The Use of Songs as Learning Media to Increase Students Listening Skill: How far It Works?

Abstract

Listening is part of four basic English that must be mastered. It becomes one of the important things that should be trained to reach the point of communication. Songs are media that well known in adult’s circumstance. The obtained information from listening will make the communication ideal, effective, and efficient. In fact, there are still so many students having difficulties in study listening. One of the factors that affected students is the teaching methods by teachers. Most of them especially in Senior High School only use voice record or DVDs which sounds robotically and make bored. Thus, this research aims to find out whether the utilization of songs can be effective way to help students increasing their listening skill or not. This paper utilizes quantitative and collects data from academic literature review. To overcome this problem for EFL students, songs are alternative media that can be used by teachers, because students prefer a relax and dynamic way of learning, rather than a static and tense of learning atmosphere. Music is loved by students to learn listening, because it is a part of life that have an entertaining purpose. In addition, songs are easy media to use. Learning using songs can be felt benefits include training empathy of students because they understand the meaning of the song deeply, fostering the musicality of the students by using songs and movements that stimulate the coordination of parts of the brain, as well as training the learning style of the students that is adjusted to the age of them. Songs are significant teaching tools in teaching ESL/EFL because, as most teachers find out, students love listening to music in the language classroom and they often hold strong views about music. This affinity with music makes songs vital tools to create a safe and natural classroom ethos and to overcome feelings of shyness and hesitation on the part of the learners.