The Third Year Students’ Ability to Answer Literal Question in TOEFL Text at English Department of Bung Hatta University

Abstrak

Reading is one of the important skills which has to be learned by students. Seyler (2004:1) states that reading is the process of obtaining or constructing meaning from a word or cluster of words. Reading will help people who learn to think in English. Reading can enlarge students’ English vocabulary. Reading can help students to improve their writing and reading. It can be a good way to practice students’ English as non-native speaker.  Reading is a good way to find out about new ideas, facts, and experiences (Mikulecky and Linda, 2004:6).

The purpose of this research was to find out the students’ ability to answer literal questions in TOEFL text. This research was limited  to the students’ ability to answer literal questions in TOEFL text which require them to identify ideas, describe ideas, and recall ideas. The design of this research was descriptive text. The population of this study was the third year students at English Department of Bung Hatta University. The number of sample was 28 students. The researcher applied the total sampling technique. In collecting data, the researcher used reading TOEFL taken from TOEFL-like test. It was reliable because it has been accepted by many English-speaking and professional institution. Wainer and Lukhele (1977) had found that the reliability of TOEFL form code with 1995-3RTF27 and 995-3RTF07 was 0,96 and 0,95 respectively.

The result of data analysis revealed that most of the third year students at English Department of Bung Hatta University had low ability to answer literal questions. It could be seen from the result of the test that only 1 student (3,57%) had moderate ability, 27 students (96,43%) had low ability (See appendix 4). It also showed that the third year students’ ability to answer literal questions which require them to identify ideas were low, because 2 students (7,14%) had high ability, 3 students (10,71%) had moderate ability, and 23 students (82,15%) had low ability (See appendix 5). Then,  it showed that the ability of third year students of English Department in Bung Hatta University to answer literal questions which require them to describe ideas were low, because  7 students (25%) had moderate ability and 21 students (75%) had low ability (See appendix 6). Next, the data also showed that the ability of third year students at English Department of Bung Hatta University to answer literal questions which require them to recall ideas were low, because 4 students (14,28%) had moderate ability and 24 students (85,72%) had low ability (See appendix 7).

Finally, based on the findings, it could be concluded that third year students had low ability to answer literal questions in TOEFL text. Consequently, it is suggested to English Department to prepare the students by conducting TOEFL Workshop or TOEFL preparation class, and the English students should improve their ability in doing reading TOEFL. Then, it is suggested to further researcher to conduct related studies to overcome the students’ difficulties in doing TOEFL

Key words : Reading, TOEFL,  and Literal Questions