Overcoming Challenges: First-Year College Students Struggling with TOEFL Structure Section

<span lang="EN-US">English as an esteemed skill for students and served as a global standard for competitiveness. It is officially taught in Indonesian high-schools, but many first-year college students battle serious challenges when transitioning university-level English requirements, notably in the TOEFL structure section. This research seeks the difficulties experienced by 39 first-year students from various background of high-school who willing to participate in the research at a university in Madura, and had unfamiliar experiences in TOEFL previously. The document analysis conducted in this research by analyzing TOEFL Structure and Written Expression test scores and in-depth interviews. The results showed specific gaps in students’ grammar knowledge and test-taking strategies. They also struggled with adjective clauses, passive voice, and descriptive phrases. These difficulties underscore the misalignment between high-school English materials and the demands of TOEFL, underlying the strategies to bridge this gap. The basic-to-advance English material and TOEFL needs to be introduced in the high-school settings. Along with it, at the university level could serve more than once English class.</span>