Abstrak
Syafiq Yastasir, Reg. Number. 2030104061. Thesis title " Level of Difficulties and Problems Encountered by Senior High School Students on TOEFL Listening Section: A Mixed-Methods Study" English Teaching Department, Faculty of Tarbiyah and Teacher Training, State Islamic University (UIN) Mahmud Yunus Batusangkar. The problem in this study is that the difficulties in completing the TOEFL listening section held by the school have not been revealed. This study aims to find out the level of difficulty of students in solving problems, find out the problems experienced by students in carrying out the TOEFL listening section, and find out the most difficult part in the TOEFL listening section and how students solve the TOEFL listening section. This study used a mixed method with a sequential-explanatory design. Data were collected through a questionnaire consisting of 44 closed-ended questions distributed through Google Form and interviews with several students. The population of this study is all students of SMAN 3 Batusangkar, with a total questionnaire sample of 110 participants from grade 10 and seven interview informants selected from a variety of their toefl test results. This study shows that students who have a high level of difficulty while taking the TOEFL listening section are the majority with 87 respondents with 79.09%. Followed by a moderate level with 15 respondents with 13.64%. Very high level with 6 people or 5.45%. And those who have a low level of difficulty with 2 respondents or 1.82%. In general, the problems faced by students in completing the TOEFL listening test consist of four aspects. The first aspect comes from the audio material that is too fast. In terms of vocabulary, there is a lot of unfamiliar vocabulary for students. In terms of understanding audio content, students have difficulty because of these two things. The last problem is the lack of listening practice which makes it difficult to answer questions, especially questions that require answers with high analysis. The problems found in the short dialogue section were difficulty in recognizing unfamiliar sounds and lack of practice. in the long conversation section was difficulty in understanding vocabulary, difficulty in grasping the meaning of long conversations, speed in conversation, and difficulty in recognizing unfamiliar topics. In the mini talks section, the problems encountered by students were speed of message delivery, unfamiliar vocabulary, overly academic conversations, and question types that required analysis. The most difficult part in TOEFL listening section is mini talks. The strategy that student used for answering TOEFL listening section is repeating the audio and guessing the answer.