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Korea is the world¡¯s last bastion of the Test of English for International Communication or TOEIC, but the compromised test may at last be on its way out. Some 12 corporations including GS Retail have dropped a TOEIC score requirement for job applicants, and three others like Doosan had lowered the minimum requirement, according to a survey of 27 major companies. SK, Industrial Bank of Korea and Pantech & Curitel also did away with test score requirements from the second half of the year, while Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics lowered the barrier.
"Until last year, we required applicants to have TOEIC scores of 830 and above, but we judged that the TOEIC isn¡¯t an appropriate indicator of actual English skills, so we stopped asking for TOEIC scores from the second half,¡± says Lee Jeong, the head of personnel at Industrial Bank of Korea.
Despite growing criticism, the TOEIC had managed to retain its position as the leading means of evaluating English skills of jobseekers in Korea for many years. But now the test, which has no reading and writing sections and consists largely of formulaic multiple-choice questions, may have come to the end of its extended run. Most candidates sit the test for employment reasons. If companies now dismiss it, the exam¡¯s very survival is under threat. When asked at the test venue why they were taking the exam, 39.2 percent of the exam takers in the first half of the year cited employment. University students made up 51.1 percent.
The test was designed by the U.S. company Educational Testing Service, which also developed the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language), in 1979 at the request of the Japanese Ministry of Trade and Industry, and is given in roughly 60 nations worldwide. Korea adopted the test in 1982, when 1,300 examinees took it. Since then, with the exception of 1998 and the following year, the number of takers has steadily risen, with about 760,000 taking it in 2000 and 1.83 million in 2004 -- a massive chunk of the 4.5 million who took the exam worldwide last year.
There have been several debates over the reliability of the TOEIC. The first was that the test allows takers to maximize their scores without speaking a word of English simply by learning how to pick the correct answers. Until very recently, it recycled questions. Some of the answers for the grammar questions could be correctly guessed just by looking at the structure of the question, and some tutors who saw through this became popular teaching students how to beat the exam. So formalized had the TOEIC become that one instructor was able to tell his students that if the term "South Korea" is found in a question, the correct answer is "strategic." Primers full of such hints are revered as Bibles among test takers.
The International Communication Foundation (ICF), which administers the TOEIC exam in Korea, says questions were repeated because the company included "anchor items" for examiners. Anchor items are recycled questions used to adjust the difficulty of the exams by comparing the percentages of students who answered the question correctly on the current exam and when the question was first asked. The ICF said ETS did away with the system in March 2003 but added the company was not solely influenced by the popularity of crammers teaching students how to beat the test. A former TOEIC tutor who gave his name as Lee (27) says the number of students enrolling at TOEIC academies dropped dramatically after the repeat questions disappeared in March 2003.
Fresh controversy over the reliability of the exam started when a series of cheating scandals came to light. Police in April last year busted a ring of cheaters who were using radios in the test venue. The same year, police nabbed a former ICF employee identified as Kang who was forging TOEIC certificates using official certificate paper he had stolen from his former employer. He had his own website where he advertised forged TOEIC certificates and was shown to have made at least 10. Kang also leaked about eight months' worth of test papers, which made their way into the hands of a popular TOEIC instructor. After these incidents, the Korea TOEIC Committee placed radio detectors in major test venues and increased the period during which cheaters would be prevented from retaking the exam from two years to five.
Some candidates distrust the test because the marking system is a secret. The TOEIC consists of 200 questions for 990 points, but the points allotted to each question reportedly differ, and the exact scoring method remains closely guarded. Some takers have noticed big differences in their expected score and the score they actually receive and have raised questions about fairness. Han (27), a jobseeker, says, "I've taken the test more than 10 times, but I have no clue what standards are used for scoring."
ICF managing director Lee Dong-hyeon says he also has no idea because that is the area of ETS¡¯ special expertise. ¡°The core is that test takers maintain similar scores regardless of which test they take," he adds.
But undaunted by controversy, there was a steady stream of jobseekers making their way to the TOEIC venue, because it made no difference to them so long as corporations were still demanding high TOEIC scores. Any changes were in fact in the hands of businesses. In July, ETS promised a "New TOEIC" that will focus on evaluating students' actual English ability. But since the new exam doesn't include writing and speaking sections either, it remains to be seen how much trust the TOEIC can recover.
"Our company places the most importance on whether you can communicate in English for work,¡± Curitel's Yu Jeong-geun said. ¡°So we conduct an English interview with applicants, and that is where we judge."
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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