A Comparative Study on Listening Proficiency in Toefl and Ielts Based Tests

Abstract

The present work entitled A Comparative Study on Listening Proficiency in TOEFL and IELTS Based Tests is an effort to find out the listening proficiency of Bachelor level second year students. The researcher collected data from Bachelor level second year students studying English as major subject in different campuses of Surkhet, Banke and Bardiya districts. The total sample population of the study consists of 120 students selected by using stratified random sampling procedure. The main tool the researcher made use of TOEFL and IELTS based listening test items taken from the book of Cambridge Preparation for the TOEFL Test and A book for IELTS: Academic Module and CDs/Cassettes. The collected data from the students were determined using simple statistical tools such as mean and percentage. The findings of the study show that the average listening proficiency of the Bachelor second year students was 30.22 percent, with 9 converted score 9 on the TOELF based listening test and 29.80 percent, with 3 band score on IELTS based listening test. The selected students excelled on TOEFL test only by 0.42 percent and the study also shows that the students of Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences were more proficient than the students of the Faculty of Education on both TOEFL and IELTS test and female students were more proficient than male students on both TOEFL and IELTS tests. The students of Surkhet district were most proficient on TOEFL and the students of Banke were most proficient on IELTS test. The study consists of four chapters. Chapter one deals with general background of the study, review of related literature, objectives of the study and significance of the study. Chapter two deals with methodology which entails sources of data, sampling population and procedure, tools of data collection, process of data collection and limitations of study. Chapter three entails analysis and interpretation of the data. The data were analyzed on the basis of the variables that were specified on the objectives, i.e. faculty wise, district wise and gender wise. Chapter four consists of the major findings and recommendations of the study.