English Students’ Difficulties in Understanding Listening Section of the TOEFL Test

The objective of this reseach is to find out the difficulties and the dominant factor that faced by the English students in understanding the listening section of the toefl test. This research used descriptive quantitative method. 18 students as the total population and 18 students become a sample of this research. The instrument of the reasearch was questionnaire adopted from Hamouda in Raini (2019). The questionnaire consist of 27 statements and devided into 7 tables. The result of this research shown that the highest percentage by using mean is in physical setting (50%) and the dominant factor is in physical setting (50%) where the problem that were the difficulty to concentrate with noises around and unclear sounds from poor quality-CD player are the biggest difficulties to the English students UNIB. It could be concluded that the content of listening test and physical setting become the highest difficulties and the dominant factor that faced by English Students UNIB. It was recommended for the English lecturer should pay more intention towards to listening material and find more suitable method or technique in teaching listening course and students should find another option to cover the listening skill.


Introduction
Recently there are two methods to measure English skills there are Test of English for Foreign Language (TOEFL) and International English Language Test System (IELTS). These methods become relatively required for some Aprino, Elfrida, Lubis English Students' Difficulties in Understanding Listening Section of the TOEFL Test businesses, governments and scholarship programs. Some countries use TOEFL and IELTS become requirements to get job as well such USA, UK,New Zealand, this will be beneficial for job seeker in order to get a better job if they have TOEFL or IELTS certificate. Test of English as a Foreign Language or as known as TOEFL is an English test that will measure someone's ability, especially in three aspects which are listening, structure, and reading. There are types of TOEFL test but TOEFL iBT is the most use in this world. It means most institutions and colleges in America use TOEFL. This is also preferred on academic English. Meanwhile, the International English Language Test System or IELTS offers an academic requirements also only for several countries such as United Kingdom, New Zealand, Canada and Australia.
There are four skills that students will learn to measure their toefl score which are listening,writing,speaking, and reading. According Graham (2006) said that there are some other factors that increase listeners' listening comprehension problem such as restricted vocabulary, poor grammar, and misinterpretations about listening tasks, that makes listening is the most difficult one because of some factors, such as listen carefully what speaker are saying, high concentarte and also another distruction will affect the result of the toefl score. According to Graesser and Britton in C. Goh (2009) said that text understanding is the dynamic process of constructing coherent representations and inferences at multiple levels of text and context, within the bottleneck of a limited capacity working memory". That means to memorize in listening section is the hardest one because of limited capacity working memory.
From the word given above, we can recognize that listening is the most commonly used language skill which plays a great role in the development of listening. in the same way, an article which appeared on the web page of Growing Greatness, Lawson (2007) indicated that listening is the fundamental language skill, and it is the intermediate from beginning to end which people gain a big portion of their information, their understanding, their education of the world and of human affairs, their appreciation, their ideals and sense of value.

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Students' Difficulties in Understanding Listening Section of the TOEFL Test The factors that mentioned above potentially cause difficulties in listening subject and can give assistance to low listening accomplishment of students. The function of listening in language development is very significant. It can be seen from the child's language development through language acquisition. In this case listening is the activity which gives the largest contribution. Children initially do not know a single word, but because they used to hear adults speaking, their language began to develop. Rost in Hamouda (2013) confirmed that listening is vital in language classrooms because it provides input for learners. Krashen in Hamouda (2013) further argued that people acquire language by understanding the linguistic information they hear. However, without understanding input appropriately, learning simply cannot get any improvement. In addition, without listening skill, no communication can be achieved (Cross, 1998). This situation is supposed to be handled seriously in order to reduce the obstacles in listening classes and make the students simple to comprehend what they listen to. Teng (2002) identified four listening factors, they are listener factors, speaker factors, stimulus factors, and context factors. She indicated that "EFL proficiency" was the most important listener factor for EFL listening problems. According to Seferoglu and Uzakgoren (2004), some other listening comprehension problems are related to the kind of listening materials. The researcher emphasized that listening is not of great importance and teacher do not teach listening strategies to their learners.
According to Harahap, A. Lubis, A, A. & Syahrial (2021) said that the result of the students profiency score for English students are lower, because it still far from the required target is in the way due to the syllabus of the English course. It showed that even English students got a lower score because of some factors. This study is conducted at University of Bengkulu to find out profile the level of English profiency in university graduates of English and non-English departments at the faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Universitas Bengkulu.
According to Yagang (1994), the problems in listening were

Research Methodology
This research used descriptive quantitative method in order to get the data. The descriptive quantitative method used to explain characteristics of a phenomenon being learnt. The instrument was questionnaires in course or college. According to Arikunto (2010) define that quantitative research is an attempt to investigate an issue by using numerical data and statistical processing. The research was conducted at Universitas Bengkulu, The population of the research was students who The collecting data has been done through some steps by the researcher, here was the steps of collectig data : The researcher distributed the questionnaire through google form to the sample, then the researcher reading and identifying the questionnaire that has been answered,   students often frequency, 1 students felt always and 2 students choose never.
On fifth item that says I find difficult to understand every single word of coming speech, 15 students choose sometime frequency (83.33%), 3 students choose always, and no students choose for often and never. The last one is item number six. Sometime 14 students (77.8%) feel difficult when listening the passage, 3 students choose always, 1 student often felt difficult and no students never feel difficult to understand the passage. I find it surprising and difficult to deal with daily language and slang.

14.
I lose my concentration if the recording is in a poor quality.

19.
At (2) 11.1% (14) 77.7% (1) 5.6% (1) Third difficult to quickly remember word or phrase that have just hear Third item is about difficult to quickly remember word or phrase they have just heard. 9 students sometimes (50%) felt this difficulty, 5 students always (27.8%) felt difficulty, 3 students often (16.7%) felt also 1 student (5.6%) never felt this difficulty. Fourth difficult listening without transcripts Fourth item in this table describe that 12 students sometimes (66.7%) face difficulty when they listening to English without transcript. The rest 3 students (16.7%) choose always, 2 students (11.1%) chose often, and 1 student (5.6%) choose never.
Fifth items difficult to answer that has long answer such why and how question. 14 students (77.7%) sometimes felt this situation, 2 students never felt this situation, and both of often and always have 1 student (5.6%). (2) 11.1% (14) 77.7% (1)

5.6%
(1) shows that 14 students sometime (77.7%) felt this situation, 2 students (11.1%) choose never, and 1 students (5.6%) choose for both often and always for first item. Second they find it difficult to understand the meaning to word which are not pronounced clearly In second item students face about not clearly

26.
It is difficult for me to concentrate with noises around.

Disccusion The Content of Listening Text
The first aspect in listening comprehension problems that mentioned by Hamouda in Raini (2019) is related to the content of listening text. From 7 aspects, this aspect is in first position of listening comprehension problems that faced by the students when doing TOEFL test at UPT Bahasa, Universitas Bengkulu. The finding showed the English students UNIB have problem in listening section of TOEFL test that caused by the listening materials.In the questionnaire's item, the first item that related to the content of listening text was asked to know whether unfamiliar words interfered with the students' listening comprehension or not Majority of the students have responded that unfamiliar words such as jargon and idioms interfered with their listening comprehension. It can be implied that limited vocabulary is one of problem faced by the student. This finding coincides with Pratiwi (2017) who reported that the dominant problem in listening section of TOEFL test was about vocabulary knowledge. The data also proves the theory realized by Underwood (1989) that lack of vocabulary is a big obstacle to most students in listening comprehension.
Besides vocabulary that becomes the reasons why the students cannot understand the talk was the length of the listening text. The majority of the students have responded that a long spoken text interfered with their listening comprehension. And because of the length of a spoken text, the students have a problem in interprate the meaning. It is also proved by Hamouda (2015) in his research's result that showed the length of a spoken text can be one major factor that negatively affects the learners' listening comprehension.
In aspect of listening material, the researchers also find that the students difficult to understand the meaning of text because they sometimes tried to understand every single word in the spoken text. This supports the claim of Butt et al, (2010) who think that some foreign language learners try to understand every single word of incoming speech, but actually, doing so is both unnecessary and impossible. The

Aprino, Elfrida, Lubis English
Students' Difficulties in Understanding Listening Section of the TOEFL Test student felt tired because there is not pause long enough after section one of listening section in TOEFL to others. Complex grammatical structures are also becoming one of examples the listening comprehension problems faced by the English student in listening section of the TOEFL test. It interfered with the students' listening comprehension. The biggest problem in this aspect is about reduced forms.
The students think that listening passage sometimes make them confused. The percentages point out difficult grammatical structures cause much trouble to students. This confirms to Voley's study (1998) which shows that poor grammatical is one of problem in listening comprehension.

The Linguistic Features
The colloquial language is a special challenges. As we know that part 1 in listening section of TOEFL test is about short conversation in daily life, it may contain a lot of colloquial words and expressions, such as gonna for going to, gotta for going to, etc., as well as slang. The uses of colloquial and slang expressions soemtimes are caused problems for English major students ofUniversitas Bengkulu because there's no specific subject about colloquial and slamg words. The result of this present study shows that the students agreed that the use of colloquial and slang expressions made it hard for them to comprehend a listening The unkown words that has spoken by the speaker sometimes could also be a problem for English students and it caused the students stop to listen the spoken text.
The spoken text that has long sentences and complext is becoming another problems and the cannot recognize the signals of the text, that's the important part that the listeners should pay attention to. Unfortunately, many students may fail to recognize the signals which indicate that the speaker is moving from one point to another, giving an example, or repeating a point. These signals can be missed especially by less proficient listeners (Gilakjani and Ahmadi, 2011).

The Failure to Concentrate
The third aspect that cause problem in listening section of TOEFL test is related to the failure to concentrate. Many students stated that they lose focus of the talk when they have got an expected answer in their mind. It can be told when the students found the answer they would quit to listen the spoken text sometimes the

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Students' Difficulties in Understanding Listening Section of the TOEFL Test students also doing find the answer and listening the dialogue at the same time that's why they lose their concentration. Another problem that faced by the English students they try to understand the next question while the question is being spoken.
Many students may be thinking about another question, therefore, they will not concentrate too much on the text.
The students lose focus after concentrating too long on the listening. The students stated that when the text is long, they have difficulty remaining focused. If the exercise is long, it would be more suitable to break it up into shorter parts by pausing or a change of t he speakers (Gilakjani and Ahmadi, 2011).A number of English students of Universitas Bengkulu also lose their concentration when they heared about new words.
They were not focus on the listening but they looked for the meaning of the new words.
So, they cannot truly understand overall of what they heared and it has impact to their comprehension of listening.

The Psychological Characteristics
The psychological characteristic is the bottom three percentage average that voted by the students as their problems in listening comprehension when doing TOEFL test. It means that the English students do not fear enough when they did not understand the listening. They just only focus on the score that they would get after it. Because they should have at least 450 for TOEFL scores if they want to take the last session of Research Report (Thesis).
One of the item that related to the psychological characteristics is the students have problems pertaining to anxiety. They feel nervous and worried when they do not understand the spoken text. The majority of students agree about the statement. Hamouda's research result shows that the very high percentages of the students reach an agreement that they soemtimes feel nervous and worried when they do not understand the spoken text. Motivation and interest are also factors in understanding the topic of the spoken text. The students did not find the difficulty to understand the spoken text which is not of interest to them. The majority of the students never stop listening when they have problems in understanding a listening text. It might be wrong decision to stop listen the toefl test because it caused the result of the other section of the listening test. This finding is contradicted to Hamouda (2013) because he found that at least half of the students choose often

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Students' Difficulties in Understanding Listening Section of the TOEFL Test and always stop listening.

The Listeners
The next aspect that cause problem in listening section of TOEFL test is related to the listeners or the students themselves. From all aspects about listening comprehension problems, this aspect is in the third position that faced the majority of students when doing TOEFL test. Almost all of the students have responded that they sometimes find difficult to get a general idea from the first listening and to predict what would come next. This problem related to the listener themselves. The ability of the listener can impact to their comprehension.
It shows that the majority of the students have responded that they never, sometimes, often and always found it difficult to recognize the words they knew because of the way they were pronounced. From this result it means that most students find it difficult to recognize the words they knew because of the way they are pronounced. This result is also consistent with Ur's declaration (1984), which states that if a word is pronounced differently from the way it was said when it was learnt, the listener may not recognize it as the same word, or may even miss its existence completely. Memory, as depicted by the students, stands for 'trouble remembering the definition of the word after being taught', 'difficulty in recalling the meaning of familiar words' and 'immediately forgetting the word after being said'.
Many students doing wrong about the memorize the words that have been heard before. They tend to quick not remember the words and it caused sometimes this problem that they faced when doing the listening test of the toefl.
The students find difficulty when listening to English without transcripts indicates that written support in the form of transcripts provided before listening exercises never help them understand the text. It is clear that students' learning habit is the main cause to their listening problems. This may be the fact that transcripts allow listeners to check and make sure that they have listened to everything on the tape.
The result further shows that the majority of the English students have responded that they sometimes found it difficult to answer questions which required other than short answer. From this result, it is possible to infer that many students find it difficult to answer listening questions which require longer answers such as why and how question (which demands writing skills at the expense of listening). This confirms Ur's statement (1989) which justifies that the difficulty in listening performance is partly

Aprino, Elfrida, Lubis English
Students' Difficulties in Understanding Listening Section of the TOEFL Test due to the provision of irrelevant tasks that demand the skills of reading, speaking and writing other than the skills of listening.

The Speakers
The speaker is the last position problems that faced by the 8th semester English Education Study Program students in listening section of TOEFL test is related to the speaker. almost than half of students sometimes find difficulty to understand natural speech which is full of doubts and pauses. This is in line with the findings of previous research which indicate that hesitations and pauses in spontaneous speech cause perceptual problems and comprehension errors for non-native speakers (Hasan, 2000).
The unclear pronunciation of some speakers is also considered as a source of listening problem. Many students choose that unclear pronunciation always causes much difficulty for them in understanding their English listening. The results show that the students always find it difficult to understand the meanings of words which are not pronounced clearly meanwhile only one student never find it a difficulty in that situation. It means that the students have a big problem in listening comprehension when the pronunciation is not clear.
According to the students' responses, the next problem faced by the students is the speed of speech. Faster speech rates, whether computer-manipulated or naturally produced, tend to have a negative impact on the comprehension of EFL learners. only one student said that this is not a big problem even the speaker sepeaks quickly it does not matter. and the rest choose sometimes, often, and always being a big problem and it can cuase the result of the listening toefl test.
As a result, the students absolutely encounter certain difficulties in listening comprehension since they lack control over the speed at which the speakers speak (Underwood, 1989). This coincides with the results of the studies done by Hamouda (2013) and Pratiwi (2017) who have reported that their subjects unanimously rated speed of delivery as one of the greatest obstacle to understanding.

The Physical Settings
The last aspect that mentioned by Hamouda (2013) is listening comprehension problems related to the physical settings and this is the bottom two position of being problem for the listening toefl test and become the dominantfactor for listening test.

Aprino, Elfrida, Lubis English
Students' Difficulties in Understanding Listening Section of the TOEFL Test Noise is one of item that barrier to listening comprehension. Interior as well as exterior test's room noise is an obstacle to comprehension. Noise, including both background noises on the recording and environmental noises can take the listener's mind off the content of the listening passage. It shows in the result of table 7 (on the appendices), the first item shows the majority of students have difficulty to concentrate with noises around. This finding also coincides with Hamouda (2013) and Pratiwi's (2017) research that shows that noises can be a problem for their listening comprehension.
The majority of the students think the difficulties they faced in listening comprehension are due to the bad recording quality/poor-quality tapes or disks.
Unclear sounds resulting from poor-quality equipment can also interfere with the listener's comprehension. It can be seen in the appendices. This is same as the failure to concentrates' aspect that showed the lack of poor quality of recording can cause problem when listening. This finding also proves the study by Hamouda (2013). From this result it can be concluded that the EFL learners have big problems pertaining to the poor quality of tapes/disks from the equipment.

Conclusion and Suggestion
Based on the analysis of the questionnaire the researchers found that Physical setting is the highest difficulties of each tabele that faced by the English Students when doing the Listening test of the toefl with the total number (50%) of students felt that CLT is the difficult one and thehe otherwise Physical Setting is the dominant difficulties that faced by the English students, about (50%) of students choose the Physical Setting as the dominant factor that make students failed in listening test of the toefl.

Suggetion
Based on the study that has been done, the researchers would like to give some suggestions to the Lecturers, the students especially English Education Study Program students, and future researchers. To all the lecturers especially who teach Listening course, they should pay more attention to the students about the difficulties that must be faced by the students, is it about the grammar or any kind of patterns on how to listen the

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Students' Difficulties in Understanding Listening Section of the TOEFL Test speaker. Choose the material that related to the listening test, and they should find a more suitable method or technique for teaching listening course. To the students, The should find another option if the listening course cannot cover their listening skills. Such as watching or listening to the English material that has been provided by the internet. Lastly to the future researchers, They should give more attention towards to the instumental that they use in collecting the data. They were reccomended continuing this reasearch by investigating the English student problems in understanding the listening test of the toefl also investigate the factors that maybe caused the problems.