods the instructor must create new methods so that students feel they are not easily bored
while studying the students also felt entertained besides watching the film, it turned out they
were learning to listening at the same time.
References
Field, J. (2003). Promoting perception: lexical segmentation in L2 listening. ELT Journal,
57(4), 325-334
Kurita, T. (2012). Issues in second language listening comprehension and the pedagogical
implications. Accents Asia, 5(1), 30-44.
Yousif, A. A. (2006). Listening comprehension difficulties as perceived by. Journal of King
Saud University Language and Translation, 19, 35-47
Chen, Y. (2005). Barriers to acquiring listening strategies for EFL learners and their
pedagogical implications. TESL-EJ, 8(4), 1-23.
Swift, S. 2007. An English Language Teaching Notebook.
http://elnotebook.blogspot.com/index.html.
Rahmatika, I. (2014) Watching movies to improve student's listening skill 4-5