An Analysis of Students' Strategies in Answering The Listening Section of TOEFL Test (A Study at English Language Education Department of UIN Ar-Raniry)

TOEFL is one of the proficiency tests which have been applied by many universities and institutions to test students’ English language skills. It also becomes one of the graduation standard requirements in the universities for the students, including in State Islamic University of Ar-Raniry Banda Aceh (UIN Ar-Raniry). However, many students faced the problems in answering the TOEFL especially in section one which is about Listening Comprehension. This research was carried out at UIN Ar-Raniry. In which five PBI students are involved in this study. They were selected based on purposive sampling technique; only students having at least 500 TOEFL scores were chosen. The research was conducted by using qualitative method through semi-structured interview to obtain the information about students’ strategies in answering the listening section of TOEFL test. The findings indicated that 12 strategies were divided into two parts based on the research questions. The strategies were implemented by students to answer the listening section. Among those top strategies are focus on the last line, guess the possible question, and focus more on detail information. For another part, the top strategies are watching movies and listening to western songs.