THE EFFECT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE PODCAST ON

STUDENTS’ LISTENING SKILLS

A THESIS PROPOSAL

Submitted to the Faculty of Tarbiyah Science and Teacher Training, State

Islamic University of North Sumatra (UIN SU) Medan as a Partial
Fulfillment of the Requirements of the Degree of Sarjana Pendidikan

Arranged by:

MUHAMMAD SHOOZIKI

0304192098

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH EDUCATION

FACULTY OF TARBIYAH SCIENCE AND TEACHER TRAINING

STATE ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY OF NORTH SUMATRA

MEDAN

2023
 CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

Hamouda (2013) defines listening as referring to a person’s ability to understand and

draw conclusions. Listening skills has an important role in learning activities in the
classroom. It helps students accept and understand all the words, orders, or directions
conveyed by the teacher. In this case, the success of students’ listening skills depends on
how the teacher teaches listening during the class.

However, in practice, the students cannot understand some parts of the audio when
listening to it. It is because they do not have a large vocabulary in English and rarely listen
to English audios. Meanwhile, the teacher thinks that teaching listening is more difficult
than teaching other skills, such as reading, writing or speaking. Furthermore, it makes the
teacher confused what type of teaching strategy should be implemented in teaching
listening, and then they use the inappropriate strategy.

This study was conducted based on a phenomenon that occurred at one of the
universities in Medan whose students had difficulty in listening to English audios. They
often get misunderstandings about the words, orders, or presentations of the teacher or
their peers in the class. Most of the students think that the teacher does not teach them
properly, so they tend not to focus during the class.

There are two factors that make it difficult for students to listen to English audio, i.e.,
internal and external. Internal factors are lack of vocabulary, lack of practice, lack of focus,
or hearing problems. While, the external factors are speakers with accents that are difficult
to understand, noise, long-duration audio, and speaking speed. Fortunately, there are
several methods to overcome listening difficulties in teaching and learning activities.
However, in this case, the researcher will solely focus on listening learning strategies
through English podcasts.

Podcasts are another audio-based material that can help students understand text and
improve their listening comprehension skills. Podcasts are created by native English
speakers to provide learners with many opportunities to listen to real and authentic material
(Hasan & Hoon, 2013). Podcasting technology can be seen as an effective and powerful
language-teaching instrument that can benefit teachers to extend their teaching beyond the
confines of the classroom and enable learners to access language materials anytime and
anywhere without restrictions (Beheler, 2007).

Therefore, the researcher will hereby conduct a research to find out the effect of
podcasts on students’ listening skills. This research will be conducted in one of the classes
in the English education department at one of the universities in Medan.

1.2 Identification of the Problem

Based on the background of the study above, there are several problems emerge in
teaching and learning listening activities.

1. The teacher does not use the appropriate teaching listening strategy.
2. Students often misunderstand while listening in English.

1.3 Limitation of the Study

This study will solely focus on the effect of English language podcast on university
students’ listening skills at one of the universities in Medan.

1.4 Research Problem

The research problem below is the question that motivates the researcher to conduct this
research.

1. Does English language podcast affect students’ listening skills?

1.5 Objective of the Study

The objective here is based on the problem above.

1. To find out whether English language podcast affect students’ listening skills or not.

1.6 Significance of the Study

This study is expected to contribute to:

1. English teacher to implement appropriate English listening teaching strategies in
class.
2. Students to improve their listening skills through English language podcasts.
3. The next researchers who have interests in English podcasts and teaching listening.
 CHAPTER II

LITERATURE REVIEW

A. Theoretical Framework
1. Listening Skills

Listening is an activity to receive and interpret messages conveyed orally, either from
a speaker or a conversation between two or more people (Yusnida, et. al., 2017: 440).
Listening includes the most frequently used presuppositions of language (Goh & Taib,
2006: 222). Moreover, because listening only happens directly the message received
cannot be repeated so skills are needed to understand the contents of the message. In
terms of language skills, listening is not only aimed at receiving information but also
being able to understand it as a whole, so it is known as listening comprehension (Ernita,
et. al., 2022: 13).

2. English Language Podcast

Podcasts are another audio-based material that can help students understand text and
improve their listening comprehension skills. Podcasts are created by native English
speakers to provide learners with many opportunities to listen to real and authentic
material (Hasan & Hoon, 2013). Podcasting technology can be seen as an effective and
powerful language-teaching instrument that can benefit teachers to extend their teaching
beyond the confines of the classroom and enable learners to access language materials
anytime and anywhere without restrictions (Beheler, 2007).

The podcast does not prescribe any language learning approaches or methods. It is
used as a tool to integrate SLA theory and methods into practice (Hasan & Hoon, 2013).
The podcasts found on the internet are mostly original and meaningful. There are four
types of podcasts that can be identified as suitable materials to be applied in EFL classes,
namely those related to ESL, native English, test preparation, IELTS and TOEFL, and
student productions. The ESL podcast is a shift to teaching English as a second language
by using audio lessons or topics, such as ‘giving directions’ or English idioms. Native
English podcasts are not designed for educational purposes, but provide native language
learning contexts to help listeners improve their fluency, using test preparation podcasts
 made available to non-native speakers to help them pass English language exams such as
IELTS or TOEFL. Student-produced podcasts differ in that they rely on students
developing them as part of an assignment (William & McMinn, 2008).

B. Relevant Study

Ernita, et al. (2022) in their article explained the difficulties of high school teachers in
teaching listening comprehension and identified these difficulties as arising from inadequate
methods, student focus, teaching tools, and learning books. The difficulties for EFL teachers
in teaching listening were the use of methods, finding learning resources such as books, and
controlling class more conducive. The study suggested that every student must have a
dictionary and bring it to school so that students can develop themselves by seeking for
vocabulary they do not know and finding it in the dictionary. Apart from that, watching
movies and listening to music in English can also train students to get new words and their
meanings.

In another research conducted in Iran, the results of research as the respondents of this
study agreed that they find it difficult to understand a listening text when the speaker speaks
fast without pausing long enough to allow them digest and comprehend what they have
listened to; the respondents said that this problem alongside very long text amounts to
inability to comprehend the text (Namaziandost, et. al., 2019).

Chou (2019) found that the junior high school teachers in Taiwan, at least in the current
study, did provide students with lots of listening. However, it seemed that the teachers’
insufficient pedagogical knowledge of listening instruction did not fulfill students’
expectations for improving listening skills and strategies for test or communication purposes.
Teachers need to be more aware of the relationship between the English language policy,
examination, their own teaching approaches, and students’ learning needs while receiving in-
service teacher training of listening instruction.

C. Conceptual Framework

This study has two variables to be analyzed whether they have an influence or not. The
result shows that English language podcasts have an influence on students’ listening skills.
This is evidenced by the existence of podcasts as audio or video-based content media. In line
with listening skills that require media such as podcasts, the researcher concludes that English
podcasts have a relationship with students’ English listening skills. Thus, this can be shown
in Figure 1.

English Language Podcast Listening Skills

Figure 1.

D. Research Hypothesis

Based on the conceptual framework above, the research hypothesis shows that there is a
significant impact of English podcasts on students' listening skills.
 CHAPTER III

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

A. Place and Time of Research

This study will be conducted at the State Islamic University of North Sumatra from 20
September 2023 to 20 November 2023.

B. Population and Sample

Since this study focuses on English listening skills, the population chosen is English
department students, more specifically third year students or class of 2020. In addition, not all
third year English department students will be the sample in this study. They will be selected
through cluster random sampling. The results show that the TBI-3 and TBI-4 that consists of
32 and 33 students will be the sample of this study.

C. Research Method and Procedure

The research method used in this study is quantitative. This study also uses a quasi-
experimental design so that its application requires treatment of the sample.

This research procedure will go through three stages, i.e. analyzing students’ abilities,
implementing teaching strategies, and assessing. It is intended that the results obtained in
class experiments will have a significant impact on changes in students’ listening skills. This
can be seen based on Figure 2 below.

Analysis

Implementation

 Assessment
 (post-test)

Figure 2
D. Research Instrument

This research instrument uses a test to obtain data. The test is in the form of assignments
that will be done directly in the classroom. The researcher will play an audio podcast with
duration of about 2 minutes, and ask students to work on the questions based on the audio. In
giving assessment, researchers used the indicators in the following table.

No. Aspect Description Score

1. Fluency a. Being able to tell the whole audio and to a. 50

draw conclusion b.
b. Being able to mention the main idea of the c. 40
audio d.
c. Being able to mention some lines of the e. 30
audio f.
d. Being only able to tell the topic g. 20
e. Does not understand at all h. 10

2. Grammar a. Being able to tell the whole audio a. 50

grammatically correct b.
b. Being able to use a suitable tense c. 40
c. Being able to write a complete letter of d. 30
words e.
d. Not relevant but still understandable f. 20
e. Does not have any meaning at all g. 10

Table 1. Assessment indicators.

E. Data Analysis Technique

The collected data will be processed using SPSS19. This is to determine test results based
on assessment indicators on the research instrument. Thus, the following are the steps for
processing data using SPSS19.

1. Finding out student scores before implementing learning strategies using the English
language podcast
2. Determining students’ highest, lowest and average scores in listening skills
3. Determining the final score and seeing student changes after going through learning
using the English language podcast
 REFERENCES

Ernita, N., et. al. (2022). EFL teachers’ difficulties in teaching listening comprehension.
JELTE: Journal of English Language Teaching and Education, 3(1), 12-23.
Goh, C., & Taib, Y. (2006). Metacognitive instruction in listening for young learners.
English Language Teaching, 60(3), 222-232.
Yusnida, D., et. al. (2017). A study of teaching listening. EEJ: English Education Journal,
8(4), 439-456.