A comparative study between the students' listening ability taught using tape recorder and those taught using live presentation

English as a foreign language in Indonesia, a developing country, occupies a special position in the educational system. Many kinds of teaching methods are used by English teachers to achieve the goal of English learning based on the curriculum. English teachers always try to find ways how to teach English properly so that the students master the English lesson well. In fact, only three language skills are given more attention namely speaking, reading and writing. Listening is the most neglected skill and receives a little attention from the teachers. As a result, a lot of students face some problems in mastering English especially in listening comprehension. There are so many techniques and instruments, which can help the students to develop their listening ability such as; tape recorder, slides, overhead projector and many other technical aids. This study is meant to prove whether there is a significant difference between the students' listening ability taught using tape recorder and those taught using live presentation. There were two schools, one school for try-out test and the other one school for experiment and two groups involved in this thesis. The control group was taught using live presentation and the experiment group was taught using tape recorder. Both groups were given a set of tests which consist of 20 items of essay. The scores were obtained with t-test calculation. The results was that the group taught using tape recorder is significantly better in listening ability than the group using live presentation. Based on the findings the writer conclude; that the teaching listening using tape recorder is more effective than the teaching using live presentation. Using tape recorder helps the students to know unfamiliar words, to hear the sounds, stress and accents and it can arouse the student's interest to learn English and decrease their boredom