ABSTRACT
The purpose of my study is to find out the students’ mastery of listening using dictation as a testing technique.
To achieve the objectives of the study, I conducted descriptive research design. I did two activities: library activity and field activity. In the library activity, I explored some reference books that were related to dictation, test, listening, the elementary school students, and research. While in field activity, I gave the students a dictation test. The population of this study was the fifth grade students of SD Negeri Wonorejo 01 Karanganyar Demak in the academic year of 2006/2007. There were 36 students; 12 boys and 14 girls.
Before conducting the investigation, I tried-out the instrument to 21 students of SD Negeri Bandungrejo 03 Karanganyar Demak in order to know the validity and reliability of the instrument. From the results of the try-out, it shows that the instrument in this study has good reliability.
In analyzing the data, I used a descriptive qualitative and a simple quantitative measurement to find the result. The results of the dictation test showed the mean is 73.26 which equals to 73.26% and the percentage of the students’ mastery in listening is 16.67% outstanding level, 16.67% very good level, 22.22% satisfactory level, 22.22% very weak level, and 22.22% fail level. The results of statistical analysis show that 26 students got 65 above while only 10 got below 64. It meant that the majority of the students have already mastered listening material given. Based on this, it could be concluded that the students’ mastery in listening met the criteria of Basic Course Outline (GBPP) standard and according to Tinambunan (1988) it was classified into below average.
Based on the results above, it can be said that dictation can be used as a test instrument of listening mastery of the fifth grade students of elementary school. I concluded that dictation is very useful for the teacher as a test instrument to check the students’ progress and motivates the students in learning the listening material given. It is suggested that the teacher should give more chances to the students to have listening practices from the book as well as other sources of listening materials that can improve and enhance their listening ability. So that they have good proficiency in this skill, not only in perceiving the contents of the passage and recognizing all the words and phrases being read but also understanding written English.
