Students' Grammatical Problems in doing structure and written expression section of TOEFL in English Intensive Program at UIN Sunan Ampel Surabaya

TOEFL is one of several kinds of proficiency test. It is kind of standardized test which has been used by universities all over the world for the sake of graduation standard, passing an English program and so on. However, many students have problems in doing TOEFL. Specially, in structure and written expression section which is a section testing the students’ grammar knowledge. This study aims to find out the students’ grammatical problem in doing structure and written expression section of TOEFL in English intensive program at UIN Sunan Ampel Surabaya. The research contains two research questions; 1) what are the types of grammatical problems that the students have when answering structure and written expression section of TOEFL at UIN Sunan Ampel Surabaya? 2) what are the frequent grammatical problems that the students have when answering structure and written expression section of TOEFL at UIN Sunan Ampel Surabaya? To answer both research questions, it is used qualitative descriptive method by analyzing documents. This study involves 22 students’ worksheet to be analyzed. Based on the findings and the discussion, this research indicates twelve types of grammatical problem that the students have in doing structure and written expression section. There are found students’ problems in clauses, subject/verb agreement, parallel structure, comparative and superlative, verb form, passive verb, noun, pronoun, adjective and adverb, article, preposition, and correct usage. It is also found the most frequent type of grammatical problems which occur is in correct usage, parallel structure of coordinate conjunction and, comparative -er form, arranging good possessive nouns, identifying noun as modifier noun, irregular plural noun, and adjective and adverb.