CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

This chapter describes an overview of this research. It consists of (a) background, (b) problem of the study, (c) objective of the study, (d) significance of the study, (e) hypothesis and (f) criteria of testing the hypothesis.

A.	Background
Teaching English has a purpose to prepare students to have communicative competence by which the students are able to communicate both in oral and written forms. In Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan (KTSP), the students are expected to have that communication in four basic skills, namely listening, speaking, reading and writing skill.
Listening as a receptive skill is an important skill in language learning and it cannot be underestimated, particularly in academic context because the students’ competence in language learning may increase with lots of listening practices (Brown, 2001: 247). In addition, Cheung (2010: 2) pointed out that listening should be the first skill to be acquired before learning the other skill. Understanding spoken words is prerequisite to speaking, reading, and writing; comprehension should precede reproduction. 
From the four skills in English, young learners make the most of the lesson through listening. They learn to understand the materials through listening, get the instruction and explanation through listening, and learn to pronounce words through listening, and practice better through listening to teachers’ praises and feedbacks. Therefore, listening skills become very crucial emphasis in the teaching of English to young learners. Piper (in Linse, 2006: 28) states that listening comprehension utilizes many of the same processes to read and comprehend a story. If children have been trained to carefully listen to English-language sounds, they will be in a much better position to match the sounds with a specific letter or symbol. Moreover, listening dominates the students’ daily activities in the classroom. River and Weaver (in Morley, 2001: 70) states that students spend twice as much as they speak, four times as much as they read, and five times as much as they write.
However, listening is difficult to learn and also to teach. A lot of students learning English as Foreign Language probably deal with problems in listening comprehension, especially young learners. Ur (2009: 111-112) also states some possible problems encountered by foreign language learners in listening. The first one is difficulty in hearing sounds. Some learners will find it difficult to catch the words because some of them do not exist in their native language. For instance, the sound /θ/ as in ‘three’ does not exist in Indonesian. The second problem is related to difficulty in predicting the language meaning that cause them to need to hear things more than once. When listeners think that every word is important they will need to hear once again in order to get the words they missed. In fact, the effort to understand everything often results in ineffective comprehension, as well as feelings of fatigue and failure. The third problem is learners will often ask the teacher to slow down and speak clearly, by which they mean pronounce each word the way it would sound in isolation and the temptation is to do as they ask. But it is not helping them. The last problem is the learners are easy to get tired because they feel overloaded with incoming information. All those problems imply that students still have difficulties in listening comprehension and consider it as one of obstacles in learning English.
Based on the informal interview with the teacher of English SD Negeri 195 Palembang, there are some difficulties found in SD Negeri 195. They are as follow (1) the students have difficulty in understanding what speaker or their teacher is saying because the teacher speak English too fast when explain the lesson or the assignment. When they hear what their teacher is saying they often do not know what it means or they try to make the teacher say it again and slowly. (2) the students often do not pay attention to listening task because they feel so bored while doing it. They think the task is too long, but the students are more interested in pictures that are sticked in front of the class while learning. But, the teacher often uses the pictures in listening task.
Therefore, attractive and interested activities are needed in listening. An interesting and attractive teaching activity can be an alternative way to solve the difficulties that are found in SD Negeri 195 Palembang. The activity as a means of teaching English to young learners helps the teachers create classroom situations to be more alive. The media also help the teachers render materials and help the students comprehend the given materials. According to Harmer (2007: 136), one of media that appropriate for young learner is pictures or images, whether they are in a book, or in cue card, flashcards or wall pictures, because pictures can be used for creative language use and stimulate many questions. A range of objects, pictures can also be used as instructional media to present and manipulate language and to involve students in the activities (Harmer, 2007: 177). The teacher can also make wall picture, flashcards or cue cards in number of ways, such as combine them with a grid and the students have to listen mark on a matrix or grid the information read out by the teacher (Halliwel, 2002: 44). This activity is intended to provide active response to new language. Halliwel adds, this activity in combining the picture in the grid is usually important as the result from what the students, especially young learners, hear. This is called listening grid by Halliwel (2010: 44). In the end, the writer thinks that listening grid is suitable for students in SD Negeri 195 Palembang related to their listening comprehension problem.
Regarding to the importance of the listening in learning English and the  problems that faced by students in SD Negeri 195, this study tries to investigate the significant difference on students’ listening comprehension score taught by using listening grid at the fifth-grade students of SDN 195 

B.	Problem of Study
The problem of this study is formulated in research question: “Is there a significant difference on students’ listening comprehension achievement taught by using listening grid and students’ listening comprehension achievement taught by using conventional strategy to the fifth-grade students of SDN 195 Palembang?”

C.	Objective of Study
The objective of this study is to find out whether or not there is a significant difference on students’ listening comprehension achievement taught by using listening grid and students’ listening comprehension achievement taught by using conventional strategy to the fifth-grade students of SDN 195 Palembang.

D.	Significance of Study
The result of this study is expected to give some contributions to the several elements, such as teachers of English (professional aspect), English students (practical aspect), other researchers and the writer herself. 
For teachers of English, it can be a new reference in teaching listening, especially in elementary school. 
For students, especially young learners, this study is also expected to motivate and help students in understanding listening materials. In particular, the study is also intended to provide some information about the use of Listening Grid for young learners. 
For other researchers, this study is expected to be used as an additional source for those who conduct a study on students’ listening ability. 
The last for the writer herself, this study can improve her teaching skills and give some experiences in conducting an educational research.

E.	Hypothesis
There are two hypotheses that will be tested in this study, the null hypothesis (Hₒ) and alternative hypothesis (Hₐ) (Cohen, 2007: 516). They are as follows:
Hₒ : There is no statistically significant difference on students’ listening comprehension achievement taught by using Listening Grid and students’ listening comprehension achievement taught by using conventional strategy to the fifth-grade students of SDN 195 Palembang.
Hₐ : There is statistically significant difference on students’ listening comprehension achievement taught by using Listening Grid and students’ listening comprehension achievement taught by using conventional strategy to the fifth-grade students of SDN 195 Palembang.

F.	Criteria of Testing Hypothesis
The criteria of testing the hypothesis are as follows:
The writer used independent t-test to test the hypothesis. The level of significance (alpha) which will be used is 95% confidence, so the alpha must be lower than 0.05 in two tail testing with df (58) = 2.0017. If the t-obtained was lower than t-critical value at the 0.05 significance level and the p-output was higher than 0.05, the null hypothesis (Hₒ) is accepted and the alternative hypothesis (Hₐ) is rejected. But, if the t-obtained was higher than t-critical value at the 0.05 significance level and the p-output less than 0.05, the null hypothesis (Hₒ) is rejected and the alternative hypothesis (Hₐ) is accepted.