ABSTRACT This study was conducted to describe the students perceptions towards theuse of songs in developing their listening

ability. The study was also aimed to find out what kinds of songs which may help students of ELESP at Sanata Dharma Universityto develop their listening ability . There were two problems formulated in this study. The first problem dealt with the students perceptions towards the use of songs in developing their listening ability. The second problem concerned with kinds of songs which may help studentsof ELESP at Sanata Dharma University to develop their listening ability.The research finding revealed that students were interested in the use of songsin developing their listening ability. Song was relaxing, fun and entertaining. Therewere sequences which can lead them to keep listening to the song, song was not boring. While they were listening to a song, indirectly they could learn to find newvocabularies, pronunciation, grammar and the implementation of a word in a phrase/sentence . Finally, the writer concluded that using songs to develop listening ability wasan interesting method in process of acquiring listening skill INTRODUCTION In acquiring English language, there are four important skills need to beacquired namely listening, speaking, reading and writing. Listening is an importantskill in learning a language. It means that someones listening ability has strongrelationship with his/her ability in acquiring a language. In our daily life, we listen More than we read, speak or write. In acquiring a second language or foreignlanguage, listening ability should be developed intensively.Bazo (2002) on http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Bazo-FourSkills.html

States thatlistening is the most difficult language skill which learners usually find. This is often because they feel under pressured to understand every word. Bazos statement isstrengthened with the writers research that the participants are the sixth semester of ELESP at Sanata Dharma University. The writer found some reasons why theyconsidered that listening was difficult to acquire namely problem with catch thewords/meaning of the words, difficult to listen to unfamiliar words, the speed of thespeech, and technical problem namely the quality of listening media (listening passage, audio-tape, head phone). Instead, listening comprehension is a process, avery complex process, and if we want to measure it, we must first understand howthat process works (Buck, 2001:1).This study was conducted to find out the students perceptions towards the use of songs in developing their listening ability. This

study was also conducted to find outwhat kinds of songs that may help students of ELESP at Sanata Dharma University todevelop their listening ability.The writer distributed questionnaire as the research instrument. According to Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary 6 th Edition Questionnaire means a written listof questions that are answered by a number of people so that information can becollected from the answers. The writer distributed questionnaires to obtain the data.The questionnaires were distributed to seven students of the sixth semester of ELESPat Sanata Dharma University. There are two major problems formulated in this study.Firstly, what are the students perceptions towards the use of songs in developing their listening ability? Secondly, what are the songs which may help students of ELESP atSanata Dharma University to develop their listening ability?

2.REVIEW OF LITERATURE 2.1 Definition of listening According to Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary 6 th Edition, Listen meansto pay attention to somebody/something that you can hear. Based on this definition, itcan be concluded that listening is a process of transferring information from anoral/spoken language.According to Doyle (2005) as cited in http://novaonline.nvcc.edu/eli/spd 110td/interper/listen/listening.html, there are seven stages process of listening namelyhearing, selecting, attending, understanding, evaluating, remembering andresponding. It is clearly seen in figure one. Figure 1: Seven stages process of listening Source: http://novaonline.nvcc.edu/eli/spd110td/interper/images/liststages.gif

3Hearing:Receiving raw dataSelecting:Choosing stimuliAttending:Focusing attentionUnderstanding:Assigning meaning Evaluating: Analyzing and judgingRemembering:Drawing on memoryResponding:Feedback

2.REVIEW OF LITERATURE 2.1 Definition of listening According to Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary 6 th Edition, listen meansto pay attention to somebody/something that you can hear . Based on this definition, itcan be concluded that listening is a process of transferring information from anoral/spoken language.According to Doyle (2005) as cited in http://novaonline.nvcc.edu/eli/spd 110td/interper/listen/listening.html, there are seven stages process of listening namelyhearing, selecting, attending, understanding, evaluating, remembering andresponding. It is clearly seen in figure one. Figure 1: Seven stages process of listening Source: http://novaonline.nvcc.edu/eli/spd110td/interper/images/liststages.gif 3Hearing: Receiving raw dataSelecting:Choosing stimuliAttending:Focusing attentionUnderstanding:Assigning meaningEvaluating:Analyzing and judgingRemembering:Drawing on memoryResponding:Feedback

2.2 The differences between first and second language listening Even they looked the same, but there are some differences between first languageand second language listening. When we talk about first language listening, we cansay that it is easy because we have mastered that. The process of acquiring firstlanguage is automatically, because we use it in our daily life and we accustomed to practice it. But, it will be different if we talk about second language listening. Buck (2001, 49) states that we usually learn things

differently in the case of a secondlanguage, especially when we learn it as an adult. Knowledge of the language variesconsiderably: from those who can understand only a few isolated words in their second language, to those who appear to be indistinguishable from native speakers.Rarely do second-language learners develop the same high level of ability as in their first language. 2.3 The purposes of listening Listening is different with hearing. Listening is following the sound andunderstanding the meaning of the sound. On the other words, it can be described thatlistening is hearing with a purpose. When we listen to somebody or listen toconversation on television/radio, we actually try to absorb the meaning or ideas. So itcan be concluded that the purpose of listening is trying to catch the meaning or understanding the ideas. 2.4 The definition of song According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song ), a song is amusical composition that contains vocal parts ("lyrics") that are performed ("sung"),commonly accompanied by musical instruments (exceptions would be a cappellasongs). The lyrics of songs are typically of a poetic, rhyming nature, although theymay be religious verses or free prose.

METHODOLOGY 3.1 Subject The participants were seven students semester 6 of ELESP at Sanata DharmaUniversity. The writer chose them as the participants because the writer believed thatthey had experiences in listening to English songs. 3.2 Method There were two questions formulated in the problem formulation. The firstquestion was aimed to find out the students perceptions towards the use of songs indeveloping their listening ability. The second question was aimed to find out what arethe songs which may help students of ELESP at Sanata Dharma University to developtheir listening ability.In order to answer those two questions, the writer distributed questionnaire asthe research instrument. According to Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary 6 th Edition Questionnaire means a written list of questions that are answered by anumber of people so that information can be collected from the answers.

3.3 Research Procedure The writer distributed questionnaire as the research instrument. The writer distributed questionnaires on 16 th and 17 th April 2009, and the writer received theresult of the questionnaires on 18 th April 2009. After the writer received the result of the questionnaires, the writer analyzed them. The writer compared the answers fromeach participant and tried to classify the answers which had the same ideas. The laststep was writing the research paper.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/15288179/using-songs-to-develop-listening-ability