The Second Year Students’ Difficulties in Listening to Short Conversation of TOEFL Like at the English Department of Bung Hatta University

Abstrak

One of skill tested on TOEFL Like is listening comprehension. It means it measures how far TOEFL test taker can understand a massage, whether it is listening to short or long conversation. Gilakjani & Ahmadi (2011) declare it plays an important role in communication, and they confirmed that it is put in educational process. Related to this, the researcher conducted a research on describing the students’ difficulties in listening to short conversation of TOEFL Like.

   The major population of this research was the second year students at English Department of Bung Hatta University. The number of sample was 23 students taken by total sampling. The data were collected by using a standardized-test in the form of listening to short conversation of TOEFL Like. The test for listening to short conversation of TOEFL Like consisted of six parts. They were restatement, negative, passive, agreement, suggestion, and who/where.

       The result of this research was shown in general that the students’ difficulties for listening to short conversation of TOEFL Like were 37% categorized as a low difficulty. Specifically, the students’ difficulties in restatement were 41% categorized as a moderate difficulty; the students’ difficulties in negative were 46% categorized as a moderate difficulty; the students’ difficulties in passive were 74% categorized as a high difficulty; the students’ difficulties in agreement were 43% categorized as a moderate difficulty; the students’ difficulties in suggestion were 20% categorized as a low difficulty; the students’ difficulties in who/where were 14% categorized  as a low difficulty.

   Based on the findings above, it can be concluded that the students’ difficulties in listening to short conversation at the most were in the passive. Dealing with such conclusion, there is one of suggestions that address to further researcher, namely, to find new strategies in material choice related to grammar skill of the passive.

           Keyword: Listening comprehension, listening difficulties, listening to short conversation of TOEFL Like