TOEFL requirement: Students’ and lecturers’ perspectives

Many institutions, including universities in Indonesia, use Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) to evaluate students’ accuracy in English use. Among these universities is Universitas Malikussaleh that utilizes TOEFL like a system to assess students’ ability and as a requirement before sitting for their thesis defense. To have a better understanding of this test implementation, a focus group discussion (FGD) was conducted with 50 students along with four English lecturers on the application of minimal TOEFL score requirements at the university. Four topics were raised in this study: (a) perspective on the test requirements, (b) test preparation, (c) attitude during the test, and (d) test result expectation. The results showed that all students and lecturers believe the score benchmark was too high for the students to achieve. The students’ preparation for the test was also significantly unsatisfactory. The lack of preparation could be the reason why a majority of students receive a low score.