ITS Students Create Edutech Startup to Help with TOEFL

English language skills are now one of the skills that must be possessed by students. Azzam Jihad Ulhaq, an ITS student, also founded a startup company called Bahasa Booster to support students in studying English tests.

Bahasa Booster itself is a startup that is engaged in English training, especially in preparation for the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). 

Until now, there are three tryout packages available on bahasa-booster.xyz which can be obtained free of charge and paid for by getting a discussion of the questions.

Users who have taken the tryout will immediately get a score that has been converted as a TOEFL score. “Now, Bahasa Booster is in the development stage for mobile applications on Android and iOS,” he explained through a press release, Thursday (24/6).

It has been running for more than 3 months, Bahasa Booster ventured to register in the 2021 Indonesian Student Startup Acceleration (ASMI) program to pass phase 2 of funding. With this funding, Azzam and his team plan to switch to a mobile app.

It is intended that various tryout tests and materials to be added can be accessed offline by users. “It’s not like going through a site that has to be accessed online,” said the founder and CTO of Bahasa Booster.

Have Various TOEFL Preparation Materials

The mobile application that is being developed will have various TOEFL preparation materials, unlike before which only provided tryout questions with discussion. 

With more funds, Azzam plans to add team members in the form of programmers and experts from the English Literature department who will compile material from various books such as Baron, McGraw Hill, and Longman.

“We will pack the material in Indonesian, so that it is easy to understand for those who are not fluent in English,” said the 2017 Informatics Engineering student.

This startup, which already has users from various places in Indonesia, will provide more personalized TOEFL test preparation lessons with artificial intelligence (AI). 

Each user will get material recommendations according to their ability to work on various questions. The questions issued in the exercise will also be in accordance with the abilities of the user.

The available material will be divided into three, namely listening, reading, and structure. Azzam said that from each section there are several skills that must be mastered, and each practice question given will represent each existing skill.

Users who often make mistakes in doing questions with certain skills will be recommended by the application to study the material. 

“The questions about these skills will be issued more often until the user is fluent in those questions, as well as vocabulary,” he added.

Azzam admitted that this Bahasa Booster will also be much cheaper than the general TOEFL preparation tutoring program. 

With one payment, users can access various materials and exercises anywhere and anytime. Moreover, with the latest personalization AI, making Bahasa Booster like a private tutor teaching his students.

There are still Many Test Results that are Below Standard

Booster language itself started from Azzam’s anxiety when he was a member of the TOEFL system development team and saw that many test results were still below standard. 

Not a few test results that are below this standard belong to final year students who need these scores for graduation. 

“In addition, when I served as general chairman of the ITS Manarul Ilmi Mosque (JMMI) in 2020, it turned out that there were also many who still had not achieved the minimum score,” he said.

Responding to this concern, the winner of the 2019 Tokopedia Devcamp Hackathon finally developed a site to study TOEFL together with two colleagues from ITS. As of February 2021, Bahasa Booster was successfully launched with 15 early adopters.

Until May 2021, three TOEFL tryouts have been conducted through the Bahasa Booster website with three question packages per month. 

During that time, there have been 300 users who have accessed the site and this startup created by four ITS students has received a lot of feedback for the development of its site.