Students’ Difficulties in Listening to Short Talk of TOEFL-like at English Department of Bung Hatta University

Abstrak

Listening is one of the most important skills in English language learning. Hamouda (2013) defines listening as the ability to recognize and understand what others are telling. Listening is not an easy skill to learn for the students. It is usually a hard skill to be mastered by the students during junior high school, senior high school, college, even for someone who wants to take the TOEFL exam. In the TOEFL test, the listening comprehension materials contains several parts including short conversations, long conversation, and short talk. Among three parts of listening materials, listening to short talk is more complicated than listening to conversation. This is because short talk takes longer time, so it also needs more concentration. Related to this, the researcher focused on students’ difficulties in listening to short talk of TOEFL-like at at English Department of Bung Hatta University.

This research was aimed at describing the second year students’ difficulties in listening to talk of TOEFL-like at English Department of Bung Hatta University. The design of this research was descriptive in nature. The number of population members was 23 students. The researcher used total sampling technique to choose the sample. The instrument used to get the data was listening test. This test was categorized as standardized test because the material of test is derived from TOEFL-like Test book.

The result of data analysis showed that the students had difficulties in listening to short talk of TOEFL-like, especially to identify main idea, details, purpose, and implication. It was proved by the fact that the students’ difficulties in listening to talk was 74.29%,  which means high level of difficulty. The students’ difficulties to identify main idea was 82.60%, which means very high level of difficulty. The students’ difficulties to identify details was 71.73%, which means high level of difficulty. Then, the students’ difficulties to identify purpose was 73.91% which means high level of difficulty. Last, the researcher found the students’ difficulties to identify implication was 69.56%, which means high level of difficulty.

Based on the findings of this study, a simple conclusion could be drawn that the students had difficulties in listening to short talk of TOEFL-like. It is suggested that the students need to comprehend listening materials, especially in listening to talk, and familiarize with the type of questions. Besides, the lecturer should find a better strategy to minimize the students’ difficulties in listening to short talk.

Key Words : Listening, Listening Difficulties, and Listening to Short Talk