Abstract

English, as an international language, plays a crucial role in global communication, with listening skills being essential for effective learning. However, challenges remain in engaging students in listening comprehension. This study aims to evaluate the use of the Disney movie 'Luca' as a tool for improving listening skills among seventh-grade students at SMPN Tanggulangin. Utilizing a pre-experimental design, 32 students were selected through purposive sampling, with data collected from pretests and posttests. Findings reveal a significant enhancement in listening comprehension post-intervention, evidenced by a p-value of 0.000, indicating that the null hypothesis is rejected. The study demonstrates that incorporating movies into the learning process not only aids in comprehension but also creates a more relaxed and enjoyable learning environment for students. The novelty of this research lies in its focus on integrating popular media into language education, addressing a gap in effective listening instruction. As a result, this study suggests that educators should routinely integrate film technology into language learning to foster better listening skills among students, thereby enriching their educational experience.

Highlights:

• Significant Improvement: The study found a notable enhancement in listening comprehension after using the Disney movie 'Luca' as a learning tool.
• Engaging Learning Environment: Incorporating movies made the learning process more enjoyable and relaxed for students.
• Recommendations for Educators: The research suggests integrating film technology into language education to improve students' listening skills consistently.

Keywords: Disney movie, listening comprehension, language education, student engagement, educational technology.

Introduction

English has an essential role in everyday life and as a means of self-development. English is the language most widely spoken by people from different backgrounds as their alternative means of communication, for example, inter-state association [1]. In communication, listening is an essential part of understanding every language. Listening skills have priority among other skills because they have played an essential role in improving another language [2]. Unfortunately, many students find it difficult when listening to understand English vocabulary speakers say, listening ability has not been fully mastered by students. Eventually, the listening ability becomes something that needs to be improved further. Without language, people would not be able to express their opinions, feelings, and ideas or even build good relationships with others. The development of students’ linguistic competence and abilities in English is significant to understanding [3]. Therefore, there is a need for learning media that support student interest, along with implementation in the English language learning process.

Nowadays, learning must be integrated with the use of technology to support the success of learning objectives. Technology is important in language learning because it can help students and teachers understand the material [4]. Technology allows educators to be creative and exciting in developing students’ listening ability [5]. Cunandar States that to absorb information well, listening must be done effectively with appropriate application to the student. Many learning media are currently being developed and implemented [6]. One of the media used for learning is watching movies, which are the most popular. This research used the Disney movies to enhance students’ listening ability. Movies are known as effective learning materials that can help students understand the speaker’s speech [7]. Students can even learn various things from movie, such as the culture and style of native speakers from movie. Based on researchers’ statements, English language practice through movies has a positive effect on improving various language skills [8]. This media can also help teachers convey material easily and keep students entertained. Based on initial observations, English teachers in junior high schools show a lack of honing students' listening skills, especially for students who do not yet understand or master English. Listening will be difficult if you use native speakers with different accents and speaking rates.

Furthermore, Disney movies are an interesting audiovisual used for teaching. Disney is an animated movie using a series of computer techniques and a combination of animation and live-action. Movies provide more sensory experiences than books and reading materials because movie provide colour, movement, and sound, as well as verbal language. The movie encourages students to actively discuss the results of which can improve students’ listening skill [9]. Various types of Disney movies can be implemented because the language structure is easy for students to adapt to. According to Nur, Disney aims to build a new nuance in teaching through its animated movies [10]. Based on research [11], movie are educational media that can be used because their popularity makes many teachers use them as source material, especially for listening ability. Students’ listening skills require more attention in language teaching to get used to the application of listening for communication between peers [12]. Teaching English language movies is carried out to make it a learning resource rather than entertainment, such as broadening insight and improving language proficiency [13].

In line with this study, selecting suitable material will be very useful to support the success of the listening implementation so that the objectives of this activity can be achieved. The application of the movie Luca as a listening improvement material is not only for practicing the ability to hear each pronunciation in English but also helps students to know the dialect used, train students to recognize many spoken words. Movie Luca has fun animated visuals with an adventure and courage genre, making them more relaxed when learning with an accelerated accent that is easy for students to understand. This movie also presents good messages about everyday life. The movie Luca was released in 2021 by Walt Disney Studios, with a duration of around 2 hours or, to be specific, 95 minutes. Luca has an exciting character and language rules that are appropriate for teenagers. This media is the best choice for recognizing the spoken forms of known words, it’s suitable for listening and watching from children to teenagers [14].

Movies have concepts with different meanings, and the messages conveyed can educate and influence people’s way of thinking clearly [15]. A movie is the playback of images that appear to actually move on video. Animated movies are categorized as audio-visual media that can be seen and heard [16]. The advantage of using audiovisual (movies) is that the listener understands the language of what is being communicated and the expression of the speaker. To achieve the research objectives, researchers have investigated several previous studies. From sinaga, claimed in his research that watching English movies influence more enjoy can improve students’ listening comprehension [17]. The other research, the results show that movies are helpful for teaching and are a fun medium for learning English, especially in their skill. Become a learning resource for all languages. [18]. The research of this study is Enhancing Listening Comprehension through Frozen 2 Movie by hamidah. The research used pre-experimental methods, and the participants were high school students around Griya Serpong Asri. This research shows that the results of the treatment of the Frozen 2 movie as a medium for improving listening were significantly higher in the posttest than in the pretest. This movie can be used to develop English listening teaching at all age levels. However, researchers need to understand the problems each student experiences to achieve success in research.

Based on pre observation by researcher at SMPN 1 Tnggulangin, the results found that some students had issues in English, especially listening skills, and had difficulties and lack understanding vocabulary, pronunciation and speed speakers. Apart from that, students’ previous level education is diverse, so their understanding of English listening still needs to be improved. In the implementation of learning process, the media used is PPT as well as the teacher method, and other media have not been used. This requires learning innovations that improve students’ English listening in order to achieve learning objectives. Therefore, the researcher hopes that this research can help teachers develop and improve students’ listening comprehension by using a new technique, namely watching movies, as well as learning to understand the meaning of information. On previous studies that have been conducted, discussing increasing listening through movie focus in senior high school and university. However, in this study, Disney movies need to be implemented to improve the listening skills of young students in junior high schools. The research aims to identify whether Disney movies improve students' listening habits of seventh grade effectively.

Research question

Does learning through feature movies (Disney) effective for improving students' listening skills?

Method

This research used quantitative research with a pre-experimental design. Quantitative research focuses on treatment and significant results in the form of numerical data [19]. The researcher aimed to conduct experiments on students to determine the effectiveness of Disney movies on students' listening and whether there were significant results on learning outcomes. The research participants were students of class VII at SMPN 1 Tanggulangin in Sidoarjo in the academic year 2023/2024. The sample uses one class with approximately 30 students with research techniques using purposive sampling to collect data on students. Researchers used one class as an experimental class to apply the Disney movie as a treatment in the learning process. The researchers used several instruments, namely the pre-test, treatment, and post-test.

1. pre-test

The first session was a pre-test organized in the classroom by providing a test in the form of a topic that contained instructions for a listening activity on Wh questions to answer, fill in the blank, and true or false. The scoring rubric uses scores between 21-40 for poor, 41-60 for fair, 61-80 for good, and 81-100 for excellent. These scores are for the appropriate aspects. In this pretest, the researcher asked students to solve the questions listed through the audio video that was played 3 times to solve the problem.

2. Treatment

After conducting the pre-test, the students were given treatment using technology media, namely Disney movies. At each meeting, the researcher used a different topic at that meeting. This application was carried out in the experimental class to determine its effectiveness. Then the student will identify the dialogue in the form of simple present tense and write the sentence in the student's book. In each meeting, the researcher used the same procedure as follows:

Figure 1. Teaching Process in the Experimental Group

3. Post-test

The post-test is the last test carried out after the learning process is complete. Researchers provide tests with the same material as the pre-test session, but in this session there are differences in the number of questions given. This test is conducted to determine whether there is an increase or effect of treatment on students' listening skills with the same 5 test questions as the pre-test. Apart from being a form of end-of-learning evaluation, the post-test will also provide evaluation data which is usually carried out at the closing stage of learning activities in the classroom.

Researcher collect instruments to obtain data, namely in the form of tests. The tests focused on English listening skills and were intended to measure the impact before and after implementing the treatment using Disney movies. The pretest and posttest levels are determined according to the student's level. The data obtained by researchers was through tests of students' listening abilities. The test results were analyzed using the independent T-test to obtain the difference between each student's score. Before that, researchers needed to test the analysis requirements, including normality tests. The data obtained was calculated using IBM SPSS 26 to find out whether the score for using the Disney movie Luca on students' listening comprehension was significant or not, so that it can determine the data analysis technique.

Findings and Discussion

1. Findings

The findings of this study aim to investigate the effectiveness of Disney movies in improving students' listening comprehension in senior high school. The results of this research are intended as an answer to the question of whether Disney movies can improve students' listening comprehension. To determine the effect of using the film, the researcher compared the results of the tests conducted on students, namely the pretest and posttest. Table 1 shows the score of the pre-test and post-test of students' listening comprehension.

A. Descriptive statistic

The pretest and posttest data that have been collected are then compiled using Excel and calculated to find out the total score for each student and the average score for each student. Based on the analysis, the value data obtained before treatment (pretest) and after treatment (posttest) can be seen in Table 1

Table 2 shows that the difference between the pre-test and posttest of students who completed the task was 32 students with a minimum pretest score of 30 and a maximum score of 67, while the minimum posttest score was 63 and the maximum score was 92. The standard deviation value of the pretest is 11.241 and the posttest is 7.542. From the calculation table above, it shows that there is a difference after being given the treatment of listening through Disney movies between the pretest average values of 46.34 which is lower than the posttest average of 77.63 which is significantly higher. This shows that students' listening skills improve after being given movie treatment.

B. Normality Test

The normality test is explained in table 3 with the kolmogrov method using spss 26, the pretest variable is 0.072 and the posttest variable is 0.200, which means that the asymp. Sig. (2-tailed) significance p> 0.005. So it can be concluded that both residual value data are normally distributed.

C. Hypothesis test

Based on the data presented in Table 4 above, the value of the ‘paired sample test’ with the average after media use is -31.281. The statistic represents the difference between the average learning outcomes Pre-test and Post-test. The Sig. (2-tailed) value obtained of 0.000 is lower than the significance value (0.000 <0.05), which indicates that the null hypothesis (Ho) is rejected and the alternative hypothesis (H1) is accepted. The results show that students' pretest scores and posttest scores increased substantially. The results showed a positive influence on students' listening comprehension from the use of movie as media in the learning process.

2. Discussion

This study highlights the importance of audiovisual media, particularly Disney movies, in improving the listening skills of middle school students. Based on the results of the research conducted, there was an increase in students' listening skills after listening to the screening of the movie "Luca". This is evidenced by the statistics of the difference in the average scores from the pretest posttest of students' listening skills. The results of the calculations obtained show a difference that Sig (2-tailed) of 0.000 is smaller than the significance value of 0, 05 (0.000 <0, 05). This shows that there is an influence on the treatment given to students at SMPN 1 Tanggulangin, it can be said that the hypothesis of this study is accepted. In line with the opinion of previous research which shows that the use of Disney movie media can improve listening skills in students [17].

Before receiving the treatment, there were some students who experienced problems in listening to English during the learning process. However, when the students received the treatment through Movies, they seemed excited and enjoyed this new method in completing the learning. The researchers indicated that movie media can affect the ability that students have when learning English to make the listening learning process as interesting as possible for students who have never learned it. The change in improvement can be seen from the results of the pre-test and posttest scores of students' listening skills after the use of Disney movie media. The application of movies media into the learning process can familiarize students with learning English by listening to conversations from native speakers, understanding the use of vocabulary and training to be able to improve their abilities, especially listening. The use of this media can help reactivate students' interest and can be done anywhere and anytime according to the needs of each student. However, there are usually other factors that can affect students' listening skills.

Furthermore, the use of Disney movies not only has a positive impact on students' ability to understand English vocabulary and pronunciation, but also increases their motivation and confidence in the process of learning English. With its engaging images and stories, Disney movies create a more dynamic and interactive learning experience [20]. This finding consistently supports the views of previous researchers who emphasize the importance of audio-visual media in providing an adequate and enjoyable learning environment, which can surpass other conventional learning methods in activating students' relaxed learning process. Although this study shows that Disney movies are effective in improving English listening skills, long-term studies can also provide deeper insights into the long-term effects of using Movies.

Conclusion

Based on the analysis of research data on the use of Disney movie-based learning media, it is known to provide an increase in the learning outcomes of students' listening skills in class VII at SMPN 1 Tanggulangin. This is evidenced by the acquisition of the average score of the posttest after treatment was 77.63 which is significantly higher than the pretest score of 46.34. In addition, it was found that the average learning outcomes of the experimental class before and after using Disney movie-based learning media increased after being given treatment as seen from the posttest results. Learning using Disney movie-based learning media also helps learners in motivating better learning achievement, also encourages them to be more passion in learning their language skills. Thus, this media is effective to be used as a new learning media that is more interesting and creative in helping students to improve their abilities, especially in student listening. It is hoped that this research will be able to provide new insights into what needs to be done to improve students' listening skills so that listening skills will improve. In addition, it is hoped that this research will be useful for future researchers in order to find out further what actions are more appropriate to take in improving student listening such as student motivation interest in movies.

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