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In a bid to rescue the compromised Test of English for International Communication, the U.S. firm ETS said Monday the TOEIC will after all include assessment of speaking and writing skills.
ETS plans to start newly designed tests from the third quarter next year, after running trials with several hundred people in Korea, Japan, and France this month.
¡°A decade of ETS research on the English language and how people communicate in practical, everyday circumstances has confirmed the need for assessments that reflect more authentic tasks such as those encountered in the global business environment,¡± ETS CEO Kurt Landgraf said.
In the speaking part of the test, candidates will be asked to describe images shown, or choose one of two business proposals and explain what it is. The exercise will be electronically recorded and sent to the marker.
In other changes, the listening and reading comprehension components will get longer, and candidates will be asked to listen to a variety of English accents besides American. ETS also reduced the number of photograph-based questions.
Launched in 1979, the TOEIC has come increasingly under fire for unreliability in Korea, one of a handful of countries where it is still widely administered. Some 4.5 million people take the test annually, more than one-third of them here.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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