THE IMPLICATIONS OF FOOTBALL COMMENTARY IN LISTENING

COMPREHENSION OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDUCATION STUDY PROGRAM (ELESP) STUDENTS

FOCUSING ON SPECIFIC INFORMATION

Septiana Citra Fridayaniseptiana.fridayani@gmail.com

Sanata Dharma University, Yogyakarta

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

INTRODUCTION

METHODOLOGY

FINDINGS

DISCUSSION

CONCLUSION

INTRODUCTION

•Football commentary uses special terms

•Listening comprehension belongs to one of the subjects learnt by students of ELESP

BACKGROUND

•To find out the implications of football commentary dealing with listening comprehension for specific information, especially for EFL learners

PURPOSE

REVIEW OF LITERATURE (1)Holmes (1992), as cited by Noertjahyanto (2001), mentions, “Registers tend to be associated with

particular groups of people or sometimes specific situation of use. In giving the examples, Holmes gives

the sport announcer talk or what we call sport commentaries.”

The function of football commentary according to Beard (1998) is to “clarify or describe what is happening in the field”

(Noertjahyanto, 2001).

REVIEW OF LITERATURE (2)

The language used in football commentary is different from daily

conversation, particularly the vocabulary (Holmes, 2001, p. 152).

In 1995, Trudgill suggests, “Whenever we speak, we cannot avoid giving our listeners clues about our

origins and the sort of person we are. Our accent and our speech generally show where we come from, and what sort of background we have” (Wray et al., 2004,

p. 88).

REVIEW OF LITERATURE (3)Buck (2001) revealed that

Listening comprehension is the result of an interaction between a number of information sources, which include the acoustic input, different types of linguistic knowledge, details of the context, and general world knowledge, and so forth, and listeners use whatever information they have available, or whatever information seems relevant to help them interpret what the speaker is saying. (Mewald, Gassner, & Sigott, 2007, p. 5)

METHODOLOGY

The Samples

The Procedures

The Materials

The Samples

7 males

1 female

8 students of ELESP

The Materials

Questionnaires

Personal Identity Participants’ Knowledge of Football Commentary

10 Questions

Close-ended Open-ended

The Procedures

Survey Research The questionnaires were given on May 2012

(via e-mail and manually filled by handwriting)

FINDINGS & DISCUSSION (1)

10 Questions

General Knowledge of Football

General and Specific Knowledge of Football Commentary

Participant’s Opinions Related to the Implications of Football

Commentary

FINDINGS & DISCUSSION (2)

88%

12%

Favorite Football Leagues of the Partic-ipants

English Premier League

Serie A

BBVA League (La Liga)

Bundesliga

Other

Figure 1. General Knowledge of Football

FINDINGS & DISCUSSION (3)

Yes No0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

Football Commentary

Do the Partici-pants Like to Pay Attention to Football Com-mentary?Are Football Commentators English Native Speakers?N

umbe

r of R

espo

nden

ts

Figure 2. General Knowledge of Football Commentary

FINDINGS & DISCUSSION (4)

English Premier League

Serie A BBVA League (La Liga)

Bundesliga Other0123456

Understanding Accents Used inFootball Commentary The Most Difficult Accent

The Easiest Accent

Num

ber o

f Res

pond

ents

Figure 3. Specific Knowledge of Football Commentary in connection with Football Commentators’ Accents

FINDINGS & DISCUSSION (5)League Total Percentage

(%)Reason(s) Percentage

(%)English Premier

25% (n=2) PronunciationSpeed of Speech

50%50%

Serie A 25% (n=2) VocabularyPronunciationSpeed of Speech

33%33%33%

BBVA (La Liga) 12% (n=1) Pronunciation 100%

Bundesliga 38% (n=3) Pronunciation 100%

Other 0% (n=0)

Table 1. The Most Difficult Accent Presented in Football Commentary

FINDINGS & DISCUSSION (6)League Total Percentage

(%)Reason Percentage

(%)English Premier

63% (n=5) VocabularyPronunciationFamiliarity

17%50%33%

Serie A 0% (n=0)

BBVA (La Liga) 25% (n=2) PronunciationSpeed of Speech

50%50%

Bundesliga 12% (n=1) Pronunciation 100%

Other 0% (n=0)

Table 2. The Easiest Accent Presented in Football Commentary

FINDINGS & DISCUSSION (7)No Implication Total Percentage

(%)1 Knowing the real situation on the field 16%

2 Knowing correct pronunciation 21%

3 Knowing new vocabulary 21%

4 Updating information about football 16%

5 Increasing listening sensitivity 16%

6 Increasing the tension of football match

10%

Table 3. The Implications of Football Commentary

FINDINGS & DISCUSSION (8)

Examples of Football Player’s Names which were difficult to

pronounce

Bojan Krkic

Martin Skrtel

Wojciech Szczesny

Jakub Blasczykowsky

Tom Cleverley

Examples of new vocabularies/phrases

beat (them) off

bang (it) inpenetration

right/left flank

FINDINGS & DISCUSSION (9)Trudgill (1995) suggests, “Whenever we speak, we cannot avoid giving our listeners clues about our origins and the sort of person we are. Our accent and our speech generally show where we come

from, and what sort of background we have” (Wray et al., 2004, p. 88).

Holmes said that language used in football commentary was different

from daily conversation, particularly the vocabulary (2001, p. 152).

CONCLUSION

New Vocabularies

Correct Pronunciation

Sense of Football

• Knowing new vocabularies

• Updating information about football

• Knowing correct pronunciation

• Knowing the real situation on the field

• Increasing listening sensitivity

• Increasing the tension of football matches