Boston – For American students, tests like the SAT, ACT and GRE mark the path to college and graduate school.
But for hundreds of thousands of international students hoping to study in the United States, a major concern is proving their language skills on the TOEFL – the Test of English as a Foreign Language.
Now that test has undergone a major makeover, aimed at better evaluating how well applicants can communicate in English.
As the test debuts this weekend, some students, particularly Asians, worry they are disadvantaged because their schools generally emphasize vocabulary and grammar over speaking.
Last year, 750,000 students took the old, mostly multiple-choice TOEFL. But in recent years, many of the 5,200 English-speaking colleges and universities that use the exam have grown concerned the test fails to identify students who master only “textbook” English.
There have also been complaints from undergraduates who can’t understand the foreign graduate students teaching their classes.
After a decade’s research, the Educational Testing Services will be giving the new TOEFL Internet-based test this weekend in U.S. test centers. The exam will phase in worldwide over the next year.
Perhaps the biggest change is a new speaking component; previously, ETS offered a separate speaking test, but few students took it.
More broadly, the focus shifts to how well students read, write and speak in combination. Students may be asked to listen to a recording and read a passage, then to speak about both. Their responses will be digitally recorded, then downloaded by experts to grade.
ETS hopes administering the test via the Internet will improve access to it, giving more international students a shot at studying abroad, in the U.S. or elsewhere. The change will let ETS expand the number of test sites from 500 to 3,000 by 2007.
