An Analysis of Graduate Students' Challenges in Answering TOEFL Structure and Writing Questions

This study examined the specific types of questions in the TOEFL's Structure and Written Expression section that posed difficulties for students. The participants were Master's students in English Education at Muhammadiyah University of Makassar, who took the TOEFL as part of their placement test for the master's program. A quantitative descriptive design was used in this study, with data collected from the TOEFL test results on structure and written expression. The data was sourced from the Official Guide to the ITP TOEFL Test published by the Indonesia International Education Foundation (IIEF) in collaboration with ETS. The results indicated that students struggled most with topics in structure, including Clause, Inversion, Gerund and Infinitive, Appositive, Reduction, and Connectors. Among these, Reduction was the most challenging, with an average of 11 incorrect answers per question, followed by Connectors with 10 incorrect answers. In the written expression section, students faced difficulties with topics such as Articles, Pronouns, Adjectives and Adverbs, Prepositions, Usage, Parallel Structure, Verbs, Nouns, Subject-Verb Agreement, and Comparisons. Adjective and Adverb problems were the most challenging, with 12 incorrect answers per question, while Comparisons and Prepositions were the second most difficult, each with 11 incorrect answers per question.