STUDENTS' PERCEPTIONS ON EXTENSIVE LISTENING THROUGH PODCASTS

Extensive listening is one of the listening activities that are very helpful for students in improving English skills. Podcasts can be used as the learning media for extensive listening. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate students’ activities when listening to the podcast for extensive listening, the benefits of listening to the podcast for extensive listening, and the challenges faced by students during listening to the podcast for extensive listening. This research used a descriptive qualitative approach and the interview as a data-gathering method. The research took place at a Private University in Yogyakarta. The participants of this research were six students of the English Language Education Department (ELED) who have experiences using English podcasts for extensive listening. The finding showed that there are four types of listening activities of extensive listening through podcast: listening only activity, active listening activity, listening, reading, and viewing activity, and listening, reading, viewing, and translating activity. In addition, there were four benefits of listening to the podcast for extensive listening: improving students’ listening skill, learning pronunciation, enriching students’ vocabulary, and learning English in interesting and fun way. Furthermore, the finding of this study showed that students in extensive listening faced three challenges through podcast: understanding English accent, finding unfamiliar vocabularies, and getting bored of the long duration.