By Kim Rahn
Staff Reporter
Koreans recorded an average score of 77 points in TOEFL last year, a sharp rise from 72 the previous year. But it was lower than the world's average of 78 points out of the full mark of 120 on the Internet-based test (iBT). Their speaking and writing abilities remained relatively weak, according to officials of Educational Testing Service (ETS), the organizer of the test.
Paul Ramsey, senior vice president of ETS Global, said the improvement reflects Korean students' efforts to enhance communicative English skills at the university level. He made the remarks during a media briefing at ETS' headquarters in Princeton, New Jersey, Wednesday.
The number of Korean TOEFL-takers was 124,000 in 2007, the largest in the world.
On top of enhanced communicative skills, the officials said a decline in the number of younger students who took the test also attributed to boosting the average score last year. A large number of middle school students used to take TOEFL as elite high schools included the scores in their admission process.
As such high demand made people unable to access the TOEFL registration Web site, elite schools dropped the test from their admission system in April last year. Ramsey visited Korea at that time, promising more opportunities for the test by increasing the number of Internet servers and test centers.
By category, reading and listening scores were 20 points each, higher than the world's average of 19.1 and 19.8, respectively. But speaking and writing scores were 18 and 20, compared with the world's average 19.2 and 20.2, respectively.
In comparison, Chinese test-takers recorded 78, Japanese 65, the Netherlands 103, Denmark 101, Singapore 100, and the Philippines 88.
``Some countries like Korea and China have a large number of test-takers, while others do not. Some nations teach English from preschool age, while others do not. So, it is meaningless to rank countries according to the scores,'' an official of Edelman Korea, the public relations agency for ETS, said.