Z GENERATION TOWARDS THE USE OF SMARTPHONE APPLICATION FOR LISTENING ACTIVITIES IN BLENDED-LEARNING

The character of Generation Z which is closely related to the use of technology triggers awareness of educators to facilitate this generation with teaching and learning techniques that are most suitable for them. One of them is by optimalizing the use of gadget or smart phones as learning media for them. Because of this phenomenon, this study was carried out with the aim to find out the use of smartphone application in learning listening skills in blended-learning class of English general courses followed by first semester students who are included as Z generation. The research also aimed to find out the significance of smartphone application dealing with the improvement of listening skill towards the nonEnglish department students and to figure out the possible obstacles while using the smartphone application. Thus, the researcher applied the two selected smartphone applications and conducted data triangulation by pre-testing and post-testing the learners to see the significance. The other instruments were questionnaires and students’ listening material summary. The data were analyzed by mixed-method technique, namely qualitative and quantitative. The results showed that the students gave medium positive responses to the use of smartphone applications for learning listening skills in blended-learning class and did not encounter obstacles while using the applications. Moreover, the smartphone applications also gave high positive impacts showed by a significant improvement in results experienced by non-English students in listening skills.


Introduction
The term Z generation is given to the generation as the successor to the Millennial Generation. The existence of the term is echoed along with the characteristics inherent in the community groups who own this generation. If the Millennial Generation or also called Generation Y is labeled for individuals born in 1981-1995(Oblinger & Oblinger, 2005, then Generation Z is a predicate for someone born in the years 1995 to 2010 (Bencsik, Csikos, & Juhez, 2006) Grouping by referring to the term specific generation of individuals born in a certain year range is a form of response from the world community today to identify a form of class that has the same experience. This is reinforced by the definition of generation by Kupperschmidt's (2000) which states that the community gives a label as a particular generation based on similarities such as age, year of birth, and events experienced and has a significant influence on the development of the individual group.
Although Generation Z is not the latest generation to emerge at this time because of the emergence of the Alfa Generation that has a year born in 2010 to the present, but Generation Z gives a special impression on aspects of life today because of the characteristics they have and which are able to have a significant influence also for the pattern of present life. Generation Z is pinned to the title of effective worker for the digital era and current technology, education as an accommodator of science should be a strong foundation to help Generation Z achieve the predicate. Thus, the characteristics and needs of Generation Z that are closely related to technology, the internet and other digital components open the way as well as can be used by education to provide this generation of internet with the knowledge delivery techniques that are most suitable for them. It aims to achieve the more effective learning objectives.  (Marsh, 2012: 4). In the world of higher education, especially in non-English majors there are several general courses that must be given to their students as a capital of basic and applied skills and knowledge. One of them is a general English course. At one private university situated in western part of Yogyakarta, first-level students are given the obligation to attend lectures on general English courses. In this course, students will be dynamic in learning four skills in English, one of which is listening skills.
These skills are important because most of our time is as much as 80% is spent communicating, and 45% of that percentage is spent listening (Lawson, 2007, as cited by Sofiana, 2015). Concerning to the statement of how much people do listening, it can be ascertained that having good listening skills is the key to the success of communicating accurately, especially in learning English.
The study by Sofiana (2015)  The two applications can be downloaded for free through Playstore or Appstore. They also offer levels of listening material including beginner, intermediate, and advanced.
Furthermore, this application provides a quiz in the form of deciding True or False of statements based on the sound recordings. This makes the applications get high ratings and good reviews. The research is conducted with non-English department students in first semester who are included in Z Generation at one private university situated in western part of Yogyakarta. The research was carried out on blended-learning based in English general subjects for the success of the learning process in listening skills.

Method
In this study, researchers used mixed-method research to carry out this study. According to Wirawan (2012: 160), mixed-method research is a research that combines qualitative and quantitative methods all in one evaluation process. Mixed-method research will make research findings richer. Related to that, Sugiyono (2011: 404) added that mixed-method research was used to obtain more comprehensive, valid, reliable and objective data. The population of this study were all first semester non-English students of one private university situated in western part of Yogyakarta who took general English courses. In addition, the first semester students who could be considered as the research population were whose have years of birth between 1995 and 2010. This was to meet the Z Generation criteria as the focus in this study. Therefore, to find out the year of birth of the students, The researcher used questionnaire to obtain data related to the implementation of the smartphone application in a blended-learning class. The questionnaire was also used to reveal the benefits of using the smartphone application as well as the possibility of difficulties experienced by students in their application. In addition to questionnaire, to obtain valid data, a test was used as a tool to determine the effect of using the English Listening smart phone application in the blended-learning class on improving listening skills for semester 1 students in non-English majors. There are two types of tests that will be applied in this study, namely the pre-test and post-test. The pre-test is intended to get initial information about the ability to listen to first semester non-English students whereas the post-test is used to obtain information and the existence of significance result of the smartphone application in the blended-learning class.
In this study, data obtained were analyzed using qualitative-quantitative analysis.
According to Miles and Huberman (1994, p. 10), in research, data were analyzed during the data collection process. Apart from that, the data is also analyzed after the data collection process in a certain period. As stated by Sugiyono (2009, p. 337), there are four data analysis activities. They are data reduction, data presentation, data triangulation, and conclusion drawing. The researcher draws conclusions obtained from data analysis and also the facts obtained in the study. In addition, the conclusions presented the results obtained in the study. The researcher analyzed the data collected from the results of the questionnaire. Thus, the results of data analysis obtained from the questionnaire are presented in a descriptive-qualitative manner. The researcher analyzed the results of the questionnaire on the implementation of the use of smartphone applications in the blendedlearning class. In addition, the researcher analyzed the results of the questionnaire on evaluating the benefits of implementing smartphone applications as well as the possibility of difficulties experienced by students in their application as the focus of this study through the three steps described as follows: a. Calculate the score for each answer option. There are four choices of answers namely Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree, and Strongly Disagree. In the questionnaire, Strongly Agree gets a score of 4; Agree to print 3; Disagree to print 2; and Very Disagree was assessed 1. In the study, scores 4 and 3 were considered as scores that had positive responses. However, scores 1 and 2 are considered as scores that have negative responses. b. Presents data in a table.  (Sugiyono, 2009, p. 144)

Results and Discussion
Pre-test is one of the instruments used in this study. The pre-test was used to determine the significance of the application of smartphone applications to listening skills. The researcher conducted a pre-test for first semester students who took general English courses at one private university situated in western part of Yogyakarta. The students came from the Department of Agrotechnology and Psychology. The students are included in Z generation which is referred to as the internet generation or also iGeneration (Putra, 2016). Z Generation was born in the period 1995 -2010. The students who were participants in this study qualified as Z generation because they had years of birth   2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23 3397 74% The students responded well to the use of smartphone applications. They were familiar with smartphones so that they could operate the smartphone application easily. They used the features contained in smartphone applications optimally, such as selecting audio levels that suit their desires, namely beginner, intermediate or advanced. They chose topics according to their interests. In addition, they also utilize transcript features and audio speed settings. With a percentage of 74%, according to Sugiyono (2009, p. 144) It is included as the medium qualifications.   24, 25,26, 27, 33, 34, 35, 36, 38 1375 76,3% The percentage of 76.3% showed high qualifications which presented that the use of smartphone applications really gave a good influence on their listening skills while giving a good impression in learning listening skills. This was indicated by the statement that they found self-confidence when using these applications to improve listening skills and provide special pleasure for students in practicing listening. The listening applications were also responded well by the research participants because it was believed in providing an opportunity for students to practice listening skills in their own way. The ease and improvement was demonstrated by their ability to retell the contents of the listening material they were listening to in the form of a brief description.
The pre-test and post-test scores for 40 students showed a significant improvement in results experienced by non-English students in listening skills. After using the smartphone application and trying to listen to audio as much as 2-3 times, their listening skills increase. The use of smart phone applications in listening skills was an embodiment of the blended-learning learning model that is believed to be able to provide students with an autonomous learning atmosphere and learning environments that accomodate their own learning styles so they can reach their goals easily and effectively. (Marsh, 2012: 4).
The exercises found in smartphone applications provide students the chances to accomplish the tasks by summarizing the contents of the audio they have listened to and retelling it in a shorter and more efficient time ( McCarthy & Murphy, 2010: 67). In answering the third problem formulation, "Is the difficulty of first semester students in The percentage of 74% was included in the medium qualification. Only a small portion of the students got the obstacles in the use of smartphone applications. There were two students who said that barriers occured when their smartphones storage memory were almost full, so they could only use one of the two applications used in this study. One person stated another obstacle related to their smartphone hardware which made them uncomfortable in using smartphone applications in doing the listening practice by using the smartphone applications. Two other people responded that the application does not have transcript in Indonesian. It was related to one another person's statement that meeting and catching up new vocabulary were quite difficult for them.
Based on the results of the questionnaire, the formulation of problems 1 and 3 showe medium qualifications. This means there were still several things that needed improving in the application of smartphone applications. The implementation of smartphone application in listening practice had to concern on how to minimize obstacles. Regarding on that, the results of the questionnaire for formulation of problem 2 showed that the use of smartphone applications still showed a positive response. The statement was indicated by a percentage of 76.3% which was included as high qualifications and a significant increasing score of the pre-test to post-test.

Conclusions and Recommendations
The use of smartphone applications in listening skill learning is able to provide a positive influence on each of the skills listening to first semester students from non-English majors. However, based on the results of the questionnaire, the formulation of problems 1 and 3 still shows moderate qualifications. It means that there are things that need to be improved towards the use of smartphone applications so that the obstacles are minimized too. Through looking at the positive effects provided by the application of smartphone applications, learning activities for the millennial generation or Z generation can be filled or varied by including smartphone applications like this. It can also provide ideas for learning other skills such as speaking, reading and writing. Moreover, smartphone applications are considered close to the characteristics of students today and the research result shows that it is able to provide significant improvement test score results and positive influences. Therefore, this research will be an idea for further research, namely the design of smartphone applications for learning English especially in listening skill.