The Educational Testing Service (ETS), which produces and manages the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), held a press conference exclusively for South Korean journalists in America. They said that Koreans should not compare their TOEFL scores with those of other countries, and gave reasons why.
Matthias von Davier, a senior research scientist at ETS, told reporters that it doesn’t make sense to blindly compare the TOEFL scores across different countries. “In case of South Korea, there are many middle-and high-school students who participate in the test, while in Germany, for instance, the majority of applicants are undergraduate or graduate-level students,” Yonhap cited him as saying.
Davier then noted that TOEFL score should be understood as representing an individual performance, not a national performance as a whole.
“As of today, we don’t have a test that can measure a national-level English proficiency,” he said.
It’s all very sensible.
Telling Koreans that they can’t rank something is a hopeless endeavor. They can — and will — rank, compare, and vow to be in the Top (#) by the Year (#) for anything and everything.
Comment by Whitey — May 11, 2009 @ 3:41 pm