“The Third Year Students’ Difficulties in Answering Structure and Written Expression of TOEFL at English Department of Bung Hatta University”.
Abstrak
The aim of this research was to find out whether the third year students of English Department at Bung Hatta University faced difficulties in answering structure and written expression of TOEFL. This research was designed with descriptive method. The population of this research was the third year students at English Department of Bung Hatta University. The total number of population was 23 students. The researcher used total sampling technique to select the sample.
To collect the data, the researcher used TOEFL Complete Test. The researcher asked the students to choose the one word or phrase to complete the sentence and identify the one underlined word or phrase that must be changed in order for the sentence to be correct. The researcher only measured the difficulties of the third year students in answering question dealing with subject and verb agreement, object of preposition, appositive, present participle, and coordinate connector, relative clause, conjunction, modality, prepositional phrase, comparative and superlative, adverb of time, possessive adjective, determiner (other, another and others), article, past form, singularity and plurality, class of word, passive sentence, past participle. In analyzing the data, the researcher did the following steps. First, she counted the difficulties. Finally, she classified the student difficulties based on the criteria of difficulties.
Based on the result of this research, it was found that the third year students’ difficulties in answering structure section of TOEFL at English Department of Bung Hatta University in general were moderate of 59.02%. It was shown by the evidence that 53.04% of them had difficulties in answering questions dealing with subject and verb agreement, 71.74% of them had difficulties in answering questions dealing with object and preposition, 62.60% of them had difficulties in answering questions dealing with appositive, 72.46% of them had difficulties in answering questions dealing with present participle, 55.43% of them had difficulties in answering questions dealing with coordinate connector, 55.43% of them had difficulties in answering questions dealing with relative clause, 84.78% of them had difficulties in answering questions dealing with conjunction, 4.34% of them had difficulties in answering question dealing with modality, 58.70% of them had difficulties in answering questions dealing with prepositional phrase, 50.00% of them had difficulties in answering questions dealing with comparative and superlative, 26.09% of them had difficulties in answering question dealing with adverb of time, 82.60% of them had difficulties in answering question dealing with possessive adjective, 56.52% of them had difficulties in answering question dealing with determiner (other, another and others), 69.57% of them had difficulties in answering question dealing with article, 73.91% of them had difficulties in answering question dealing with past form, 56.52% of them had difficulties in answering question dealing with singularity and plurality, 60.87% of them had difficulties in answering question dealing with class of word, 39.13% of them had difficulties in answering question dealing with passive sentence, 71.74% of them had difficulties in answering questions dealing with past participle.
Based on the results of the research, it can be concluded that the third year students’ difficulties in answering structure and written expression of TOEFL at English Department of Bung Hatta University were moderate. Relating to the conclusion, she suggests English lecturers to pay attention more detail to every student that still had difficulties. The students are suggested to ask for the lecturers about the strategy of structure and written expression section in TOEFL test, to do more exercises, and to study harder.
Key word: Structure, written expression, TOEFL.
