SCRUTINIZING STUDENTS’ LISTENING STRATEGIES: CREATING MENTAL LINKAGES

Abstract

One of memory strategies introduced by the listening lecturers in listening comprehension II at IAIN Batusangkar  is creating mental linkages strategies. It is assumed that these strategies are considered to solve students’ problem in listening comprehension in order to comprehend oral text. The problems of the research were what  creating mental linkages strategies used in that class and how they are applied. Therefore the purposes of this research were to find out the students’ creating mental linkages strategies used by students and  how they applied it in listening comprehension. The research method was descriptive qualitative. All participants (74 students) were the respondents for questionnaire, and 7 students among them were selected to be  interviewed. They were chosen through snowball sampling technique. The data of the research were collected by using questionnaires and interview. After analizing the data it was found that not all of students applied creating mental linckages strategies correctly: (1) they have applied grouping strategy correctly with the percentage 55%, (2) they have applied associate/elaborating strategy correctly with the percentage 27.40%, and (3) they have applied placing new word into context strategy with the percentage 46.68%. It can be concluded that the result of the study indicates that creating mental linkages strategies are used by the students in listening comprehension need to be developed  in to the correct ways to get better comprehension in listening.