Listening Performance And Problems In Learning Listening Comprehension

English is an international language that is really important. It is important because it is used in all aspects of life such as, arts, sciences, humanities, travel and social sciences. From that statement, it can be concluded that English is necessary in all aspects of human life. People realize that learning English is so essential. In fact, there are many countries that do teaching and learning English. It is because learning English are necessary for all countries in the world. In addition, there are many advantages that people can get by learning English. Reddy (2016) explains that it can be used to get an information, entertainment and job. Similarly, Robinson (2012) states that nowadays, all of field jobs are using English. Thus, learning English is crucial.

There are four language skills that must be mastered. Those skills are reading, writing, speaking and listening. These four language 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, the pattern, and the sentence make a sense. While, writing is the way people to create the sentences after learn about the pattern of language. Meanwhile, speaking is how the way people learn language in oral. The last, listening is how the people learn by interpreting what the speaker says. In other words, English covers four basic skills such as, reading, writing, speaking, and listening.

Listening skill is considered very important. It is included in many aspects of education like university entrance exams, school exams, and other examinations. Subsequently, 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, twenty five until thirty percent on speaking, eleven until 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. Thus, it can be included that listening is essential skill for human. People’s ability to comprehend the listening message utterance called as listening comprehension. Similarly, Hamouda (2013) states that understanding what other people said called as listening comprehension. Specifically, listening comprehension is the way people select the aspect of input, form meaning from passages, and associate what they hear with existing knowledge. In short, listening comprehension is the way people understanding or selecting the aspect of input from what they hear with existing knowledge.

Listening comprehension is also essential in learning English. It is so useful for people 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 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.

There are problems in the process of learning listening. Darti and Asmawati (2017) found the learners’ problem in listening comprehension are lack of vocabulary, poor grammar mastery, accent, pronunciation, lack of concentration, speed of speech, anxiety, noisy, inability to apply listening strategy, and bad quality of recording. From the students’ entire problem in listening comprehension, the critical one is anxiety. Otair and Aziz (2017) state that anxiety is a major problem that related 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 becomes 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 in learning listening comprehension, the most critical one is anxiety.

There are many definitions of 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 disorder that makes people have negative feelings such as, uneasiness, frustration, self-doubt, apprehension and tension.

Anxiety is not only known in psychology but also in language education. It has been a long time that anxiety associated with foreign or second language learning and communication become a focus of second language researcher. Furthermore, the second language researcher starts to develop research on anxiety in other aspects of the language. Zhao (2016) states that since 1980’s, the second language researchers have begun to change the domain of research into anxiety to be more specific like listening, reading, writing and speaking. In fact, the most students’ anxiety is in listening. Vogelly (1998) found that many students who complain of experiencing anxiety on listening skill. In other word, anxiety is also known in language education and the most students’ anxiety is in listening skill.

Many people put less attention on anxiety in listening. The most ignored but potentially one of the most debilitating type of anxiety is the anxiety accompanying listening comprehension. Most people assume that listening is easy because it is passive skill, so the anxiety in listening should be easy to fix. In fact, this assumption is wrong, 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. 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.

Based on preliminary study on May, 14th 2018 to EFL students of UIN Raden Fatah Palembang though informal interview consisting of seven questions and using Indonesian language, there are many students said that they got unsatisfied or low score in listening subject. They also confirmed that one of the factors is their anxious in listening.

There are some researchers who have conducted similar research study about listening anxiety. 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.