THE EFFECT OF NARROW LISTENING FOR EFL UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS

Submitted to Fulfill the Requirements for Qualitative Research Assignment

by:

SHOFIA NUR AFIDAH 162122046

REZA FAUZI AHMAD 162122124

RIZAL RAMDHANI 162122111

ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

FACULTY OF EDUCATIONAL SCIENCES AND TEACHER’S TRAINING

SILIWANGI UNIVERSITY

2019
THE EFFECT OF NARROW LISTENING FOR EFL UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS

Reza Fauzi Ahmad1, Rizal Ramdhani2, Shofia Nur Afidah3

English Education Department, Faculty of Educational Sciences and Teacher’s Training

ABSTRACT
Current research has shown that learning listening through narrow listening way was not a novel
approach in developing listening competence. Narrow listening is an approach to develop
listening skills at intermediate to advanced language levels. In the previous study, they explained
the advantages of narrow listening in teaching L2. It also is aimed this research to see how if the
narrow listening can be applied in the learning process of the EFL undergraduate student. The
present study examines the extent to which narrow listening can create an expressive and good
English language learning environment. The participant of this research is English major
students in a university in Tasikmalaya. The data are collected through interview among
participant, as the most effective way in investigating the data. The contribution of the findings
as a shred of evidence that narrow listening can potentially assist English learners in developing
their listening skill. Therefore, the ultimate goal of this study is to provide strong evidence for
English learners that the complexity in learning listening is already solved. The findings of this
study will be further explained in the paper.

Keywords: Narrow listening, extensive listening, English language

INTRODUCTION

Listening is one of four basic components of language skills (Zhen, Khuang, Zhang,
2014) as follows listening, reading, speaking and writing. Researchers in L2 acquisition have
claimed that listening plays an essential role in the process of acquiring a foreign language
(Asher, 1977; Krashen, 2003, 1982; Potovsky, 1975; Rost, 2002; Thompson, 1995; among
others). The process of listening can be obtained in daily life, but the effect of listening directly
can affect the language produced which can affect communication, even in language teaching,
listening comprehension used to be regarded as a passive skill and listeners were even called as
tape-recorders (Hu, 2012). Many teachers just play the tape without presenting necessary hints or
background knowledge to students and they usually plunge the students into listening directly
without any preparation, which makes listening comprehension difficult (Hu, 2012). In an
Indonesian university, many of students are difficult to engage with listening activity due to the
lack of facility, unhearable audio, noise environment, and somehow feel anxious. Therefore,
narrow listening comes to bridge the gap that will be introduced to students to overcome the
issue that they have regarding listening comprehension.

Narrow listening was first introduced by Krashen in 1996. However, the term was in fact
extended from Krashen’s own narrow reading (1981). Krashen notes that narrow listening will
be most useful for lower level L2 learners because they can take advantage of the background
knowledge of the previous text to aid their comprehension of the present text (Chang, 2017)
because every student reported that the most important source of their listening comprehension
problem was the fast rate of speech (Renandya and Farell, 2010). According to Chang (2010) in
the theoretical framework of her research, narrow listening will be most useful for lower level L2
learners because they can take advantage of the background knowledge of the previous text to
aid their comprehension of the present text. There are several features that can be used in the
extensive listening teaching process Wide listening and Narrow listening. Both wide and narrow
listening can be assisted or unassisted, such as supported by written print or pictures. They differ,
however, in how materials are organized and studied. Narrow listening hence refers to learner
focus on the same theme or the same author’s works systematically and consistently for a period
of time, and then move on to the next theme or author (Chang, 2017).

In the previous study the Narrow listening based on research findings on the receptive
skills; listening and reading. It is based on the concept of extensive listening (listening in great
amounts and for content) and the principles of repetition, authenticity, listening for information,
and topic familiarity (Rodrigo, 2003). The study has depend our understanding of in the narrow
listening. Approach presented here, comprehension is enhanced because subjects can produce
same input several times. The Narrow listening passage has been found to be a very effective
means for improving listening comprehension. However, this research makes the writers want to
discuss the reason how if the narrow listening can be applied in the learning process of the EFL
undergraduate student, and also hence in this paper aimed the extent to which narrow listening
can create an expressive and a good English language learning environment.

Research Design

The case study regulates to explore any phenomenon upon data collection that allows the

author to link the research to his interest. We design the question ‘What’ as an initiation to

explore more further information that will support in accomplishing this study. Prior experience

and several kind of listening may be needed to hyphotize the final result of why this study

proposed. As a preface, this initial work helps prepare a blueprint of the study.

This research has considered the tackling in student’s listening problem during the

teaching – listening process. To explore the participant’s perspective, in knowing how the

process the participant adopts narrow reading to listening, this study implements a case study

approach.

The research verifies a student’s completion in case the participant dealt with difficulties

in improving listening skill. It strongly relates to how lecturing process last in listening

classroom activity. To overcome the problem, the participant did vary ways as an effort to find

the most comfortable one. This allows the writers to know how intensive listening and extensive

listening do not give adequate contribution in tackling his problem.

The participant is one of the English students; an English male student at a state

university in Tasikmalaya. He is 20 years old. He has been learning listening for two semesters;

intensive listening course and extensive listening course. He dealt with serious problem in

improving listening. The worst thing is he almost fade up to learn listening. He figured out the

most appropriate way to solve the problem, until ultimately he discovered that listening to one

theme from diverse source could help him a lot. It is called narrow listening.
 Semi-structured interview is conducted to collect the data to investigate the perspective of

the effect he got from narrow listening activity. Moreover, we record the interview which

eventually transcribed into written form of analysis. The qualitative context analysis is applied

by read-thought interview transcripts and written notes.

Findings and Discussion

Narrow Listening helpful students both at the beginning (first and second semester) levels

in improving their listening. Only a small percentage of beginning students did not find Narrow

Listening helpful. These students indicated in their comment that they found the speakers were

either speaking too fast or mumbled too much to allow them to understand what they were

saying. In the lab, beginning students are usually exposed to some form of modified, planned,

rather than authentic, unrehearsed input, and their comments point to the need to extensively

exposed them to natural aural input from the very beginning. Students who found Narrow

Listening helpful reported that it was most helpful for first improving listening comprehension,

second fluency and third developing vocabulary.

Harlow and Muyskens (1994) found that while students gave listening a high rank both as

a goal and as a class activity, they accorded language lab tapes the lowest possible rank as an

effective activity, thus indicating that traditional lab programs with repetitive drill and practice

exercises do not fulfill beginning student’s needs. They recommended that language program

should acquire tapes which are based on authentic texts, such as interviews and conversations,

and are meant for global listening comprehension, which is exactly what Narrow Listening

provides.

The beginning students in this study found Narrow Listening to be interesting. One

student reported: “Narrow Listening holds my attention much better than any other types of
listening that I have done.” Students also mentioned that it was nice to be able to get a break

from lab tapes and to be able to just listen without having to worry about answering questions.

One student commented: “Narrow Listening is more interesting and it allows to listen more

carefully because there are no specific questions to answer.” Students reported that they enjoyed

the natural, off-the-cuff conversations of Narrow Listening. One student observed: “It helps me

to listen to people speaking English fluently even if I’m unable to understand everything they

say. I think it is important just to be around the language.” Another student commented: It really

helps to listen to someone who is speaking spontaneously.” Another student commented: “I’m

impressed, and I think listening to these everyday conversations is great for learning casual

speech.” Several students reported that Narrow Listening helped them build their confidence as

they realized that they could understand real conversational English. One student said: “Narrow

Listening helps me feel better about English.” Another student reported: “It is helpful to be put

into a real talking type situation. I know more about how real English people talk and I’m now a

lot more confident.”

References

Chang, C.-S. (2013). The effect of extensive listening on developing L2 listening fluency: some
hard evidence.
Chang, C.-S. (2017). Narrow Listening : A Subset of Extensive Listening. Volume 1, Number 1.
Huntsinger, J. R. (2012). Does positive affect broaden and negative affect narrow attentional
scope? A new answer to an old question.
Krashen, S. D. (1996). The case for narrow listening. System 24, 1, 97-100.
Renandya, W., and Farrell, T. S. C. (2010). ‘Teacher, the tape is too fast!’ Extensive listening in
ELT.
Renandya, W. (2012). Materials and Methods for Extensive Listening.
Rodrigo, V. (2003). Narrow listening and audio-library: The transitional stage in the process of
developing listening comprehension in a foreign language. Mextesol Journal, 27(1), 9-25.
Zheng, C., Kuang, F., & Zeng, W. (Eds). (2014). An Empirical Study of Teaching Narrow
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