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4.3 Discussion
JUELT exercise books to educate their students before taking the test, so that students can directly reach the minimum score of 400. In addition, the suggestion for Jambi University is that the JUELT certificate can be useful in Jambi University itself and validated nationally so that can be used as the TOEFL certificate. Participant also suggested for the JUELT room arrangement and JUELT schedule orderly, also for the registration fee that maybe can be cheaper.
In addition, participant suggested to raising the minimum score of JUELT more than 400. Meanwhile, another participant suggested to degrading the minimum score of JUELT become under 400.
Paper-Based Test (PBT). The differentiation lays in the use of computers in taking the exam (Alek Farkhan, 2019).
There are two main different action taken by the participants before taking JUELT as their graduation requirement. First, some of them did the preparation by reading the TOEFL preparation books that provide exercises, follow the TOEFL preparation course managed by English private course, do the practice exercise, and learn from YouTube.
This is in line with Azhari et. Al (2021) statement’s that the majority of students use online facilities and information in learning such as YouTube, learning applications, and online tests. On the other hand, the rest of participant (P05, P06) did not do the preparation before taking JUELT, this is also because of there are no preparation classes that is prepared by the university and no willingness from students to prepare themselves before the test. As well as Khathir’s (2015) statement that the policy was not supported by the number of TOEFL (JUELT) preparation classes, so the opportunity for students to get adequate preparation before TOEFL (JUELT) was very small.
According to findings above, the researcher found that the statements that stated that JUELT is beneficial as a graduation requirement. One side stated that JUELT gives many benefits for Forestry students as a graduation requirement because it can prepare students for higher education admission, scholarship, and job application. It is in line with Aziz’s (2016) statement that TOEFL can be used worldwide to measure the English language aptitude of students who apply to universities and colleges in countries where English is the language of instruction. Also, it can measure students’ English proficiency especially for non-English students. As well as Bhakti’s (2014) statement that the policy of using TOEFL as one of graduation requirements is also seen as a way to measure and
prepare students to become competitive person for the future. It is in line with the statement from Aziz (2016) which stated that the policy of TOEFL (JUELT) as a graduation requirement may help students to know their current English proficiency so students can take corrective measures for the future. However, the other side stated that JUELT is unbeneficial for Forestry students as a graduation requirement because the certificate cannot be used outside Jambi University. As stated by participants ‘’Kalau saya sih tidak terlalu berguna, karena tidak bisa digunakan untuk diluar UNJA.” (Trans:
[In my opinion], JUELT is not too beneficial because it cannot be used outside Jambi University) (P03, personal interview).
Based on the findings above, the researcher found that students are challenged in taking JUELT as a graduation requirement. The researcher divided the problems into two, which are external and internal factors. The external challenges faced by the students are the test equipment and facilities that are not capable for the test, the technical problem such as power outage, and the schedule that is almost at the same time with proposal seminar schedule because of the personal participant’s poor time management. These external challenges could disturb the students who are taking the test and make them depressed while doing it. It is in line with Aziz’s (2016) statement that external challenges can determines the success of a test. Besides that, there are also internal challenges faced by the students, such as the nervousness and the previous knowledge in English. Aziz’s (2016) statements also support this finding that internal factors are factors that come from within the participant themselves, such as their English ability at the time of the test, the extent to which participants work to improve English skills before taking the examination, and nervousness also students’ anxiety.
Besides the external and internal challenges, the researcher found that there are other challenges faced by the students during the test that is related to listening comprehension, structure and written expression, and reading comprehension. From the findings above, it is found that each part of the test become the challenges for each student. Students challenged in listening comprehension because of the unfamiliar dialogue accent said by the native speakers in the audio and the bad quality of listening sound system. It is supported by the statement from Zuhrayana (2018) that confirms in her research that listening is the most difficult part for non-English students because of the bad quality of sound system, lack of grammar understanding, vocabulary and idiom understanding that becomes the challenges in answering the listening comprehension part in JUELT test.
Structure and written expression also become the most difficult part of JUELT for some students. The reason is students need to be extra focus during the structure and written expression part because structure and written expression filled with the complicated materials. It is in line with Mahmud (2014) statement that many students were still facing some problems and challenges in this structure and written expression section due to lack of grammar understanding. Also, it is stated that the issues in the TOEFL (JUELT) materials that students were expected to know more about more complicated issues such as subject and verb agreements, parallel structures, etc, so it is not enough for students to only remember the fundamental level of grammar, such as subject pronoun, object pronoun, verb forms, etc. In addition, the most difficult part of the test stated by students is reading comprehension section. It is caused by the long passage that seems to make students bored when reading it, and also lack of reading skill understanding. Samad’s (2017) statement is in line with the findings that these problems
make students unable to guess the meaning and to understand a text. Besides those problems, lacking strategies, such as the ability to do scanning and skimming, leads to significant issues in comprehending reading text, as stated by Nezami in Samad (2017).
Based on the findings above, researcher found that the application of JUELT as a graduation requirement gives Forestry study program students positive and negative impacts. The positive impacts felt by students are through JUELT, they forced themselves to learn English and it forces themselves to enrich their vocabularies, increasing their English proficiency, and prepare themselves to be ready for the future job life. In line with Mahmud’s (2014) statements that stated the TOEFL look alike tests are usually administered by the university and are used for internal usage to examine the students’
English proficiency. The negative impacts felt by students are the JUELT policy become a burden for students because it increased students’ anxiety. In addition, there are many students’ graduations that is postponed because of the policy.
The suggestions suggested by the students are for the university to arrange JUELT schedule and location management system orderly because from the participant’s experience that the test schedule is often not on timeso that the schedule is late and the test room is full before all the test-takers enter the room, so the test-takers moved to the other room. Participants also suggest to conduct the JUELT preparation class and provides JUELT preparation exercise books in study program or faculty to prepare students before taking the test. This is in order to decrease students’ anxiety and increase the number of students passed the minimum score at least on the first test. In line with this finding, Alek (2019) stated that students who were doing preparation for taking test such as JUELT had their own motivation increased as they expected to meet their certain expectations for taking the test. Other suggestions also suggested by students for the
university to validate the JUELT certificate nationally as TOEFL certificate, so that they can use it for the post graduate education’s admission and future job.