179 PROMINENT Journal, Volume 2, Number 2, July 2019 USING SHORT STORY GAP FILL TO ENHANCE STUDENTS’ LISTENING COMPREHENSION ABILITY Nur Ekaningsih Sultan Agung Islamic University of Semarang Abstract This research explained how listening comprehension by Short Story Gap Fill improved students’ listening comprehension achievement, observed students’ behavior during listening comprehension class and described the teacher’s Gap Fill technique along with the research. It used Classroom Action Research (CAR) with quantitatively data then analyzed into qualitative. The qualitative data were about students’ interview, while the quantitative data was their scores in pre-test and post-test on listening comprehension. Short Story Gap Fill contained listening comprehension exercises which tend to prove the missing words or phrases on a script of a story or a dialog; they were “pre, while and post-listening which focused on students’ ability to carry out the gap on the listening exercises. This research consisted of two cycles. The findings involved, the third-semester students of the English Department were fascinated by Short Story Gap Fill and immersed in listening comprehension well. However, during the first cycle, there were still 3 from 31 incompletely fulfill the gap in listening comprehension because they could not catch the vocabulary well and less focus. Ultimately, on the second cycle, the students' accomplishment in listening comprehension through this technique improved dramatically on their score of using the same technique. Keywords: CAR, Gap Fill, Listening Comprehension INTRODUCTION Listening is very essential in learning English because this skill is integrated the three other skills. Listening is necessary as language advice for students who learn a language. Listening is one of the beneficial components in language communication because listening draw students’ knowledge in many aspects such as linguistic, pragmatic and prior knowledge Vandergrift (2009: 17). The linguistic knowledge is the fundamental knowledge to learn a language. Discussing about listening, it provides input that can be very noteworthy for foreign language acquisition in general and for the advance of the speaking skill in particular. Input creates the students capability and competency in language acquisition. As written on Kauffman (2016), students with good listening comprehension capability, another skills also create automatically, speaking skills’ enhancement, also the grammar and the acuteness. All the competencies above will derive if students have had so much associates with the language which the students comprehend when the language is spoken by the native speaker. So, hearing the native speakers’ utter their language inspired students’ memory to keep new words in longer time, students also get something new to learn much how to pronounce the same as the natives do. In other ways, the difficulties faced by students learning foreign languages in Indonesia, namely the very lack of knowledge and vocabularies that students could get before to learn languages, students found it difficult and unclear when listening to foreign languages that they had never known before. Brown (2006)