Listening Comprehension Problems at The Fourth Semester Students of English Education Department at Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa University

Abstract

This research was aimed to find out the problems and the causes of problems faced by fourth semester students in listening comprehension at English Education Department University of Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa. The qualitative descriptive design was applied in this study. The data were collected from questionnaire and interview. This study used data reduction, data display and conclusion drawing in analyzing data. This study used methodological triangulation to gain the credibility of the study. The result from the students’ problems in listening comprehension was divided into three categories. First, listening comprehension problems related to listening material such as unfamiliar words, poor grammar, understand every single word, length of the text, interpreting meaning, fatigue, unfamiliar topic, reduced form and background knowledge. Second, listening comprehension problems related to listener such as understanding listening, anxiety, unclear pronunciation, intonation of speaker, recognize signal, lose focus, unknown word, infer meaning, predict next discussion, memory and misinterpretation task. Last, listening comprehension problems related to physical setting such as bad quality of recording, hesitation & pause, lack of visual support, variety accents, speed of delivery, inability get repeated, and noises. Besides, the causes of problems in listening comprehension such as listening has a complex process, limited time, unclear pronunciation, length of the text, poor of recording, sleepy, noisy, lack of practice and lack of background knowledge. So the researcher hopes the next researcher will perform a better comprehension such as discusses further about the causes of the problems and promoting techniques to solve the listening problems.