Students’ Needs for TOEFL Preparation Course at University

Abstract

This study aimed to identify students’ needs in the TOEFL Preparation course at university. This descriptive research was conducted on thirty first-semester students and the lecturer at Universitas Riau. The instruments were a needs analysis questionnaire for the students and an interview guideline for the lecturer. The results revealed that (1) Most of the students’ abilities were at the basic level; (2) Students took TOEFL Preparation course for several reasons such as to help them get a scholarship and as one of the requirements to finish their study; (3) Students preferred to learn through the teacher-centered method and doing more TOEFL exercises; (4) The lecturer should provide them various examples of TOEFL tests; and (5) The time for having TOEFL Preparation course needed to be extended. Overall, this research implied the need for a newly designed syllabus that could fulfil the students’ needs and could decrease their obstacles in learning TOEFL so that the students’ ability improved significantly.