Do you think that TOEIC score can show someone's English ability?

English as a Second Language Preparation forum for the TOEIC® Test
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Hi everyone,

Recently I attended a TOEIC exam in Taiwan where I live. I have seen the previous post that Diana posted, and I have the similar question to TOEIC. As far as I know, the TOEIC exam doesn’t have speaking part and writing part so far in Taiwan. So, personally, I have some doubts that if the TOEIC exam really can show how people’s English abilities.

However, I went on a Bulletin Board System in Taiwan, I saw some people are just taking efforts to take a higher TOEIC exam, but not really improve their English instead. It seems like that some people can get very high points in this exam but they are still afraid to speak English, something like that. Moreoever, some people just buy some TOEIC exam books and do it. Also, they found out some questions of TOEIC exam are THE SAME to the TOEIC exam. I can’t believe it.

For myself, I don’t think it’s a great idea that trying to find out the TOEIC books that may have the same questions to the real TOEIC exams. I think it does can’t improve our English except someone just wants to get a high score because many school of Taiwan nowadays ask students to get a score more than 650 points to graduate from their school, something like that. By the way, I think some people do take efforts in improving English, and take a TOEIC then , mealwhile, absolutely.

I’m wondering how you think of this matter. Hopefully, Taiwan can have speaking part and writing part of TOEIC exam in the near future.

As usual, have a nice day!

Maggie :o

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The TOEIC Speaking/Writing is a new aspect of the TOEIC Exam. I work with Speaking scoring program, so I’m very familiar with the program. While the TOEIC Listening and Reading exam has been around for quite some time (mid 70’s I think?), the Speaking and Writing components are only about 3 years old.

The vast majority of our candidates are Korean, and to a lesser extent Japanese. However, we are seeing a rapid rise of Indian test takers, and I thought that we had some Chinese or Taiwanese candidates, but I could be wrong. It’s hard for me to distinguish between the various East Asian accents. However, if it’s not offered in Taiwan, (I’ll have to ask our business department about this), I can assure you it will be in the near future. We only recently expanded our business offices into India, Malasia, and Indonesia, and the number of test takers from that region has swelled.

We’re currently starting to hear some of our first native French speakers, as the expansion into Europe is now beginning, also.

As for a question about a book, there really isn’t a book that I know of that can prepare you for speaking. We suspect that there are test prep companies paying students to take the test and memorize questions, but we are constantly developing new prompts. Also, simply memorizing formulas or specific answers doesn’t improve your scores on the Speaking exam. We are seeing a rise in such stock phrases being used in the test, but it doesn’t really improve candidates scores, and may in fact detract from their scores. The way the test questions are designed, it’s impossible to give 1 single correct answer. Just as in natural speech, there are multiple successful ways to answer the questions, depending on the individual candidates actual speaking ability.

While I would agree that the listening/reading exam doesn’t accurately reflect English ability, the speaking does. As Maggie pointed out, studying books doesn’t necessarily demonstrate the ability to speak. The speaking test does, however. It’s really quite different from the reading/listening TOEIC exam.

Many companies are using the Toeic Speaking component as a requirement for applicants, to assign promotions, etc. Also, the popularity of the test and it’s recognition as an industry standard for measurement of speaking ability is becoming ever more widely accepted.

It still hasn’t reached the volumes and isn’t as widely taken as the TOEFL, but that is expected to change as the program increases in age. The Speaking/Writing aspect is currently expanding, and rapidly. We scored more responses in the first 3 months of this year, then we scored in the entire previous year! We are having to hire and train more and more raters to handle the influx of volumes.

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Hi Skrej and everyone,

Thanks for giving so many details about TOEIC exams. And I think it’s possible that some companies may pay students to take the test and memorize questions because that reminds me one thing. I remember one of my TOFEL teachers told us that he got used to memorize TOFEL questions and as far as I know he uses that contexts to be the materials of the TOEFL cram school. It’s really not a good example, indeed.

Moreover, I got update some information that we have allready Toeic speaking and writing exam this year in Taiwan according to my finding on Toeic website of Taiwan. So you are RIGHT. :slight_smile: But the registratoin fee is really NOT inexpensive. Ha! But I guess that because TOEIC center need to hire some people to score the contents, such as speaking voices which candidates have spoken in the exams and it does take much time. I understand it I think. And I think I’ll prepare some time for speaking and writing parts and take it in the near future as well.

Greetings!

Maggie^^

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I’m always kind of curious as to what students do pay for the test. I know it fluctuates and is pegged to the local currency, and isn’t a uniform price in US dollars which is simply converted into local currency.

I’m not surprised that it’s expensive, though, considering there’s a minimum of 4 people who score every test. As part of our efforts to maintain accurate scoring, no single person scores more than about a third of any given candidate’s test.

So, on a given scoring day, there are a certain number of raters, then there’s some more people who are responsible for monitoring a small groups of raters, (making sure they’re scoring accurately, answering any questions the raters have, etc.). Finally, there’s another couple of people above them who help them do their job, making sure they’re catching all the mistakes, etc. (This is what I do.)

Also, they have to pay all the people who write and develop the tests, plus more.

That being said, I think ETS probably could be charging more for the tests than they do. Officially, they are a non-profit company, so their goal isn’t to make as much money as they probably could. Any profits they do make after salaries and other operating expenses, gets turned back into research and development.

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Thanks a lot, Skrej. I got it and understand the TOEIC exams more.

By the way, your name is pretty special to me. Is ‘SKrej’ a kind of family name? Also, I’m wondersing how I can say it, I mean the pronunciation. Cause I can’t look it up in the dictionaries.

Maggie^^

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Heh, well, no, it’s not a family name. As far as I know, it’s pronounced ‘Skuh-resh’. Supposedly it’s Bulgarian for ‘hoar frost’, and that’s the Bulgarian pronunciation. However, I usually use the English pronunciation of ‘skuh-rej’.

There’s a story behind the name.

A Bulgarian friend of mine once told me it was the name of a penguin in a Bulgarian zoo, which had bitten her on her butt. :lol:

Somewhat later, I realized that ‘skrej’ spelled backwards in English is…‘jerks’. I’m not sure if she was playing a joke on me if it really is the bird’s name, and the English spelling was just a coincidence. However, the word does exist in Bulgarian, spelled Ϲкреж, so maybe she wasn’t trying to pull a joke on me.

Either way, I thought that the story of a penguin biting her on the butt, and the possibility that I may have fallen for a trick were both kind of funny, so I continue to use the name.