Learning center with self-directed learning: a foundation for TOEFL learning activity

Abstract

As a proficiency test, TOEFL requires its learners a special learning strategy to master it. In order to find out an appropriate strategy, learners should understand its characteristics, one of which is autonomous learning. The paper attempts to figure out that learning center (LC) can provide adult learners opportunity to learn TOEFL effectively. LC is a learning site where adult learners are engaged in self-directed learning (SDL) activity. At the site, learners could learn TOEFL effectively and efficiently to achieve a better score. Two groups of students from tourism department and civil engineering department of State Polytechnic of Bali were involved in the research. The research participants were semester V students of the two departments. The former group consisted of twenty-two students and the latter consisted of twenty-six students. TOEFL, a standard testing device applied for measuring students’ English competence, has been treating as a challenging device. A lot of students each year had been failing to achieve the passing grade conditioned by the institution prior to their graduation. Ten module sets of TOEFL consisting of ten listening, ten structure & written expression, and ten reading modules have been provided to support LC. The students were informed about the existence of LC and invited to join LC program for a number of meetings. In the future, joiners shall learn TOEFL individually at their preferred opportunity. However, the research participants were guided during the learning at LC as they had not gotten used to the program yet. Of thirty meetings provided, participants had joined fifteen times. The first test (T1) was given prior to their joining LC and last test (L2) was given at the end. During the learning, one staff was in charge to serve participant with the test, answer sheet, and to record their mark in their credit point card. The tests’ result was then analyzed with a descriptive statistic to see how effective LC was to improve students’ TOEFL score. As the result, students were able to improve their TOEFL scores. More obviously, the tourism department students were able to improve their scores more significantly than civil engineering students. In conclusion, self-directed learning with LC model is one of the prospective methods to improve students’ TOEFL scores.