There are several skills in English, but it can be classified to 4 parts; listening, reading, speaking, and writing. From those skills, listening is very essential skill to be mastered. To know more about listening, let us have a look on this definition of listening based on this theory, “Listening is integral to our lives. It provides us with important information and insights. It keeps us focused, balanced and connected. Listening is essential to how we relate with one another, with ourselves, with nature, with the spiritual realm, and with other aspects of the world around us.” (http://www.nhchc.org). According to Mega, she said that listening activities are quite difficult. Furthermore, she mentioned what the aspects make listening difficult to be mastered. Those aspects are accents, pronunciation, and the vocabularies. Why should we use songs? It is that because all people in the world like music. They can stand listen music for a long time. The condition is like what students have. For the example, Satria Akbar Sigit, one of college students of State University of Malang, said that songs can make him more relax. In addition, in spite of being listening materials, songs are not too long or too short in duration. On the other way, there are a lot of English learners have difficulty in learning English. To figure out this problem, let us analyze the process to improve students’ listening skills through songs in three main steps: preparing, analyzing, and evaluating.
The first thing that we have to know is the preparation step. The most important part is preparing the materials. Without providing materials, we cannot teach the students. In this step, there are three processes to do. Firstly, teacher picks the appropriate song. In choosing a song, the teacher should choose the right song and the right level because each English learner has different skill and level. Secondly, the teacher explains the procedure of the lesson that would be given. Here, the teacher gives the steps and explanation about how to do the tasks given. The teacher should explain how to make a draft of the lyric or how to catch the words from the song. The third, teacher should set the students to be prepared. The teacher should give instruction to the students to put on the headset and prepare the stuffs they need such as stationeries.
The second step is analyzing the song. In this step, the students are fully engaged in the learning activity. Normally, there are three steps in it. Firstly, students listen to the song played. While listening to the song, the students analyze and predict the lyric. Secondly, students make some notes about the lyric they are listening to. They just have to write down the prediction about what the singer sings. The third step, students make the report of the song. The students should sum up the draft they have made before and write down the complete lyric of the song.
The last step is evaluation process. In evaluating the song, there are three steps to achieve. Firstly, the teacher shows the correct lyric of the song. The teacher and the students are examining this correct lyric. Secondly, while the students are examining the lyric, they are also correcting the notes they made. In this step, students should examine the mistakes in their final notes. They have to correct any mistakes such as wrong words. Thirdly, after the students get the correct lyric, they sing the song to know the right pronunciation of the words in the song.
In summary, there are several skills in English, but it can be classified to 4 parts; listening, reading, speaking, and writing. From those skills, listening is very important skill to be leveled. In addition, listening skill is really needed when we talk in English to know what the other speaker says. Teaching English to improve student’s listening skill by using song requires three steps: preparing, analyzing, and evaluating. Each step has different function in acquiring the language skills, especially in listening skills. As a recommendation, the teacher should pick some interesting songs which can improve students’ competence in listening.
Written by
Restu Maulidianto
Satria Akbar Sigit
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