AN INTRODUCTION: DICTATION

Language is the basic knowledge of human being. Since human was born, parents have taught them how to use language. It starts from saying “Mom, Papa,” until some complex words that’s hard to say. Anyways, it is undeniable that language is the first knowledge which human ever got in their life. In other hand, it is the basic knowledge that can not be separated from its neighborhood around. Or in other words, neighborhood has an important role in human language acquisition. Because environment around is a human closest society, where human use a language.

Meanwhile, English is known as an international language which it is commonly used as communication media between someone with the other one from different language or country. Therefore English becomes one of major subject in every school whole over the world. While the English usage in every countries are various. P Bhaskaran Nayar divided the typologies of English user, they are:

1. English as a native language (ENL)

2. English as a second language (ESL)

3. English as a foreign language (EFL)

4. English as base language (EBL)

In Indonesia, English is used as a foreign language which it is not mainly used as wider communication. But it is also taught in every school as foreign language which officially becomes student’s requirement for their graduation. An English language has been taught since the student was at primary school; in fact some private schools teach this subject more extensively by inviting the native English teacher or used English as school daily language.

Generally there are four goals for language learning that consist of speaking, listening, reading, or writing skills. It means that every student should master four skills in language learning. It has been explained by Douglass Brown “for more than six decades now, research and practice in English language has identified the four skill - listening, speaking, reading, and writing – as a paramount importance”

From the statement above, listening still becomes one of the significant problem that mostly faced by many students. And most of English teachers do too. Jill Hadfield stated that the one of the most common problem is students have bad at listening to each other. Therefore, teacher should apply the good technique to improve student’s listening skill.

So far there are many techniques to improve listening skill. But the technique that will uncover on this paper is dictation. Anthony V Manzo said “dictation method is design to improve listening, speaking, reading, spelling, self correction, and content analysis”

Meanwhile for the students of any foreign language, dictation is useful and necessary exercise in that it can give practice in the most essential skill of linking together the spoken and written form. Its fact was supported by the research of dictation for foreign language teaching, “Dictation was confirmed to be an effective teaching method in this experiment. Subjects in all the three groups show statistically significant improvement in foreign language listening comprehension. Dictation technique offers the easiest way for students and teachers to learn. It exercises student’s listening little by little. So that why this thesis entitled “the influence of dictation through student’s listening skill”

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