A.

Background of the Study

In studying the English language, there are four skills that must be
mastered. They are reading, writing, speaking and listening. The fourth
such capabilities must be mastered in order to master the English language
well. Listening is one of the skills that must comprehend in learning
English.
Listening plays significant role in the acquisition of the English
language. The development of listening has stolen the attention of many
English teachers in many countries. Generally, listening is considered as
the simplest process of receiving a spoken language and also listening is
considered to be the easiest skill to be mastered because it only requires
short amount of time rather than the other skills which are speaking,
writing and reading. Listening process in mother tongue (language) is one
of the factors that support this perception because listening process in
mother tongues looks easy and brief. As the matter of fact, this perception
is completely not true, as stated by Ghasemboland and Nafissi “a complex
cognitive process needs a lot of efforts particularly in the second and
foreign language learning processes.”11
Everybody has learned their language since they were children,
especially their mother tongue. The process occurs naturally and properly
with a view to communicate in society environment. Listening ability in
English as foreign language also plays an important role in building
communication skill. As we all know, communication is a part of human’s
daily activities. Through communication by using language, we can share
our ideas with other people. In that way, a smooth interaction between
people can take place.
Listening is one of the important skill that student should have
learned in learning a language such as learning English, but learning to be

1
Farimah Ghasemboland and Zohreh Nafissi, The Effects of Using English
Captions on Iranian EFL Students‟ Listening Comprehension, Procedia - Social and
Behavioral Sciences, 64, 2012, p. 106.

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good in listening is not easy as it seems. This cannot be separated from the
influences of listening in constructing students' vocabulary and enhancing
language usage. Listening has the potential to develop students’
pronunciation, words stress, and syntax acquisitions. It also contributes for
language expertise and proficiency. Additionally, listening facilitates
students to obtain 45% of the total language competences2. There will be a
process of giving response verbally and nonverbally during the
communication process as part of the listening behavioural aspect that
generally cannot be avoided. This explanation is in harmony with Glenn’s
explanation about the processes of listening that include receiving, paying
attention, remembering the spoken words as well as understanding their
meanings. Giving feedback or responding is the last process in the
listening3. Feedback is crucial to this communication process because
without feedback the whole idea of effective communication will become
passive and ineffective communication. In harmony with the explanation
above, it can be concluded that listening is not easy as it seems because it
involves not only cognitive processes but also some behavioural and
affective processes.
Listening has offered so many benefits to the students’
language development, but as explained before listening is not an easy
skill to be mastered. Furthermore, since in Indonesia English language
is treated and taught as a foreign language instead of second language,
therefore the teachers’ quality and quantity inputs for the students
cannot cover their insufficiency of real spoken and written target
language in English.

2
Ron Iwankovitsch, The Importance of Listening, Language Arts Journal of
Michigan, 17, 2001, p. 5.
3
Glenn in Janusik, Listening Pedagogy: Where Do We Go from Here? In Andrew
D. Wolvin, (Ed.) Listening and Human Communication in 21st Century, (London:
Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2010), p. 204.

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 From those statements above, it can be conclude that by
watching English movie will improve students’ listening
comprehension by makes them relax and comfort when they study. In
conclusion, the researcher is interested to conduct the research on
“Improving Students Listening Skill Through Watching English
Movie”.

B. Identification of the Problem

Based on the explanation of the background of the study. There are
some problems that can be identified, those are:
1. Most of the students are lack of listening skill.
2. Most of the students cannot understand what native speaker says.
3. Most of the students cannot answer listening comprehension
questions correctly.
4. Most of the students do not obtain enough exposure by their
teacher to English by using authentic material which in this case is
English movie.

C. Limitation of the Problem

In order to avoid misunderstanding in interpreting the problems,
the writer limits this research to improve students listening skill through
watching English movie of the 8th grade of MTs Al-Inayah Cilegon in
academic year 2018-2019. The description of kind of movies and listening
skill will be explained in the literature review.

D. Formulation of the Study

Based on the background of the study and the identification of the
study, the problem is formulated as follows: “How did the English teacher
improve students listening skill through watching English movies?”

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E. The Objective of the Study
The objectives of this study are:
1. To analyze and describe whether watching English movie can help
improve students listening skill at MTs Al-Inayah Cilegon.
2. To analyze and describe how English movie watching improve
students listening skill at MTs Al-Inayah Cilegon.

F. Significance of the Study

For the writer and English teachers, this research will have
information about Watching English movies that can improve students’
listening skill as a strategy to be used in the classroom and give the
positive effect to their students.
For the students this research will give input and new learning
experience to them in improving listening skill, especially by using
English movies as a strategy to improve their listening skill
For the other researchers, by conducting this study, it will support
and motivate other researchers who need to do a research and also to give
positive effect on the quality of the research of improving students’
listening skill through watching English movies.

G. Organization of the Writing

To make this research easy to be comprehended, the writer divides
this research into three chapters:
Chapter I is introduction. In this chapter the researcher puts some
points: background of the study, identification of the problem, limitation
of the problem, formulation of the study, the objectives of the study and
significance of the study.
Chapter II is theoretical frameworks. This chapter consists of the
theories from some experts about reading comprehension, suggestopedia
technique and hypothesis.

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 Chapter III is research methodology. This chapter consists of
research method, population and sample, the site and time of study, the
technique of data collecting and the technique of data analyzing.