The Effectiveness of English Songs on Listening Skill for Eight Graders at SMP Misaya Mina

Abstract

This study investigated the effectiveness of using English songs to improve students' listening skills, employing a quantitative pre-experimental research design with a one-group pre-test and post-test. The research was conducted on 30 students from class VIII-A at SMP Misaya Mina Kandanghaur Indramayu, with data collected from May 28 to June 3, 2025. The primary instrument was a gap-filling task based on song lyrics, designed to measure listening comprehension. Before the main experiment, the instrument's validity and reliability were meticulously tested. A validity test confirmed that 10 out of 12 trial questions were valid, showing a significance value of less than 0.05. Furthermore, the reliability test, using Cronbach's Alpha, yielded scores of 0.812 for the pre-test and 0.830 for the post-test, both well above the 0.700 threshold, thus confirming the instrument's consistency. The results demonstrated a significant improvement in students’ listening skills, with the mean score rising from 63.00 on the pre-test to 76.33 on the post-test. This improvement was statistically significant, as shown by a paired sample t-test with a p-value of 0.000, which is less than 0.05. A Shapiro-Wilk normality test confirmed the data was normally distributed, supporting the reliability of the statistical analysis. The findings strongly suggest that incorporating English songs as a learning medium is a highly effective method for enhancing students' listening skills.

Keyword : English songs, Improvement, Listening skill