THE EFFECTIVENESS
OF THE TRAINING COURSE FOR TOEIC
IN
VOCATIONAL FACULTY OF BRAWIJAYA UNIVERSITY
CHAPTER I
A. BACKGROUND
OF THE STUDY
·
To
face the challenge of being an entrepeneural university and prepare students
competitiveness in the global market, Brawijaya University requires students of
all faculties to have adequate English proficiency prior to graduation,
indicated by their scores on TOEIC. (Pedoman Pendidikan Universitas Brawijaya,
2012).
·
Test
of English for International Communication (TOEIC) is an instrument developed
by Educational Testing Service (ETS) to assess non-native English proficiency
and is currently used in 60 countries and taken by more than 4.5 million people
per year (Trew, 2007).
·
Since 2012, English Compulsory Course for the
first year students of Vocational Faculty is conducted as a training course for
the TOEIC (Pedoman Pendidikan Vokasi, Universitas Brawijaya, 2012).
·
Apparently,
assesment instrument affects educational practices and beliefes (Cohen, 1994),
therefore, it is important to implement a systematic attempt to gather
information about the course, to make any judgement or decision on its
effectiveness (Lynch, 1996).
·
On a
study of the Effect of Three Month TOEIC Training Program, Tanabe (2010) suggested
that the combination of quantitative and qualitative data would work as clues
in evaluating similar programs.
B. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEMS
General
·
Can Training Course for TOEIC improve students English
Proficiency?
Specific
·
How much improvement do students make by taking
Training Course for TOEIC?
·
What do students think of Training Course for
TOEIC?
·
What do instructor think of Training Course for
TOEIC?
C. OBJECTIVES
General
·
The study is aimed at measuring the effectiveness
of TOEIC Training Course held for students of Vocational Faculty, University of
Brawijaya.
Specific
·
It investigates
the degree of TOEIC score improvement of students following the Course.
·
It also finds out what students think about the course
and
·
what the instructors think about the program.
D. ASSUMPTIONS
·
All instuctors are assumed to be equally
competent in teaching English.
·
Students are treated equally according to the
their levels.
E.
OPERATIONAL DEFINITIONS OF TERMS
1) The
Training Course for the TOEIC is an English Course conducted to implement
Vocational Faculty curriculum for the first year students (Pedoman Pendidikan
Vokasi Universitas Brawijaya, 2012). It is offered as an integrated English
instruction in which the four primary
skills of listening, reading, speaking and writing, as well as other related
skills (vocabulary, spelling, pronunciation, syntax, meaning and usage) are
interwoven in the instruction (Oxford R, 2001).
2) TOEIC (The Test of English for International
Communication ) developed by ETS (Educational Testing Service), is an
English proficiency test
designed specifically to measure the everyday English skills of people working
in an international environment which
covers real-life settings such as meetings, travel, telephone conversations,
etc. (Trew, 2007).
3)
Effectiveness is the
extent to which Integrated Skills Teaching in Training Course for TOEIC can
help improve students proficiency in English. This improvement is measured from
students gain on TOEIC scores.
CHAPTER II
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
A. REVIEW
OF INTEGRATED SKILLS EFL.
·
Language learning strategies: What every teacher
should know.. Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle. Oxford, R. (1990)
The integrated-skill approach, exposes English language learners to
authentic language and challenges them to interact naturally in the language.
This approach stresses that English is not just an object of academic interest
nor merely a key to passing an examination; instead, English becomes a real
means of interaction and sharing among people. Whether found in content-based
or task-based language instruction or some hybrid form, it can be highly
motivating to students of all ages and backgrounds.
·
Teaching by Principles. USA:
Pearson ESL. Brown, H. Douglas (2000).
B. REVIEW
OF COURSE EVALUATION AND PREVIOUS STUDIES
·
Lynch, Brian K : Language Program Evaluation:
Theory and Practice.
Course Adaptive Model (CAM) for
language program evaluation is meant to be flexible adaptive, heuristic. It
provides the basis for arguing for the important contribution that program
evaluation can make.
·
Tanabe,H. The Effect of a Three-Month TOEIC
Training Program in Tokyo Polythecnic University, T-Kougey research
Journal.Vol-2-29-2001, Tokyo Polytechnic University.
In the three months program of teaching TOEIC, there was not a clear
evidence that the course directly improved the scores of the students. This
came from the lack of quantitative data because
of the smallness of the number of the participants in the TOEIC practice
course. However,the questionnaire given showed positive motivational changes in
the students and this might work as clues to improve this course in the next
semester.
C. REVIEW
OF TOEIC AS AN INTERNATIONAL
STANDARDIZED TEST
A
Teacher's Guide to TOEIC®Listening and Reading Test Preparing Your Students for
Success. Oxford University Press. Trew, G. (2007) :
·
There are two formats of
TOEIC : 1) Secure Program (SP) –The
standard and most common form of the tests administered directly by the TOEIC
Steering Committee or their local representatives. 2) Institutional Program (IP) which are administered by individual
companies and schools on days and at locations decided by the institutions that
conduct them. IP tests are generally used for assessment of new employees, as a
placement test for in-company English lessons or for self-development.
·
TOEIC Listening and
Reading Test consists of 200 multiple-choice questions divided between four
listening and three reading parts and takes two hours to complete. The test is
paper-based, with students using a pencil to mark their answers on a special
machine-readable answer sheet. The test is scored from 10 to 990 and there is
no pass or fail mark. The following chart showing the approximate correlation
between TOEIC scores and levels of ability is based on ETS research.
CHAPTER
III
RESEARCH
METHODOLOGY
A.
RESEARCH DESIGN
·
It is an evaluative research: measuring the
program accomplishment on the basis of its stated goals and objectives.
(Neuman, 1997)
·
It employs a Pre- Experimental Research or
One-Group Pretest-Postest Design. The effectiveness of the program is measured
by comparing the average score of the pretest and the postest. (Latief, 2012)
·
The Context Adaptive Model (CAM) specifically
formative evaluation, developed by Brian
K Lynch (1990) will be adapted for this
research.
B.
POPULATION AND SAMPLE
· The population
of the study includes 563 students of Vocational Faculty taking Training Course
for the TOEIC.
· Stratified
Sampling will be applied since there are 20 groups of students divided into
three sub population, each represents students level of proficiency (Novice,
Elementary and Intermediate).
· The
relative size of each level is controlled to
guarantee representativeness or fixes the proportion of different strata
within a sample (Neuman, 1997).
SAMPLE
OF STUDENTS OF VOCATIONAL FACULTY
TAKING
TRAINING COURSE FOR TOEIC
STRATIEFIED
BY ENGLISH PROFICIENCY LEVELS
Levels
|
Population
|
Stratified Sample
|
|
N
|
Percent
|
n
|
|
Novice
|
180
|
31.97
|
32
|
Elementary
|
360
|
63.94
|
64
|
Intermediate
|
23
|
4.08
|
4
|
Total
|
563
|
100
|
100
|
N = the
total number of population ; n =
the number of sample
C.
RESEARCH INSTRUMENTS
·
TOEIC
Institutional Test as required by International Test Center will be used
as the Pretest instrument.
·
TOEIC Standard Test will be the Posttest instrument.
·
Questionnaire will also be used to gather
informations about what students and instructors think about the course
D.
DATA COLLECTION
·
The IP-TOEIC administered by ITC at the beginning
of the semester before students attend
the course, will be used as The Pretest instrument.
·
The SP-TOEIC, administered at the end of the
instructional sequence by ITC, will then be used as the Post Test instrument.
·
Students are also required to respond to a questionnaire
concerning their efforts to succeed in the Training Course for TOEIC and their
opinions about some aspects of the course.
·
Another questionnaire is assigned for the
instructors focusing on aspects of the teaching of Training Course for the
TOEIC.
E.
DATA ANALYSIS
·
A simple basic statistical techniques are used to
analyze the research data.
·
The average score of Pretest is compared to the
average score of Posttest.
·
The gain is then used to decide the improvement degree
of students proficiency.
·
The result of the questionnaire will be the
LIST
OF REFERENCES
Brown, H. Douglas (2000). Teaching
by Principles. USA: Pearson ESL.
Lynch, Brian K (1996) Language
Program Evaluation: Theory and Practice. Cambridge University Press.
Neuman, W.Lawrence (1997). Social
Research Methods. Qualitative and Quantitative Approach, University of
Wisconsin, Whitewater.
Oxford, R. (1990). Language learning strategies: What every
teacher should know. Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.
Program Pendidikan Vokasi, 2010. Pedoman Pendidikan Vokasi Universitas
Brawijaya tahun 2010-2011,
Rogers,
B. (2006). Introductory Guide to the
TOEIC Test.
Boston: Thomson.
Tanabe,H. The Effect of a Three-Month TOEIC Training Program in Tokyo Polythecnic
University, T-Kougey Research Journal.Vol-2-29-2001, Tokyo Polytechnic
University.
Trew, Grant, 2007. A Teacher's Guide to TOEIC®Listening and
Reading Test Preparing Your Students for Success. Oxford University
Press.
Good post about TOEIC it is very useful for students
BalasHapusFAQ about TOEFL iBT