Elfiondri, Usman Kasim, Faisal Mustafa, Tomi Mandata Putra
Studies have shown that reading comprehension is the most difficult section of the Paper-Based Test (PBT) TOEFL. Therefore, this research aimed to identify which sub-skill in reading comprehension poses the greatest challenges for the students and how this sub-skill correlates to other reading comprehension sub-skills. To achieve this purpose, this research utilized both qualitative and quantitative approaches. To collect the data, 33 advanced EFL undergraduate students and fresh graduates at Syiah Kuala University, Indonesia, were recruited to sit a PBT TOEFL reading comprehension test, comprising 50 multiple choice questions to be completed in 55 minutes. The data were analyzed in two stages. In the first stage, the analysis involved descriptive statistics to find out which subskill was more problematic. Futhermore, inferential statistics was used in the second stage using Kruskal-Wallis sum test and Spearman's correlation to seek significant evidence that each subskill is different from another and to find out how the most problematic subskill correlates to others. The results showed that the problems in reading comprehension were divided into three levels. Vocabulary was in level 1, which was the most problematic subskill, and level 2 consisted of the main idea, detail information, and inference. The least problematic subskill was reference, i.e. level 3. In addition, vocabulary correlated to all other subskills except the main idea. Therefore, the universities need to dedicate more time in Reading Comprehension courses for difficult reading comprehension sub-skill. In addition, since vocabulary is a very fundamental but also the most problematic sub-skill which correlated to almost all other subskills, a separate vocabulary development course needs to be offered for the students. © 2020, English Language Education Journals.
Universitas Bung Hatta, Indonesia; Universitas Syiah Kuala, Indonesia; University of Queensland, Australia
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