The school for which I work paid for all of its employees to take the TOEIC (including the native English speakers!). I haven’t had much experience with TOEIC, mainly TOEFL and IELTS, so I’ll give some impressions of the exam from the point of view of a native speaker.
The listening section was quite straight-forward, though I was confused at some points where there was more than one question related to a single listening piece. The fact that the recordings were played only once didn’t help, either. There are a LOT of idioms and phrasal verbs used on the exam, so it’s quite helpful to study those in context.
The reading section was no problem, though I did see many points of possible difficulty, including “-ed” verbs and adjectives and confusion through similar words that mean different things.
“The listening section was quite straight-forward, though I was confused at some points where there was more than one question related to a single listening piece.”
Shouldn’t it be “…where there were more than one…”?
“There are a LOT of idioms and phrasal verbs used on the exam”
Shouldn’t it be “There are a LOT of idioms and phrasal verbs used in the exam”?
Hi Jared - Please don’t be offended by what you consider pedantry when someone is trying to understand what is right.
Both - to put the record straight:
‘There was one question’ is correct for the reasons given.
In my opinion, despite the reasons given, ‘on the exam’ is incorrect. It should definitely be ‘in the exam’ We can talk about the writing and text on the exam paper, but when talking about the content such as idioms and phrasal verbs, then ‘in the exam’ is right - and it isn’t referring to the examination room, but to the examination itself.
AE speakers typically speak of scores ‘on the exam’ - but I’ve never seen the content being described as ‘on the exam’.
Still, I appreciate that y’all have gotten used to doin’ things yer own way.