New TOEIC---speaking, writing

New TOEIC to offer speaking, writing tests from next January

It looks like aspects of the Toeic and the iBT Toefl are merging. For further info, you could also look at http://communicate01.googlepages.com/.
It might help make some meaning out of all the chaos.

Dave


Kiyomi Arai Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

The U.S.-based test organizer Educational Testing Service has announced a new approach in one of its major products--the Test of English for International Communication--beginning in January next year.

The current TOEIC test evaluates the listening and reading skills of test-takers. In addition, ETS will launch TOEIC speaking and writing tests, which will be offered in a package but scored individually.

The new tests' materials will be provided through the Internet, although test-takers will still have to go to authorized testing centers because of the need to confirm their identification.

The speaking test will take 20 minutes and involve 11 questions, while the writing test will take one hour for eight questions. Test-takers will receive separate scores for each test, with additional information provided on their proficiency levels in each area.

During an interview with The Daily Yomiuri following a press conference in Tokyo in mid-July, ETS Assessment Specialist Jessica Reeder said the tests were developed using a cutting-edge ETS method--"advanced measurement design methodology"--to make it clear what level the test-taker has attained.

The method uses a top-down approach: first develop broad ideas about what kind of skills needed to be scored, then devise tasks and finally come up with actual questions. Thus the new tests include new tasks, such as writing an e-mail in response to one presented on the test sheet.

Bhaskar Pant, ETS managing director of Asia-Pacific operations, said the organization started developing the tests a decade ago in response to increasing demand from test-users, who are mainly corporations. "Communicative skill is something that has been recognized by the global marketplace, as English becomes used more and more in e-mail communication and conference calls. Business tasks require speaking and writing skills much more so than before because of the increase of global interaction," he said.

The conventional TOEIC test combined with the new TOEIC speaking and writing tests will evaluate four skills--speaking, listening, writing and reading--just as in the new Internet-based TOEFL test that started recently, also offered by the ETS.

Pant said ETS emphasizes that it is becoming more important for a person to have communicative skills, and both TOEFL and TOEIC tests measure the same four skills, though their concepts and markets differ.

Practice versions of the TOEIC speaking and writing tests are available on the ETS Web site: www.toeic.or.jp/sw/.

(Aug. 31, 2006)