Listening Anxiety Of Undergraduate EFL Students Of UIN
English is an international language that is really important. Almost all aspects of life use it such as, arts, sciences, humanities, travel and social sciences. The major venues of foreign country use it too. Even, Brown states that learning and teaching English are necessary for all countries in the world. It is because there is so much information written by English in this globalization era. Further, the people realize that learning English is so essential. Today, there is no country that is not learning English. Besides, there are many advantages that people can get by learning it, such as for getting job. Nowadays, all of jobs including computer programming are using English. From explanation above, we can know the reason of English is necessary to learn.
In order to master English, there are four skills that must be master. Those skills are reading, writing, speaking and listening. These four English skills appear together in English class naturally. Reading is the way people learn language by seeing the words on the paper and begin to learn how the way the word can come together, the pattern and the sentence to make a sense. While, writing is the way people to create the sentences after learn about the pattern of language. On the other hand, speaking is how the way people learn language by practices it in oral. The last, listening is how the people learn by interpreting what the speaker says. In other word, four English skills are necessary to learn. From the four skills, the most necessary one is listening. Like a baby learns language by listening first, the people commonly learn language by listening first too. Listening component is included in many aspects of education like university entrance exams, school exams, and other examinations. On the other hand, people usually spend their time more to listen than to speak on their conversation. More than forty percent of our daily communication time is spent on listening, thirty five percent on speaking, sixteen percent on reading, and only nine percent on writing. Meanwhile, Hamouda (2013) states that kindergarten until high school students were expected to listen 65-90 percent of the time. It can be included that is that listening is essential skill for human.
In addition to that, there is one important thing which should be well understood in listening, it is listening comprehension. Listening comprehension is the way people select the aspect of input, form meaning from passages, and associate what they hear with existing knowledge. It is so useful for people that want to achieve their English skill because they will learn more about speech sounds, comprehending the meaning of individual words, and understanding the syntax of sentences. In summary, listening comprehension is essential activities for people because they will learn various aspects of listening like speech sounds, comprehending the meaning of individual words, and understanding the syntax of sentences.
In fact, there are problems in the process of learning listening. The first is many people do not realize that it is important. Hamouda (2013) explains that the university is more focus on English grammar, reading and vocabulary. Not only university, but also course book and teacher do not think that it is important to consider listening while designing their lessons. Other problems come from the student anxiety. Otair and Aziz (2017) state that anxiety is a major problem relate to listening comprehension. Similarly, Golchi (2012) explains that anxiety is usually provoked by listening skill. Even, not only listening comprehension but also listening ability effected by listening anxiety because it will make student's attention dispersed and the auditory organ and reaction of their sensitivity will weaken also, anxiety become one of the most essential factors to hind students’ listening capacity and performance. It will be critical if anxiety becomes really strong or last for long time. To sum up, there are many problems that make learning listening comprehension difficult for students and the most critical one is anxiety.
Anxiety is an apprehension condition, equivocal fear. In the eyes of Xu (2011), anxiety is correlated by negative feelings like uneasiness, frustration, self-doubt, apprehension and tension. Specifically, it defines as the name of disorder that makes people feel nervous, fear, apprehension, and worry. So, anxiety is disorders who make people have a negative feels. In addition, anxiety has an impact with foreign language learning. It has been a long time that anxiety associated with foreign or second language learning and communication become a focus of second language researcher. Besides that, the researcher have been started to develop research on anxiety in other aspects of the language. Zhao (2016) state that since 1980’s, the researchers have begun to change the domain of research into anxiety to be more specific like listening, reading, writing and speaking. Lastly, there are many students who complain of experiencing anxiety on listening skill. In other word, anxiety can influence the English skill especially in listening. Unfortunately, researcher put less attention on anxiety in listening. One of the most debilitating anxiety but most ignored is anxiety in listening comprehension. Most people assume that listening is easy because it is passive skill, so the anxiety in listening should be easy to fix. But, this assumption is wrong. In fact, listening anxiety is a variable that can affect the success and failure foreign language students. Similarly, Katemba (2013) found that Indonesian university students are highly anxious in English. It includes listening too. Based on preliminary study to the EFL students of UIN Raden Fatah Palembang, there are many students got unsatisfied or low score in listening subject and one of the factors is their anxious in listening. In short, many people do not realize that listening anxiety is one of big factors to make EFL students fail in learning English including Indonesian students especially students of UIN Raden Fatah Palembang.
Meanwhile, there are some researchers who have done the similar research about listening anxiety in the world. Pan (2016) found the factors of listening anxiety are teacher and learner factor, listening and material process and other factor. Serraj (2015) found the three factors of anxiety such as, individual factors (nerves and emotionality, using inappropriate strategies and lack of practice), input factors (lack of time to process, lack of visual support, nature of speech and level of difficulty) and environmental factors (instructors, peers and class environment). Lili (2015) found listening anxiety factors are lack of confidence, lack of listening strategies, characteristic of listening comprehension, characteristic of listening materials and fear of negative evaluation.
Stawiarska (2013)found factors cause listening anxiety like knowledge related factor, process related factor, learning strategies, output related factor (evaluation and performance) and personal factor. Kim (2002) found the factors causes listening anxiety are tension and worry. From many previous studies about listening anxiety, I am interested to do the similar research about listening anxiety in UIN Raden Fatah Palembang with the research title “Listening anxiety of undergraduate students of UIN Raden Fatah Palembang.”
Concept of Listening Comprehension
Many researchers describe the definition of listening comprehension with the various utterances. Hogan, Alonzo, and Adlof (2014) define that listening comprehension indicates the people competence to know text read aloud. Similarly, Gilakjani and Ahmadi (2011) state that listening comprehension is the way people selected the aspect of input, form meaning from passages, and associate what they hear with existing knowledge. It can be concluded that listening comprehension is the way people understanding deeply about what speaker says.
Meanwhile, listening comprehension has the process. Based on Saricoban (1999), there are three processes of listening comprehension such as, pre-listening, during (in-while) listening, and post listening.
First is pre-listening. In this step, the purpose of listening must be given. The teacher must train the student to know what the meaning of speaker will be said before they do listening. So, the teacher needs to build their prior knowledge before do the listening activity. The next is during (in-while) listening. For this step, the teacher can help the students by asking them to do the visual activity like taking note or drawing their mental picture as their reminder. The last is post- listening. In this step, the teacher can ask the students to tell about what they got from the listening text. It is for evaluating students to know how far they understand what they have heard. In summary, listening comprehension has three essential processes.
Concept of Listening Anxiety
Anxiety is one of human emotion. It is similar to when the people feel angry or sad even, it can be a motivation for people to improve their performance. It is normal when the people feel anxious in some conditions. For example, the students will have a final examination. Commonly, they will feel worry or nervous before the examination and after that they feel back like usual. This condition is reasonable in human. But, anxiety can be change into danger. It is happen when anxiety becomes really strong or last for a long time. This condition is different to normal anxiety and the definition of it be changed. MNT (2017) explains it as the name of disorder that makes people feels nervous, fear, apprehension, and worry. Demir (2015) divided the anxiety into two kinds based on the level of it such as, facilitating and debilitating. Facilitating is little anxiety while debilitating is too much anxiety. It can be included that anxiety has the different types depending on the anxiety level. Further in listening, anxiety gives the different effect for students. Students with little anxiety (facilitating) will be attentive, use knowledge and strategies, and understand well in listening class. On the other hand, students with over anxiety (debilitating) will be lack of concentrate, inhibit to hear distinctly and lack of understanding. However, if their anxiety level is too low it will give them the negative effect too, it will make them do not consciously their concentrate in listening. So, the different student level of anxiety will give the different effect on their listening comprehension.
Factors that Causes Listening Anxiety
There are many factors that cause students listening anxiety. Vogelly (1998) found the factor of listening anxiety based on students comment. She divides it into four categories such as, input, process, instructional factors and personal factors. First is Input, it divides as five sources such as, nature of speech, level of difficulty, lack of clarity, lack of visual support, and repetition of input. Based on Vogelly research, the students claim that the speech is too fast, poor enunciation, different accent, and the teacher speak too softly in listening class make nature of speech become one of anxiety sources. While in level of difficulty, it makes a part of students feel frustration and anxious if the exercise of listening comprehension is too hard. Further in lack of clarity, the students got anxious when they do not know what kind of text that they listen and what supposed to do. Meanwhile in lack of visual support, Vogelly state that it is important to notice it even thought, there is not many people got anxiety cause this source. It is dissimilar with repetition input which is many students feel frustration and anxious when the input is presented only twice.
Next is process, It has four sources such as, inappropriate strategy, lack of times to process, cannot study for listening comprehension, and cannot check answer. Many students use inappropriate strategy on listening, most of them try to translate every single word, this strategy make them miss the next part and feel anxious. Subsequently, several students claim that they feel anxious when the teacher asks them to give the respond directly without giving them time to process the material. Following that, a part of students cannot study for listening comprehension because they do not know how to prepare on listening, it make them frustrated and anxious. Afterward, the students also feel anxious because in listening class they cannot check their answer like in reading class. Furthermore is instructional factor, it sourced from lack of listening practice, the test thing, and uncomfortable environment. Starting with listening practice, the students feel anxious because there is only a little or no special class time to practice their listening. Next, several students claim that they got anxious just because the test thing. They cannot reply or go back to previous question. Subsequently, uncomfortable environment can make students feel anxious such as, the room is toonoisy, lacks oxygen, or is small and cramped.
Last is personal factor. It has three sources such as, fear of failure, nerves, and instructor’s personality. Fear of failure and nervous are common thing in learning, but a part of students feel it too much when learning listening comprehension, it is the best factor of anxiety. On the other hand, the instructor that often asks the students to answer the question directly will make the students feel anxious too.
Besides, Lili (2015) found that the factor that causes students listening anxiety are lack of confidence, lack of listening strategies, characteristics of listening comprehension, characteristic of listening materials, and fear of negative evaluation. In addition, another factor that causes listening anxiety on students was found by Pan (2016) such as, teachers and learners factor, listening material process, and other factors. Teachers’ personality can make the students feel anxious, a part of teachers are too serious in the class and a part of them are too strike about students’ mistake. It will make students feel under pressure and anxious in classroom. However, the students’ listening comprehension ability, students’ self-efficacy and students’ habit can be the factor of their anxiety too. The studies have shown that if the listening comprehension level is low, it means the anxiety level is high and vice versa. Similarly, if the self-efficacy is weak, it means the anxiety is strong. Furthermore, the students who show little interest in listening and lack of motivation will easy to absent-minded during the class. It will make them lost the important information and got anxious. Besides, the material difficulties also are the causes of learners’ anxiety. Pan state that “the more difficult the listening material is, the more complex the syntax, the more likely to cause learners’ anxiety.”
Previous Related Studies
There are many previous studies related to this study. First is Pan (2016) with the title “Analysis Listening Anxiety in EFL Class”. She found the factors of listening anxiety are teacher and learner factor, listening and material process and other factors. Next is Serraj (2015) entitled “Listening Anxiety in Iranian EFL Learners”. The result is there are three factor of listening anxiety such as, individual factors (nerves and emotionality, using inappropriate strategies and lack of practice), input factors (lack of time to process, lack of visual support, nature of speech and level of difficulty) and environmental factors (instructors, peers and class environment). Furthermore, Lili (2015) entitled “Influenced of Anxiety on English Listening Comprehension: An Investigation Based on the Freshmen of English Majors”. She found listening anxiety factors are lack of confidence, lack of listening strategies, characteristic of listening comprehension, characteristic of listening materials and fear of negative evaluation. Subsequently, Stawiarska (2013) entitled “Causes and Symptoms of Foreign Language Listening Anxiety: A Case Study of Proficient Students about to Graduate with an MA in Teaching EFL”. The result is there are several factor causes listening anxiety like knowledge related factor, process related factor, learning strategies, outputs related factor (evaluation and performance) and personal factor. Last is Kim (2002) entitled “Anxiety and Foreign Language Listening”. The result is there are two factors causes listening anxiety such as, tension and worry.
From those previous studies above, all of the writers found several kinds of factor causes listening anxiety which depended on the sample they studied. In this study, I will present the way listening anxiety influence listening performance and factors cause listening anxiety in EFL students of UIN Raden Fatah Palembang.
