AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster -- TOEFL tips!
RS: Each year close to one million people around the world take the
TOEFL -- the Test of English as a Foreign Language. Since it's required
to get into many colleges and universities in America, we get a lot of
questions about it.
AA: So we turn to Mari [pronounced
Mary] Pearlman at the Educational Testing Service, the private
organization in Princeton, New Jersey, that administers the TOEFL exam.
PEARLMAN: "It takes about two-and-a-half hours, whether
it's paper-and-pencil or computer-based. Students are asked to read
relatively lengthy academic passages. Let's say there might be a
reading comprehension passage about the greenhouse effect. There might
be another reading passage about twentieth century architecture. There
might be a third passage about great social movements in Europe from
1860 to 1900.
"Those passages are followed by
comprehension questions, comprehension both of the subject matter in the
passage -- did they understand what they read -- also did they
understand how the language works, did they get the signals. For
example, in English, when we qualify an assertion, we use certain
linguistic signals. Can they see what those particular kinds of signals
are doing."
RS: The TOEFL also tests for listening comprehension. Recordings are played.
PEARLMAN: "Sometimes they sound like lectures in a classroom,
sometimes they're conversations between two or three speakers. In
either case, students are asked to listen through headphones, and then
they're asked comprehension questions about both the content of what was
said and how the speakers interacted if it was a conversation."
AA: In another section, students must recognize and correct grammatical errors in sentences. And then there is an essay.
PEARLMAN: "Usually the essay questions are things like this: 'Some
people say that young people are the source of all really innovative
ideas. Others say that it is only after people have aged and raised
their own children that they have true wisdom. Which of these would you
agree with? Give two specific examples to support your point of
view.'"
RS: Mari Pearlman is vice president of teaching and learning at the Educational Testing Service.
PEARLMAN: "One of the things that is pretty clear to us is that, in
the United States, what you want to find out is what people do in
response to things they don't know yet. That is, unfamiliar material.
Since going to university and graduate school is largely a process of
encountering things you don't yet know -- that's why you're there --
this seems like a good measure of certain skills that are important."
RS: Yet in many places in the world, Mari Pearlman says, that is an unfamiliar definition of knowledge.
PEARLMAN: "So, for a lot of students, how to prepare for TOEFL is
mysterious, because their whole model of learning is that they just
memorize lots and lots and lots and lots, and they expect to see some
portion of that on the test. And that's not the way this test works."
AA: Since the TOEFL is a test of academic language, Mari
Pearlman says the best way to prepare is to read a lot of high-level
material in English. The Educational Testing Service and others sell
test preparation materials.
RS: She says another thing to do
is to listen to a lot of English. And, once a speaking test is added
to the TOEFL next year, it will be important to practice speaking.
PEARLMAN: "That is probably the thing that's most neglected, sounding
like an English speaker, which is hard. I mean it's hard for any of us
to sound like a speaker of another language. That's the hardest part."
RS: "When it's not our native language. Of course."
PEARLMAN: "Intelligibility is obviously part of what we score, but
it's also the key to knowing whether the person can actually address the
content as well."
AA: In 2004, the fortieth anniversary of
the TOEFL, the Education Testing Service will introduce what it calls
the "next generation" of the exam. Mari Pearlman says E-T-S has been
working for about ten years with researchers to develop the new test.
Instead of testing each language skill separately, the new TOEFL will
integrate reading, writing and speaking.
RS: This September
E-T-S will come out with a CD-ROM to help teachers prepare students for
the new TOEFL. Mari Pearlman says her organization hopes the new exam
will have a "big effect" on the teaching of English as a foreign
language, to better prepare students for academic life. To learn more
about the test, there's a TOEFL Web site; it's TOEFL (that's T-O-E-F-L)
dot o-r-g.
RS: You'll find our programs on the Web at
voanews.com/wordmaster. Our e-mail address is word@voanews.com. With
Avi Arditti, I'm Rosanne Skirble.
(Source: VOA- E&J CAFÉ tổng hợp)
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