THE INFLUENCE OF INTEGRATION OF FOUR SKILLS TO

THE PERFORMANCE OF UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS ON TOEFL

SAMPLE TEST

Nurul Azizah Ria Kusrini

Institut Pesantren KH. Abdul CHalim, Mojokerto
E-mail: [email protected]

Eka Rizki Amalia

Institut Pesantren KH. Abdul Chalim, Mojokerto
E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract
Nowadays, there are a number of approaches to teach English. All
of them have been used and developed along the time to help the
foreign students to reach a better proficiency of English as foreign
language. For few years, there have been many opinions that
reinforce the idea of integrating four skills to create a real
communication atmosphere as authentic as possible. They propose
to mix reading and listening comprehension with oral and written
expression in teaching English. Hence, this investigation aims to
identify whether by including integration of four skills into the lesson
can bring significant affects or not to the performance of
undergraduate students in doing a TOEFL sample test. To reach this,
observation of lessons will be recorded on checklist and the
application of a standardized test will be applied in order to establish
the relationship between two variables, the integration of four skills in
lesson and the affects to the students’ performance in doing TOEFL
sample test. Finally, it can be properly affirmed that the integration
of the four skills of the English language influences the students’
performance concerning English as a foreign language.

Key words: Integration of four skills, receptive skills, productive

skills

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Volume 3, Nomor 1, Mei 2021; e-ISSN: 2686-6234, 61-74
Website: jurnalstitnualhikmah.ac.id
The Influence of Integration of Four Skills to the Performance of Undergraduate Students on TOEFL
Sample Test

BACKGROUND OF THE PROBLEM

Starting from classic questions from my students, such as “why English is
so difficult?” and “why we still cannot use English well, oral and written,
though we have studied for more than 10 years?” are dealing with what kind
of approaches that the teacher used in the class. There have been many
opinions proposing the integration of four skills as the key to create authentic
classroom environment in teaching English in a way close to real
communicative situation. Some teachers said that combining receptive skills
and productive skills directly in the class could be the great method to
augment the students’ language ability instead of teaching each skill
separately.
Some theories concerning to the integrating of four skills have been
widely spread over decades. Brown (Brown, 2000) had identified
fundamental aspects of teaching language are listening, speaking, reading,
and writing. Then, harmer classify those four skills as receptive skills and
productive skills (Harmer, 2007b).. Moreover, Dianne added two supported
skills, they are grammar and vocabulary (Wall, 2011), because all four skills
are misunderstandable without these two skills in communicative
production. It means that the students can enrich their performance by
exposure to their experience with the language provided.
From these theories, integrating four skills will encourage the students’
motivation to effectively provoke their language ability. The students tend to
learn to speak and to write from what they hear and see or read (Harmer,
2007b). In this case, Brown (2000) stated that a course dealing with reading,
will also deal with other skills. It is also supported by Hinkel (2007) that
communication will be meaningful when people employ all the basic skills in
cycle. It is clearly seen that employing four skills can promote the students’
performance and enrich the teachers to be more creative at the same time
(Brown, 2000). In addition, all theories have conducted that it does not make
any sense to teach language in separated way instead of using the four skills
simultaneously in teaching language, especially for EFL class.
The problem of this study is the teaching method used in the class in
which the four skills are implemented separately. In fact, most of the
educators teach grammar in most of the time in as much as it is considered
as the hardest skill for the students. Whereas, the students also complaint
about the monotonous teaching and lesson which they think do not
influence well for the students’ performance in the result of Standardized Test
of English Proficiency (STEP). Therefore, the research problem of this study is

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to find out if the integration of four skills affects the students’ performance in
taking STEP.
There are two variables in this study. The first variable is the integration
of four skills in teaching TOEFL preparation course concerning to the
methodologies and strategies used during the teaching and learning
process. Another variable is the students’ result in taking STEP.
Considering to the aim of this study is to identify the integration of the
four skills in EFL classroom and how the skills are developed for them. Institute
Pesantren KH. Abdul Chalim is one of new Islamic private university in
Indonesia which fundamentally based on Pondok Pesantren – Islamic
boarding school. It was founded in 2015 by DR. KH. Asep Saifudin,M.A., the
founder of Amanatul Ummah Boarding School. The unique thing from this
institution that the students have to take five non-credits subjects – English,
Arabic, IT, accounting, and Aswaja- for the first six semesters. This is done to
evoke the students’ quality both in soft skills and hard skills. This study chooses
the last year of Intensive class in that they are focusing on TOEFL preparation
course.

THEORITICAL BASIS
The Four Skills
Basically, there are three sections that are tested in STEP i.e. listening,
structures, and reading. However, all of these sections are the application of
four skills of language ability. Therefore, this study will highlight the developing
of each skill, students’ problem, and solutions for each.
a. Listening Skill
Listening is one of receptive skills, whose main purpose is to listen to
what someone says. Hence, the product of listening itself is a spoken or
written response from the students that shows whether they are correct or
incorrect during listening process (Brown, 2000, p.118). Furthermore, there
are seven essential components of listening – volition, focused attention,
perception, interpretation, remembering, response, and the human
element – which is an integral part of active listening process (Purdy,
2010). Therefore, listening is considered as critical skill (Richard &
Renandyah, 2002), and it, nowadays, is assuming important in EFL
classroom (Nurpahmi, Islam, & Alauddin, 2018).

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Because of these issues, some students face some problems in

listening comprehension session. The problems basically include
unfamiliar sound and similar sound which often lead to misunderstanding.
Therefore, they need to listen to a recording for several times, whereas, in
TOEFL is recoding played only once. However, sometimes the teacher
did not know how to break listening down into understandable materials
to increase the listening skill (Wall, 2011,p.6). She added that some of the
teachers believe that the students can improve their listening skill through
osmosis process, both inside and outside the classroom.
Among the three parts of listening section in TOEFL, part A and part
C are considered the most difficult for EFL students. Although part A
consists of short dialogues for each number, it scopes various skills to
understand. The biggest problems for the students are similar sound and
idiom. These skills relate to speaking, especially the way to pronounce the
words correctly (Wall, 2011). Thus, to dealing with listening task, students
must focus on general context rather than particular sounds (Bastías et
al., 2011). Moreover, students can optimize their ability by contextualizing
their assumption and using their prior knowledge in this way (Nurpahmi et
al., 2018), especially to cope part C in TOEFL test.
b. Reading Skill
Reading is receptive skill which can develop independently along
with listening and speaking skills (A. Aydogan, 2014) because reading is
not merely a textual but whatever a person looks at and understands
(Homby, 2005). According to Harmer (2007a) there are two types of
reading, extensive and intensive reading. Extensive reading refers to
reading activity for pleasure. It means the students read whatever they
want to read based on their interests. While intensive reading is a focus
reading for specific purpose, commonly, for taking test. Reading also
relate to grammar and vocabulary (Bastías et al., 2011).
However, in TOEFL, the students are forced to comprehend the text
to answer the questions in limited time. Thus the main problems faced by
the students are the speed and lack of vocabulary. These problems are
related to each other because the speed of the students to read is slow
due to lack of vocabulary. Even more, some students with limited
vocabulary tend to translate the text textually – looks every word up in a
dictionary -which commonly leads to misconception. This condition may
block the students’ mind to find suitable and effective strategy to
comprehend the text.

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To overcome the problems above, teachers must know more about

the sub-skills of reading, such as skimming, scanning, referencing, and
inferring (Wall, 2011). Besides, some strategies can be implemented
based on the types of questions in TOEFL such as focusing on idea, direct
questions, indirect questions, and vocabulary questions (Phillips, 2001).
Each sub-skill and strategy should be applied through simultaneous
practice with different topics of the articles to get them used to it.
c. Speaking Skill
Speaking is often related to listening because it is a two-way
communication (H. Aydogan, 2014). Wall (2011) emphasizes that it is a bit
impossible to develop speaking as separated skill in learning language,
and it was the reason why speaking was not tested on TOEFL PBT and CBT.
However in IBT , there are two types of tasks in speaking section:
independent speaking and four integrated speaking. Independent
speaking provides the students some questions about familiar topics and
they can use their personal experience and general knowledge to speak
out the answer. In the integrated four speaking, the students will listen to
the lecture and read a related passage about certain topic, and then
they will listen to the questions that require them to respond through
speaking(Pamela J. Sharpe, 2007).
Although speaking is a basic product of language learning, it is still
considered as the most difficult skill to master, especially for EFL students.
First thing is that they feel inhibited to try to speak since they are afraid to
make mistakes. Second, they feel nothing to say. It does not mean that
they do not have any ideas, but it is just on their tip of tongue and do not
know how to express it well. The last and the most common problem exist
in the class is when they translate their mother-tongue into English which
often lead to misunderstanding.
As a mean to solve these problems, Bastías et al. (2011) suggests
some strategies. First is to make a small discussion with simple and familiar
topics. In this time the students are trained mentally to make short speak
– three to five sentences – concerning to the topics given. Second is to
review some essential vocabularies and common expressions to minimize
the hesitation. Third, the teacher takes important part to keep the
students speaking the target language and make them to speak more
and more. These strategies are simply to implement in EFL classrooms.

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d. Writing Skill
Writing involves in productive skill which is considered the most
difficult skill for either native speakers, second-language speakers, or
foreign-language speakers(H. Aydogan, 2014) since it does not merely
write letters or numbers (Homby, 2005) but need to generate the ideas
and organize them into readable text(Richard & Renandyah, 2002).
Beside the ideas, there are so many aspects that must be considered
such as spelling, diction, punctuation, and organization that help the
readers easy to understand the writing (Hinkel, 2017; Bastías et al., 2011)
and it also involves either graphic or the development and presentation
of thought in a structural way (H. Aydogan, 2014).
Writing is of daily activities in learning, but composing good writing is
very difficult for everyone, especially for EFL students. First thing is
generating ideas. Although the students are provided certain topics, they
expand the ideas in jumping way or just write whatever in their mind
without considering the organization. Second is structure. Some of them
cannot realize when to use present verb, past verb, conjunction,
adjective, and adverb in sentences. It brings confusion for those who
read it. Third, so many “repetition” words occur in a paragraph due to
lack of dictions they have.
The best solutions for these problems are varied. First, the students
must focus on the structure of essays and pay less attention to the content
(Wall, 2011). Second, after the students understand the structure of essay,
guide them to map their ideas, thus, their writing will be clear, concise,
and well organized (Phillips, 2001). Third, remind the student to make
supporting statement every time they make any general statements
(Phillips, 2001). The last, give the basic and simple structure to use in their
writing, hence, it will be readable (Bastías et al., 2011).
The approach of Integrated-skills
All theories of language strongly imply that all aspects of language are
interrelated and intertwined. They further claims that students must be given
concurrently an opportunity to use all language skills (H. Aydogan, 2014) in
meaningful, functional, and cooperative activities (Brown, 2000).
Furthermore, Oxford (2001) stated that there are four essential strands –
teachers, learners, setting, and relevant language – each of which consists
of four primary skills of language that associate with supported skills –
vocabulary, syntax, meaning, structure, and usage – can form good
communication if all of them are correctly interwoven.

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Although there are three sections in TOEFL, but all of them are
correlated to one another. To understand the listening section, the students
must be familiar with the expressions and phrases used in the dialogues.
Hence, this approach is effective to make the lesson more dynamic
engaging for the students (Josephine Hungyo and Jimmy Kijai, 2009). In
addition, Barbuzza et al. (2001) in (Bastías et al., 2011) that emphasizing what
the learners can do in language can combine any or all language skills
which are relevant into classroom.
There are some types of integrating four-skill instruction: Content-Based
Instruction (CBI), Task-Based Instruction ((TBI), and Project-Based Instruction
(PBI) (Oxford, 2001) that each of that has different focus on. CBI focuses on
basic social and interpersonal communication in the beginner level, and
academic and complex topic in advance level. TBI and PBI are basically
group work that increases the students’ interaction and collaboration.
Through this approach the students are actively work by participating in
project work which involves researching, writing, and presenting (Harmer,
2007b).

METHODOLOGY
There are two variables used in this study. They are the third year
students – Class A, the high grade class, and the result of STEP, TOEFL like for
local institution. There are 30 students in the class which consists of 23 girls
and 7 boys. This study use non-experimental class where the data is
gathered through observation in at least 8 meetings, each of which duration
is 90 minutes.
This study uses two instruments to collecting the data. First is checklist
and questionnaires which are designed by a researcher considering the
aspect mention in previous theories. The second is Standardized Test of
English Proficiency (STEP) which is composed from TOEFL test preparation
guide published by Longman and Rutledge.

ANALYSIS OF DATA
A. Checklist
The students’ responds to the checklist are presented in graphics. Each
graphic will be completed with the description.
a. Does the lecturer teach all language skill in the class?

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Question1
0

Yes
100% No

The graphic shows that the lesson is presented in coherent sequence to

develop the topic. From the class observation notify that the class is started
by presenting the topic and explaining the contents, and then giving the
opportunities to the class to ask more details and asking them to provide
some questions based on their personal and general knowledge.
b. Which productive skills does the lecturer teach most?

Question 2

20%
Speaking
80% Writing

The graphic above shows that speaking is a skill that mostly taught
rather than writing. This data is supported by the observation that speaking
is conducted more because it can help the students to understand the
expressions used in listening section test and to recognize the pronunciation
of the similar words used there. However, during the speaking class, the
students also do writing activity to compose the dialogue or text they are
going to present. However, the writing is not mainly involved in learning
process because it is not tested particularly in STEP.
c. Which receptive skill does the lecturer teach most?

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Question 3

100% 100% Reading

Listening

From the graphic above, both reading and listening are completely
taught. It is because both reading and listening are included in STEP test
sample. The class observation shows the student are mostly independent
study by doing some listening and reading practices and discuss the
strategies to answer the questions.
d. Does the lecturer provide an appropriate material supporting the
learning process?

Question 4
15%

Yes
85%
No

85% materials are provided by the lecturer based on the topics and
skills. The 15% materials are taken from the students’ textbook which is
composed from the TOEFL handbook test preparation published by
Longman and Rutledge.

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e. Does the lecturer associate the student’s previous knowledge with the
content of the topic?

Question 5
35%
Yes
65%
No

The 65% materials are familiar with the students’ prior knowledge, which
are about the expressions used in English – in speaking and listening activities
– and general articles such as news, history, economy, and so on in reading
activity. The 35% materials are less known by the students. Therefore, the role
of lecturer is maximized to help the students understand the contents.
f. Does the lecturer encourage the students to interact in group?

Question 6
0%

Yes
100% No

This graphic shows that interaction and collaboration study among the
students are developed well. Although this group work or pair work does not
occur on every meeting, this helps the students to actively participate in
either classical discussion or group discussion.

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g. Does the lecturer interject supported skills, grammar and vocabulary, in

learning process?

Question7
0%
Yes
No
100%

This chart shows that grammar and vocabulary are always presented in
every topic. This study also notices from the observation that grammar may
take half of meeting because it is tested separately on STEP. In addition,
grammar and vocabulary are usually involved in reading activity.
B. Analysis of results for STEP sample
The following graphic shows the result for the sample of STEP applied for
the final exam. There are three sections tested in STEP, they are listening,
structure, and reading. The total passing grade for STEP for this class is 400
which will be described in details. In listening section, there are 50 item
questions which are divided into three parts. To pass this section every
student must get minimum 17 points which converted into 42 based on TOEFL
score conversion. The section 2 consists of two parts, i.e. 15 items for structure,
and 25 items for written expression. To pass this section, the students must get
at least 17 items which is later converted to 41. The last section is reading
which consists of 50 items. The student must answer 17 questions to pass the
section. This score is the same as 37 as TOEFL conversion score.

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Sample Test

120%

100%

80%
Listening
60%
Structure
40% Reading

20%

0%
Passed Failed

This graphic expresses the level of achievement of the students for every
section of test. It is clearly shown that reading comprehension put the highest
percentage because 100% students passed. Although there are two sections
which the students failed, the percentage of the passed ones is still higher
than the failed ones. It shows that this approach works well for the third
students of intensive class, especially class A. However, grammar section is
still considered the most difficult skill to comprehend. It is proven that the
graphic of this section is the shortest among the others. It seems that there
should be a separated meeting for discussing grammar.

CONCLUSION
The main purpose of this study is to identify the integration of the four
language skills affect positively the students’ performance on STEP sample
test. From the description above, it can be said that integrating four skills
influence the students’ result on STEP with over 75 percent students pass STEP
sample test well. However, it is actually not merely combining four language
skills in learning process, but how to integrate them in a lesson to make the
students to actively participate in real communication. Moreover, the
strategies given by the lecturer also ease the students to answer the
questions well.

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Sample Test

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