New TOEIC nothing to fear

Beginning with the May 28 session, the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC) will have its first major makeover since it was first administered in 1979. But the core quality of the test will be maintained, with the scale, the score range and degree of difficulty unchanged, according to its designer, Educational Testing Service (ETS).

The U.S. nonprofit organization has refined the TOEIC's tasks "to make them more authentic," according to ETS assessment specialist Trina Duke, who announced the revision at a press conference held in Japan last year.

The changes will allow the test to introduce new tasks "that more closely reflect what a person using the language in the real world would have to do," she said.

For example, the listening section will feature a variety of accents from English-speaking countries, not only from the United States. Meanwhile, test-takers will have to listen to longer sets of dialogues as well as longer talks, for which they will have to answer three questions each.

Previously, one or two questions each were set for most conversations and short talks. Also, questions asking test-takers to identify errors in sentences have been replaced by cloze passage (fill-in-the-blank) questions.

However, the he highlight of the changes in the reading section is to introduce "double passage" questions. Such questions require test-takers to refer to two passages and combine the information to find the right answers.

Facing such upcoming changes in the TOEIC, test-takers rushed to the examination's March session as it was their last chance to take the format they had become familiar with.

According to the Institute for International Business Communication, the test's Japan administrator, about 143,000 people took it in March, up 19.2 percent from a year earlier. The March 2005 session saw just a 3 percent increase in the number of test-takers from the previous year.

Will the revised TOEIC be easier, more difficult or about the same as the previous version?

When the Kinokuniya bookstore organized a workshop in Tokyo earlier this month, a choice of "becoming a little more difficult" was the most favored view in a poll of those who attended.
However, TOEIC trainers Robert Hilke and Hiro Maeda, who led the workshop, believe that the revised test "will be a little bit easier or about the same" in terms of difficulty.

Test-takers do not have to feel intimidated about the new TOEIC test, Hilke stressed, "if you understand the test and if you understand how to take the test."

In Part 3, for example, test-takers now will have to listen to 10 longer sets of conversations, while they previously listened to 30 shorter sets of dialogues. At the same time, the number of questions per conversation will increase to three to maintain the total number of Part 3 questions at 30. Maeda, who has achieved a perfect score of about 990 points on the TOEIC, calls this a welcome change.

"With 30 sets of conversations, Part 3 featured a wide variety of topics," he said. "So you had to switch gears 30 times, but from now on, you'll just be processing 10 different topics."
Hilke said that as test-makers will have to create three questions for just one dialogue, "Each question will surely become a little easier."

Throughout the workshop, the pair emphasized importance of "time management," which remains key regardless of the changes.

The first two parts of the reading section--Part 5 will present incomplete sentence questions, while Part 6 will set cloze passages--should be set to give more time to the final section. Each question in Part 5 should be answered at maximum 20 seconds, while no more than three minutes should be spent per passage in Part 6, the two trainers stressed.

This approach will leave 55 minutes to tackle the last section, Part 7, with its "double passage" questions. The workshop introduced a sample of these questions, presenting a leaflet on a restaurant and an e-mail inquiry from a customer.

The skill of skimming information is the key for processing double passages, Maeda said. By presenting sets of interrelated texts, the new TOEIC will be able to set questions requiring test-takers to refer to both texts to find out right answers.

One piece of advice the expert provided for these questions was: "You should briefly read at least the first passage to find out what kind of information is written in which part of the text."
"Also, it's also important for you to quickly grasp who appears in the passages and the relationships among the people," he added.

Time management is an important element even in the listening section, the two stressed. Hilke said the key to processing longer conversations and talks is to "read the [next] question before you listen."

To create time for this, the two suggested a technique by which test-takers just lightly indicate their choices on answer sheets during short pauses between questions so that they can go on check the next question. They can more fully black out the marks later, when the test moves on to the reading section.

"[We] cannot overemphasize that how you use your time is the most important skill for you in getting a good TOEIC score," Hilke said in concluding the workshop.
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Major changes to TOEIC


-- Part 1, in which test-takers listen to descriptions of photographs, will see its number of questions reduced from 20 to 10. Instead, Part 4, the short talks part, will have 10 questions added, for a total of 30.

-- Conversations in Part 3 and talks in Part 4 will be spoken for a longer time. Previously, a single question was set for each dialogue, while two to three questions were offered per talk, but the revision will set three questions per conversation or talk.

-- In these two parts, test-takers will also be able to hear questions spoken, although they are already written on the sheet.

-- In addition to a U.S. accent, the new format will feature Canadian, British and Australian accents.

-- Part 6 used to be dedicated to identifying errors in sentences. The revision will eliminate this error-recognition task. Instead, the new Part 6 will set cloze passages, featuring three passages with four blanks each. As a result, the number of questions will be reduced from 20 to 12.

-- In addition to the traditional "single passage" approach, Part 7, the reading comprehension part, will see the debut of a "double passage" approach featuring pairs of related texts. Some questions will require referring to both texts for correct answers, thus assessing the ability to connect information across passages. The number of questions will be increased from 40 to 48.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/features/language/20060425TDY16001.htm