A comparative analysis of students listening difficulties in answering IELTS and TOEFL

Home Assignment

English Literature Department

Faculty of Language and Art of University of HKBP Nommensen

By :
SHAN H. L (16810001)
YOSEPHIN CHRISTIN (16810012)
PARAWARY SITUMEANG (16810021)
YARMAN NDRAHA (16810024)

ENGLISH LITERATURE
LANGUAGE AND ARTS FACULTY
NOMMENSEN HKBP UNIVERSITY
MEDAN
CHAPTER I
 INTRODUCTION

1.1 The Background of the Study

IELTS is an international standardized test of English language proficiency for non-

native English language speakers. is a test which measures people’s English language skills to
see if they are good enough to take a course at university or graduate school in English-speaking
countries. It is for people whose native language is not English but wish to study in an
international University. It measures how well a person uses listening, reading, speaking and
writing skills to perform academic tasks. The main differences of IELTS and TOEFL test are the
length of the text, context, question type and the accent. The TOEFL test is all in an academic
context whereas the IELTS test is half academic half social. The TOEFL test is multiple choice
only while IELTS has a range of different questions including sentence completion, matching
headings and true, false or not given. The research data are taken from TOEFL and IELTS test
result, the listening audio and a questioning the difficulty of the test from participants which held
by English Literature students in 2018 and 2019. The purpose of this study is as comparison in
deciding what test should be taken in terms of the difficulty level of each test. The IELTS test
contain different accents from English speaking countries such as Ireland, Wales, Scotland, the
USA, Canada, and Australia whereas the TOEFL test will always be standard American English.

1.2 The Problems of the Study

Based on the background above, the research question formulated into some problems of
as follows :
A. What solutions should students have who have difficulty listening in answering ielts and toefl
tests?
b. Why is the difficulty level of listening in the ielts test higher than the toefl test?
c. Are the factors that greatly affect making it difficult for students to do listening tests?
1.3 The Objective of the Study
This research aimed to give the solution according the problems of study above, they are :
a. To know accents are used in IELTS and TOEFL test
b. To know the differences in format of answering the IELTS and TOEFL test questions
c. To know the reasons why are IELTS considered more difficult than TOEFL
1.4 The Scope of the Study
 This research focusses on listening section on IELTS and TOEFL.

1.5 The Significances of the Study

a. This research will be useful for the students who wants to take IELTS and TOEFL test,
especially in listening section.
b. This research will be useful for the IELTS and TOEFL lecturers to improve listening skill of
students.

CHAPTER II
 REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

2.1 Theoretical Framework

In conducting a research, theoretical frames are very important to explain some concepts

that applied in the research concerned. Consequently misunderstanding and miscommunicating

could be avoided. Some theories deal with the defenition of certain terms that are used in this

research.

1. THEORY

2. METODE
3. SIGNIFICANCES
4. REFERENCESS